Finley Embraces Heart and Home (Love Austen 4)

They finish while I’m waiting out front for my third taxi of the night.

My phone rings.

Ford’s voice. “Fin? You okay?”

My jaw ticks.

Finley. Home breakers don’t get to use my nickname.

I’m fifteen and thinking the same thing as I stare down Tom.

How angry I was. How stubborn.

Grief rises in my chest and crashes through the soles of my feet. I should hate Ford for what he’s doing to Rush.

But I hate him for showing me how I’ve villainised Tom.

Tom, who doesn’t cheat on my mum. Tom, who has always been there if I’d wanted him. Tom, who never lies about how he feels.

I hang up and my vision blurs as I write Tom a message. Just in case there’s a way he can read it.

They’re not words I’d ever thought I’d say to Tom. I want to now.

They look so small. A teardrop in a river, when the river should have been made of them.

I love you.

The taxi arrives.

I slide into the back.

“Where to?”

Mansfield is a dark silhouette against a violet night sky.

Ethan is here. His car is parked out front. My nape prickles.

The wild pain of the hours before has been tempered with shock, with regret. I move quietly up the path.

I glance toward the bird’s nest. I have a feeling I might see Ethan there. But movement pulls my gaze left, toward the pear trees.

Ethan stands in a fork in the branches, halfway up. He’s saying something, but it’s not directed at me. Though he has to have heard the taxi roll up. He has to know I’m here.

His voice is strangled. “Mrs Norris, just come down, dammit.”

A tortured meow is Mrs Norris’s reply.

Ethan’s large frame shakes; leaves shiver in the moonlight. A pear thuds to the grass.

I can’t believe I ever thought to go anywhere else but to him.

“Eth.”

His sobbing continues; he drowns the sound.

For a moment it looks like he’ll fall out of the tree, and I drop my suitcase and launch myself toward him.

“Is that it? The End?”

“Not nearly! This princess cares about more than saving only herself. She looks over the prince’s shoulder and notices a poor young man, stuck in a tree. He’s calling out for someone to come to him.”

I start climbing the tree, twigs and leaves brushing my face, snagging on my clothes. I’m too hasty. My foot slips, catching on a lower branch. I keep going.

Mrs Norris lets out another wretched cry.

Ethan’s face is streaked with tears and snot; his body wracks harder, his eyes glance upwards, pleading . . .

I nod. Climb higher. Scooch and adjust and balance.

Mrs Norris’s claw is stuck in a knot in a branch. She hisses when I lean toward her and we both sway. “Look at me, Mrs Norris.”

She meows.

“I know we’ve got a . . . competitive relationship, but I want to help you.”

Another meow, quieter this time.

Balanced precariously, I reach her and firmly clasp her body. “Let me get you down and you can go back to hating me tomorrow.”

I unhook her claw and haul her furry body to my chest. She struggles and digs into my arms, painfully; I hold tight until I can release her safely. She jumps into the grass and scampers away.

The leaves continue to quiver.

“Thank you.” Ethan wipes his face with his sleeve.

I clasp his fingers first, then the warm soft part under his arm. I press against him, wrapping around him tight, tighter. I grip the tree trunk behind him, hauling myself closer still. My body soaks up his silent sobs.

—it had opened dazzling bright.

K. Mansfield, “Her First Ball”

He comes to my room later.

“I can’t sleep.”

Neither can I.

“I know we’re—”

I flip the blankets down for him.

He sighs and crawls and collapses next to me. His naked chest gleams in the moonlight. There’s nothing sexual about the way he’s sprawled. He’s exhausted. Even lifting a blanket is too much.

For long beats we say nothing, but our breaths are short and hitched, always on the cusp of breaking the silence.

He turns on his side. Soft fingers touch my arm. “She scratched you.”

“I’ll swap out her cat cream for water tomorrow.”

He laughs softly, then stops. Swears.

I press a finger to his lips. “You can hurt for him and still laugh.”

“I’ve barely visited since you left. When I saw him, I . . . for the first time in my life, I hated him.” His face screws up and his chest heaves. I feather my hand down his side, to his gleaming scar. “We’re a kaleidoscope of conflicting emotions, Ethan. You can hate someone and still very much love them.”

“I don’t want him to die. I don’t want his last memories to be of me ignoring him.”

“They won’t be.”

“How do you know that?”

I close my eyes. I can’t quite explain how I’m so sure. I try anyway. “I never let myself remember the good things about Tom.”