Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 86450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
“I have a piece of advice,” I say softly, my hand going to rest over his.
His eyes come to mine. “Yeah?”
“I don’t think you have to decide if she’s guilty. And I don’t think you have to decide she’s clean. You can just… not decide. Keep her close, keep watching. You don’t owe her the benefit of the doubt after what she said, but it’s also okay to hope she’s still the woman you want her to be.”
Finn’s quiet and his eyes scan the area again. Something in his face eases slightly, like I’ve said the thing he already knew but needed to hear from a person who isn’t him.
The corner of his mouth lifts, but it doesn’t quite reach all the way to his eyes. I imagine under all the analysis, under the testing and the watching and the careful not-deciding, there’s a simpler thing sitting in his gut… grief. He’s mourning her already. He’s standing in a park holding my hand and saying goodbye to a woman who isn’t even gone yet, just in case.
I reach up and put my palm against his jaw and turn his face to me. “Hey.”
“Yeah.”
“Whatever she did or didn’t do… it’s not yours. You pulled a sixteen-year-old off a corner and gave her eighteen years of a family she’d never have had otherwise. If she threw that away, that’s hers to have thrown. Not yours to have failed.”
His throat moves and the level of vulnerability I see in his beautiful eyes will probably haunt me the rest of my life. “How do you do that?” he asks quietly, tucking a lock of hair behind my ear.
“Do what?”
“Say the very right thing I needed to hear.”
“It’s my job.” I go up on my toes and kiss him. “It’s my job because I think I’m falling in love with you.”
I feel him go completely still against me. I hadn’t planned to say it. It just tumbled right out, and I don’t have a single urge to walk it back.
Finn pulls away just far enough to see my face, his eyes almost frantically searching mine. His expression is disbelieving and wrecked all at once. “Say that again,” he demands.
“I think I’m falling in love with you. I’m not a hundred percent sure because I’ve never been in love before, but I think this is what love should feel like.”
“Josie.” My name comes out rough and he cups the back of my neck before resting his forehead against mine. “I’ve never felt this way either, and I’ve never wondered what it felt like. But yeah… I think this is what falling in love must be. I’m going to earn you falling all the way.”
“You don’t have to earn it.”
“I’m going to anyway.”
And right there, in the middle of Occidental Park with his gun under his jacket and a Russian somewhere in the city who wants me dead, Finn Marlowe kisses me like I’ve never been kissed before.
CHAPTER 19
Finn
There’s an onion, three bell peppers, and a half pound of mushrooms on the cutting board, and I’m working through them methodically, cutting them into one-inch pieces.
I came down a little after seven and left Josie in my bed, sleeping on her back with one arm flung out to the side. She didn’t even move when the bed shifted, telling me that she’s exhausted and needs the sleep. Of course, part of that might be because I kept her up late last night, but I can’t fucking help myself when she’s near me.
The water outside the kitchen window is still and there’s a heron at the edge standing on one leg, still as a statue. He’s been there since I came down and my gaze keeps cutting his way to see if he’s going to try to nab a small fish from the shallows.
I think about last night and the significance of it. After ten minutes of indulging Josie in a walk through Occidental Park, we came here to my place and completely ignored the fact that we had told each other we were falling in love. We didn’t feel the need to discuss it, but I’m sure we were both processing it.
Josie kicked off her shoes by the door, and I poured us some wine. We made dinner together and she was a terrible help, stealing pieces of broccoli off my cutting board, distracting me by reaching past me to put something in a bowl with her hip pressed to mine, and I let her. We carried our plates out to the patio and turned on the heaters. We sat there with the gas humming and the water lapping at the shore’s edge. We ate pasta and talked about mundane life things like the best way to unclog a drain at her house and why Tom Hanks can’t seem to make a bad movie.