Her face collapsed. “I swear I didn’t.”
“I know you keep saying that,” I cried. I shoved my book aside. “But this is the first time I’ve had something that was just mine, and yes, I should’ve told him, and I would’ve eventually, but it was mine to tell him. Not yours.”
“I know.” She sniffed. “I’m so sorry.”
I stood from the bed and paced my room. “And it’s embarrassing, okay? I can’t believe you knew I had a crush on Finn that whole time and you never said anything. Why didn’t you tell me you knew?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Because … I don’t know! I know the two of you so well, C. You’re … you’re the same person. I love Finn, I do, and I love you more than anything in the entire world …”
“But?” I crossed my arms tightly over my chest and waited her out. She didn’t want to say whatever she’d been about to say.
Lia shifted from the floor onto my bed. She licked her lips, and I noticed for the first time that she had matching dark circles under her eyes. Looked like neither of us had slept the night before.
“But you would’ve been the most boring couple ever.”
My mouth fell open. “That’s so freaking rude,” I whispered.
“No, I mean …” She rubbed her forehead. “Okay, I just mean there wouldn’t have been any spark. No fire. You probably would have been perfectly happy, and sweet and blah blah blah, but Finn is the boy version of you.” Her eyes pleaded with me. “Why do you think I get along with him so well? He’s just like you.”
Slowly, I sank into the chair in front of my desk and processed what she was saying. And Lia wasn’t wrong. Finn and I had so much in common. It was weird, though, now, to try to think about him in a romantic sense.
Not just because of what Lia said, but because of what I’d experienced with Bauer—oh hell, would my heart ever not hurt thinking his name?—which was in an entirely different universe.
He was my opposite. Finn’s too.
And as pissed as I still was that he’d stormed out the way he did, I couldn’t help but look at my sister and try to put myself in Bauer’s shoes. Like he said, the thought of him wanting anything with Lia that night, hoping he might cross some invisible boundary, it hurt. Oh, how it hurt.
“I shouldn’t have ignored you,” I whispered. “I’m sorry too.”
She sagged in relief. “No, it’s okay that you were upset. You had every right to be.”
“Maybe I was channeling my inner Lia.” I smiled. “I don’t know where that stubborn streak came from.”
My sister swiped at her face and laughed. “I know, right?”
I let out a sigh that came from so far down in my soul that Lia laughed again.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with all these,” I motioned to my chest, “feelings.”
Lia braced her arms on her thighs and leaned toward me. “Okay, talk to me. Tell me everything. I mean, maybe not like, sex details. But … what happened while you were gone?”
Then she patted the bed.
My entire being settled back into place as Lia and I braced our backs against the wall. She curled her hand around mine with our legs stretched out straight onto my bed, and I unloaded for the next hour.
After a bit, she leaned her head on my shoulder, and I set my head on hers, and we fell quiet before I got to the scene in the driveway. I didn’t even attempt to wipe the tears coming down my face during that part.
“I’m so mad at him for leaving,” I said, voice hoarse from talking. “But I get it. I don’t want to, but I do.”
“I don’t.”
I nudged her. “I don’t need you to vilify him. Paige did enough of that.”
Lia laughed under her breath. After the driveway showdown, family dinner was a shitshow. I cried in my old bedroom while Isabel and Paige and Lia yelled over each other about what happened. Logan kept knocking on the door, trying to talk to me, and Emmett happily sat at the table with a strangely quiet Finn.
“I’m not trying to vilify, per se.” She nudged back. “I mean, sure, it couldn’t be easy to hear that about Finn, but literally, nothing ever happened between you two. Not even a single loaded glance. I think if he’d given his hothead temper five seconds to calm down, he would’ve thought that through and seen that you were still the badass that rocked his freaking world off its axis up in that cabin, and he’d eventually get over it.”
“Here too,” I heard myself say.
“What here too?”
I glanced down at my bed with a sheepish grin.
“Oh my gosh,” Lia groaned. “Seriously? Don’t tell me stuff like that. It’s Bauer. I’m still coming around to this whole thing.”
That made my heart do the weird achy thing again. I missed him. It had been two days, and I missed him.
“Nothing to come around to.” I sighed. “He made it clear I wasn’t worth the trouble of dealing with that kind of emotional baggage to him.”
“Claire, be serious, you know that man was crazy about you, right? Like … stupid, head over heels in love with you.”
“If he was,” I said carefully, “he has a strange way of showing it.”
“Bauer has the emotional IQ of a six-year-old, C. You know that.”
“No, most six-year-olds could communicate better than he did in that driveway. He has the emotional IQ of a stunted twenty-six-year-old who has no freaking clue how to be in a relationship. Combine that with his stupid face and stupid muscles and stupid job, and that makes him the most dangerous creature alive.” I banged my head against the wall. “And stupid me, I thought …”
“What?”
Bang.
“I thought he’d be willing to figure it out for me. Because of what we had together.” I laughed. “And look where that got me. Brokenhearted, being irrationally stubborn to my twin sister who really didn’t do anything wrong, and missing him like he sawed off a part of my body and took it with him.”
“Graphic but okay, I’m tracking.” She glanced at me. “Why are you being so hard on yourself about this?”
Bang.
“I’m the one who’s supposed to be studying human behavior, right? Cause and effect. Knowing how childhood trauma can play out into adulthood. It’s like I saw Bauer and every single
I can fix him impulse was screaming at me. Except the multiple orgasms just made me dumber.”
Bang.
“Number one,” Lia said. “Stop banging your head against the wall. Concussions help no one. And number two, Adele did a number on him. So freaking what? Brooke did a number on us, and you know why we’re not emotionally stunted?”
I turned my head to look at her. “Why?”
“Someone who never gave up on us. A group of someones. We had each other, and we had Logan. Then we had Paige.” She groaned. “And I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but Bauer has never had anyone refuse to give up on him.”
A faded picture on a wall of a cabin came into my head. “He’s had one person. But I get what you’re saying.”
Lia’s fingers tightened around mine. “If this man is as important to you as I think he is, then show him what it feels like. Refuse to give up on him if he feels what I think he does. He never would’ve gotten so upset if you hadn’t dug your cute little claws into his emotionally stunted heart.”
I sighed. “So just … ignore the bullshit he spouted and tell him I’m not going anywhere? That sounds healthy.”
“Noooo way. If he knows what’s good for him, there will be copious groveling. But you don’t have to decide anything right now, okay?”
Curling into my sister, I let her hug me. It felt like I could sleep for a week after that one conversation. “Okay.”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.