Page 33 of The Lies That Shatter
Shit! Did I say I would ring him, or he would ring me?
I quickly open our text chain from earlier and scroll through them, hoping to find the answer. But like an idiot, I didn’t specify whether I would ring him, or if I should wait for him to ring me when he’s free. We settled on a time, but that’s it.
What if I ring him and he’s busy? Will he get annoyed at me for pestering? But what if he’s waiting for me to call him, and thinks that I don’t want to talk to him anymore? I don’t want him to think I’m standing him up.
Fuck, the whirling of information that is tumbling around my brain is deafening, as I quite literally overthink every fucking scenario.
RING!
I’m pulled out of my thoughts by the sound of my ringtone echoing around the room as the mobile phone vibrates in my hand. I look down and see Finn’s name as the clock on the wall perfectly hits eleven. I can’t help but smile at his punctuality, and the fact he rang me.
Answer the fucking phone before he hangs up, you weirdo,the voices in my head shout.
I press the button and change it straight over onto the speakerphone, so that I can hear him clearer. “Hello.” I hate how fucking breathy and unsure I sound.
“Hey.” Finn sounds confident and sexy, the way he always does, and I want to roll my eyes at him. Trust me to be a bag of crippling nerves, and he sounds completely fucking unaffected.
“Hi,” I repeat, sounding like a bumbling idiot.
His chuckle echoes around the room, and does stupid things to my insides. “You said that already.” I groan loudly, which just makes him laugh more. “Are you nervous?” he asks.
I nod, but then I realise he can’t actually see me. “Yes, but I don’t know why.”
He’s silent for a moment, and I curse myself for blowing this so early on. “I never thought things would ever be awkward between us. We used to sit on the phone talking for hours,” he replies, his voice sounding almost wistful, like he thinks back on those nights often—like I do.
“I guess it’s been a while since we really talked.”
“You mean to tell me that what happened the other day when we talked doesn’t count? Just because you were straddling me with your tongue down my throat in between talking?” he states, sounding every bit as sarcastic as I remember from when we were kids.
When we were growing up, people used to call Finn the quiet Doughty, after Freya. Compared to his brothers, he shrank into the background. Evan was moody and got into fights. Liam was the calm, smooth talker that everyone loved. Kellan—though we didn’t know he was a biological brother back then—was the sarcastic one who made everyone laugh. Whereas, Finn was the quiet one that was only noticed because of how hot he was. He preferred to stay invisible to everyone except me. With me he showed his funny, sarcastic side, and I loved that I was the only person who got to see the real Finn.
“I seem to recall your tongue went in first.” What the hell kind of a comeback is that? I’m arguing over who used their tongue first. This is what happens when I’m around this guy. All good sense seems to evaporate from my mind, and I turn into a pool of liquid, unable to form proper sentences.
“How could I not when you were grinding against my cock?” he says with a deep chuckle that makes my stomach tighten.
Great, now he’s mentioned his cock, that’s all I can think about. I can still feel how hard he felt beneath me.
“I loved feeling how hard I made you,” I whisper, not sure if I should admit that.
I spent the last God knows how many hours planning how this conversation would go, and not once did I imagine it going like this. I mean, in my wildest fantasy it may have, but that’s different.
“Sweetheart, you have no fucking clue how hard you make me all of the damn time,” he groans, and even though he can’t see it, I can’t keep the shit-eating grin off my face.
“Really?” I ask, not quite believing what he’s saying.
“Abso-fucking-lutely. I will tell you more about it later. But first, how are you doing? Did work go okay today? You didn’t have any problems with the Whitlocks, did you?”
I groan, resting the phone on my knee as I pull out my messy bun and start running my fingers through my hair for something to do. “It was okay. I didn’t see Mortimer, which is good because he creeps me out. Mel fucking hates me. I’m sure of it. She keeps looking at me weirdly, and it’s starting to freak me out a little.”
“She’s just jealous. She’s been funny since I offered you a lift home. She thinks you’re a threat to her, that you might try to take me from her,” he says, and I’m struggling to work out if he’s kidding or not.
“Are you joking?”
He laughs. “No, I’m very fucking serious. She knows how beautiful you are, and that’s a threat to her. She told me that she doesn’t like the way you look at me. Apparently, you stare at me like you want to see me naked. It would appear I’m a fucking amazing actor because she had no idea that it’s actually the other way around. I’m the one thinking about you naked all the damn time.”
Now it’s my turn to laugh. “You’re wrong. It’s definitely me doing that. I just didn’t realise my face was giving so much away.”
I can almost hear him rolling his eyes at me over the bloody phone. “Please, you’ve never had a damn good poker face. I’ve always been able to read you.”
