Her shocked gaze connects with mine, and I watch as an astonished smile blooms across her face. “Right?”
“I guess the question is—is it worth the risk?”
She blows out a breath, ruffling the pale strands of hair framing her face. “I don’t know.”
My lips twitch into a smile, and a flutter starts low in my stomach when her eyes follow the movement. “I think you do. And when you’re ready, I’ll be here.”
“Promise?” she asks, sounding equal parts vulnerable and hopeful. It makes my chest ache.
I know there are people watching us. Locals running booths that the tourists are perusing. I know that kissing her will make town headlines, be the center of gossip before the hour is over, but I don’t care. In fact, I want everyone to know she’s mine. I’m hers.
So I lean forward and echo her words from earlier this morning against her lips. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Finley,” a female voice yells, seizing our attention. Our heads swivel in the direction of the voice, and surprise washes over me when I see Gus and Eloise. I expect Finley to stiffen against me, show signs of discomfort at seeing her ex-boyfriend and his fiancée, but her body stays soft, and a smile flashes over her face.
Either she’s a better actress than I knew she was, or she’s unbothered.
“Gus, Eloise, hey,” she says, voice light as cotton candy. “What are you guys up to?”
Finley may seem unaffected, but Gus is not. His jaw is tense enough that I expect his dentist will have words with him, and his eyes are hard as they take us in.
“We have a meeting with our caterer in a few minutes and thought we’d see what was here,” Eloise answers while Gus stands silently at her side. As if sensing his mood, she glances up at him, a smile plastered on her face, trying to include him in the conversation. “Gus and I can’t decide on the menu. I want lobster, but…” Eloise trails off, looking at Gus hopefully, waiting for him to continue her thought.
“Gus doesn’t like seafood,” Finley finishes for her, and then the four of us lapse into awkward silence.
“Right,” Eloise says finally, and clears her throat. “Well, we better get to our appointment.”
“It was nice seeing you,” Finley says, and I think she sounds genuine. Enough that it makes doubt start to sour in my stomach.
“You, too,” Eloise yells over her shoulder. Gus walks beside her, still yet to say a word. His shoulders are as tense as I feel, all the earlier fuzzy feelings burning up in the hot sun.
When they’re gone, Finley turns to me, wide-eyed. “That wasweird, right?”
I don’t want to say what was so obvious to me, but I need to see her reaction. “Gus was jealous.”
Somehow, her eyes widen even further. “No.”
I’m nodding before the word is even fully out of her mouth. “He was.” Then, after hesitating, I ask, “Does that make you happy?”
I can see in her face that she knows what I’m getting at, that she can read me as well as I was starting to think I could read her. Wearing my heart on my sleeve like this is painful.
“I want Gus to be happy,” she says carefully. “I’m really glad he has Eloise. It hurt knowing I wasn’t enough for him, and I’m not going to say it doesn’t feel good to show him—” She cuts herself off, heaving out a breath. “To show him that I’m enough for someone else. But I don’t want him, and I don’t want him to want me.”
A knot I didn’t realize had formed in my throat slowly starts to unravel, letting air fill my lungs once more. “You’re sure?” I ask, knowing how it makes me sound, how she must be able to tell from those words alone how gone I am for her.
She holds my gaze, inching closer until we’re lined up everywhere, until her hands are on my chest and mine are like magnets connecting to her hips of their own volition. I’ll never get over the way we seem to fit together perfectly, like our bodies were designed with the other one in mind.
I can feel her chest drag against my own as she pushes up to her tiptoes, lining her lips up with my ear, sending a shiver down my spine. “I’ve never been more sure of anything.”
“How do we want to do this?” Finley asks as we sit in the car in front of her mom’s house for our weekly Saturday night dinner.
I arch an eyebrow. “It’syourmom’s house.”
She gives me an incredulous look. “Still, I’ve never brought a boy home before.”
“Finley, I feel the need to remind you that I have, in fact, been here once or twice before.”
“This is different, and you know it. We have to tell them we’re together.”
