“You know… it was hard.”
I furrow my brow but keep my eyes on the road. “What was?”
“Losing my best friend.” His voice is rough around the edges now. “And… well, yeah, my best friend’s little sister, who also kind of felt like my best friend too. My family. It was just fucking lonely. On the road, during the season, even at home. It was just me and an empty phone, and I didn’t know whether she or Dane were okay. Or if I’d ever see either of them again.”
I don’t look at him. I can’t.
“I wanted to be there for them,bothof them. I wanted to show up and help, but Dane shut me out.” I peek up at the mirror and find his serious, sad blue eyes pinned on me. “I wasn’t the one who left.I wanted to be there.You know that, right?”
I swallow hard and look back at the road before I do something fucking stupid. Like cry. Or hope.
I clear my throat and shift my voice lower. “Well, sure. I believe you. But it’s not like you need to explain that to me. I wasn’t there.”
There are a few beats of silence before he replies. “Sure.Anyway,” he starts with an audible sigh. “What I’m getting at is that people do stupid shit when they’re that lonely.”
That piques my interest. “What kind of stupid shit?”
Any insight into what has been going on with him all these years is welcome.
Silence stretches again, but it’s the kind that feels full of something rather than empty. I breathe in and realize the air in the bus has changed. The windows are slightly fogged, and the heater hums low, but it’s more than that. The whole place smells like him now, like sweet maple syrup and that warm, earthy something that always clung to him— fresh cedar and old sweatshirts. It’s stupid how much that grounds me. How my shoulders drop just a little, my grip on the wheel loosens, and I feel the ache in my chest pulse softer.
Like something homesick and tired just… exhales.
“Like almost marrying the wrong girl,” he mutters.
My foot slams onto the brake, and the bus jerks hard, tires squealing. Finn lurches forward with a grunt, and there’s a muffled thud from the back as Dane swears.
“What the…” Finn starts, but I’m already shouting.
“There was a rabbit!” I ease off the brake and slowly start to accelerate again. “Or… something,” I mumble. “Sorry. You were saying?”
My thoughts go haywire as my hands shake, even with me gripping the wheel this hard.
Married.He almost got married.
I breathe in hard through my nose, tell myself to get over it, and stop being a child.So what if Finn had a girl?So what if he locked it down while I was off falling apart? It doesn’t matter, it’s not like he was mine. Not then, and especially not now.
Still, unease slithers down my spine, or maybe it’sregret. I canfeelFinn giving me a look, but I don’t meet his gaze to confirm, and he doesn’t press.
“I was with someone for a few years,” he admits quietly. “Thought she was it. She was smart, ambitious, and knew the sport inside and out, since she works for the UCI. Said she believed in me, or maybe just believed in what I could be.”
I chance a glance at the mirror and find his gaze fixed on the view outside the window.
“I thought I was digging my way out of that lonely hole,” he continues eventually. “Thought I had a shot at building something real with her. But it turned out, she was more into the guy I could’ve been than the guy I was.”
“What happened?” I ask before I can stop myself.
He huffs a bitter breath, more air than sound. “When it became clear I wasn’t going to be the next Dane Crews, when I wasn’t winning World Cups, she left me for someone better.” His jaw works again. “She wanted the guy with the trophy.”
My throat tightens.
God, what kind of idiot walks away fromhim? From Finn, with all that quiet steadiness and warmth he doesn’t even realize he radiates, making him believe he wasn’t enough, that he had to be someoneelseto be worth staying for.
She had him, and she let him go.
“Sounds like a bitch,” I grit out. “Her loss.”
Finn laughs. “You think?”
