Page 21 of So This Isn't Love
The party breaks up around ten. Annie hugs me at the door a beat longer than usual, which is her way of saying she knows Finn’s comment cut deeper than I let on. Jules makes me promise to report tomorrow "in real time, with photos," and Cathy walks me to my car humming something that sounds suspiciously like a battle march.
"Whatever you're planning," I tell her, "remember he's technically a donation to the library."
"Hey, I treat every animal that comes through my door with complete professionalism. Even the human ones." She pats my car roof twice. "Seven sharp. Pray he hasn’t eaten breakfast before he gets here."
"Why would... Cathy. Why would you say that?"
"Goodnight, Darcy!"
I drive home through streets I know by heart, past the dark library and the darker school, and let myself into my apartment over the bookshop, where everything is quiet and smells like old paper and the fancy scented candle I shouldn't have bought the same week I spent three thousand dollars on revenge.
I get ready for bed with great efficiency and absolutely no thinking. I check my banking app exactly once, quickly, the way a person checks a bruise. Three thousand dollars from my savings account, which had been set aside for a dream project I’ve been thinking about for the past several years. Now, it’s on hold indefinitely, all because of some decade-plus payback fantasy.
Worth it, I tell the dark, with most of my conviction. Today didn’t go the way I thought it would—for many reasons—but I still have tomorrow to exact another dose of revenge.
Whatever Cathy has in store for him, he deserves.
I promise myself I won’t feel anything when I see him again. Not the hurt from the past. Not the soft curiosity that started forming when I saw him with those kids at the drama club. With Joshua, who hadn’t come out of his shell for anyone yet ended the day working alongside Finn like they’d known each other for years.
I tell myself I won’t think about any of that.
Then I lie there in the dark and relive the feeling of Finn’s hand resting in mine at the studio, warm and strong and patient, every signal answered a half-beat after I sent it. Nothing anticipated. Nothing resisted.
A man whose whole life is velocity, holding still because I asked him to.
CHAPTER 9
FINN
Iarrive at Main Street Books at 6:58 a.m. with two dozen donuts and a drink carrier holding six different coffees, because I don't know how Darcy takes hers and a man walking into hostile territory brings options.
She's waiting at the curb in a simple blouse, jeans and sneakers, her thick dark hair up, holding a large travel mug that renders my entire coffee strategy obsolete. When she sees the donut boxes, she smiles.
It's not the teacher smile. Not the polite, bulletproof one. It's not the real one either—the one I earned three times yesterday before I blew it—the one that starts in her eyes a half-second early. This is a third smile, brand new. Small, serene, patient.
Every instinct I own checks the sky for weather.
"Good morning." She takes the donut boxes out of my hands. "I'll hold these."
"They're for sharing."
"They're for later." She sets them on her stoop like contraband and gets in the car. "Drive. I'll navigate."
"You're confiscating my diplomacy donuts?"
"Doctor's orders." She clicks her seatbelt. "You'll thank me afterward."
The clinic sits on the east edge of town, a tidy white building with a hand-painted sign and a gravel lot, and Cathy Morse is waiting on the porch with a clipboard under one arm and an unmistakable air of long-awaited delivery.
"Mr. Bardot." She shakes my hand with a grip that means business. "Thank you for volunteering. Sundays we have no staff, and the boarders still need full care. Feeding, water, kennel turnover, exercise, and a few items of specialized handling." She consults the clipboard with what I can only describe as relish.
"Happy to help. I run an adventure gear company. There's not much I haven't handled."
Behind me, Darcy makes a sound like a cough that has given up pretending.
"Wonderful." Cathy beams. "Health code requires scrubs in the kennel area. Unfortunately we're between supply orders, and the only pair in your size is from our community outreach bin."
The scrubs she gives me are pink. Not a quiet pink either. A loud, luminous, cartoon pink, printed all over with kittens wearing tiny stethoscopes. The shirt strains across my shoulders like it has doubts about our partnership.
