Page 2 of Late Night Talking
An image flashes across my mind. Finn beneath me, his head thrown back in ecstasy as I ride him. A chill runs up my spine, and I stare down at the tablecloth, the room starting to tilt just a little. Ethan is telling a story about a powerful man he once caught fucking his secretary in an elevator, and when I lift my gaze, it’s to find Finn watching me, like he knows I was just thinking about fucking him. Like he knows that Ethan’s story is reminding me of the time I got on my knees for him in a conference room or the number of times Finn bent me over a desk and railed me from behind. I’ve come in half the offices in Vegas. At least, the ones in Finn’s buildings.
“Oh, shit, I gotta hit the men’s room,” Ethan says, and panic spikes through me as he rushes off, leaving me alone, across a table from my ex-boyfriend.
“Took him long enough,” Finn says, not moving a single muscle in his body besides his mouth. “The man must have enough wine in him to drown in.”
My skin feels like it’s electrified, buzzing and humming. Because God, Finn looks good. He’s always looked good, with suits that fit him so well it’s painful and those eyes and his expensive haircuts. And maybe it’s just because this is the first time I’ve seen him in person in eight months, but I swear he’s even more gorgeous than he ever was.
I clench my hands into fists, like I’m trying to physically stop myself from catapulting over the table. “What are you doing here, Finn?”
I expect him to dance around the question, to pretend that he didn’t set up this meeting because he found out I was dating Ethan. But he doesn’t bother. He settles his gaze on mine and says, “I’m done living without you.”
My throat tightens, like I’m about to choke. I reach for my wine glass and swallow down the rest of it. When it’s gone, Finn bends forward and refills my glass without my asking. I was never a drinker before, only sometimes having a cocktail when I went out with Bonnie, but living with Finn, he showed me how wine and whiskey and gin could make your whole body want someone with a feverish desperation, and I came to love it.
“You can’t just come in here and say that.”
Finn looks away from me, searching in his pockets for something, and I realize he’s looking for his cigarettes. He pulls out his pack and lights up with a box of matches right there in the middle of Guy Savoy. “Why, because you’re so committed to your playboy here?”
“Finn,” I hiss, “you can’t smoke in here.”
He raises an eyebrow in the direction of our waiter, who exaggeratedly turns his head in the other direction. Because that’s Finn. Powerful, in Vegas and everywhere else in the world. He thought leaving Lulu at the altar two years ago would be the end of him, but instead, he made an impression on some very wealthy investors who helped him build the Dublin, a hotel at the end of the Strip that single-handedly established the empire Finn had meant to build with Lulu’s family.
And now he’s allowed to smoke in restaurants where he’s paying a grand a person for less food than I would serve a cat.
He blows out the smoke in his mouth and reaches into his pocket for something else. “How long have you been seeing this guy who knows nothing about you?”
I sigh and slump down in my seat like I’ve trained myself not to. I know I should defend Ethan, but I don’t have the energy. “Three months.”
Finn leans forward on his elbows, until he’s close enough to me that I can taste the cigarette on his breath. “He doesn’t know about us.” It’s not a question. It’s an observation. One that makes me squirm in my seat.
“No,” I breathe.
Finn sets something on the table between us, and I look down to see a business card, but I’m looking at the back of it, where there’s an address scribbled in Finn’s handwriting. I leave it sitting there and look up at him, disturbed, for a second, at how I can count all the freckles along his face that I know he hates.
“What is this?”
He takes another puff on his cigarette, and I feel a little thrill in the pit of my stomach. He’s nervous. Finn always smokes when he’s nervous. I made this man, who terrifies half of Vegas, nervous. “My new address. I leased the old place.”
His penthouse. The place we first met. The place we first fucked. The place I fell in love with him. I feel like all the air has been squeezed out of the room, like a sponge that’s been wrung out.
“You’re staying?” The whole world blurs all around us. Finn is the only thing in sharp focus. My eyes fall to his mouth, and I remember the taste of him, the way he loved to kiss me right after he took a sip of whiskey, letting me taste the smokey flavor of it and him together.
“As long as you’re in Vegas, I’m in Vegas,” he says, his Irish accent pulling his quiet voice even deeper. “I’m not leaving without you again.”
My eyes meet his, and the air between us is pulled taut, like an elastic that’s going to snap eventually. The question is, which one of us will snap first?
Finn leans away from me quick, settling back into his chair, and I snatch the card with the address on it off the table as fast as I can before Ethan comes around the corner to find us. I don’t know how Finn knew he was coming, but I can only assume he bribed a waiter to signal him or something.
Before Ethan can even sit down, Finn stands and buttons his suit jacket with one hand, reaching out to shake Ethan’s hand with the other. Next to Finn, Ethan’s suit is ill-fitting and the wrong color. It’s not just that Ethan doesn’t have the money Finn does. There’s something about the way Finn carries himself, the way that confidence comes off him in waves. Ethan tries to mirror it, but it just comes across as pompous instead.
“It was nice to meet you,” Finn says, nodding first at Ethan and then at me before stalking off in the direction of the front entrance.
Ethan scoffs and lets his hands drop to his sides. “God, what a dick.”
Chapter Two
“So, what are you going to do with it?” Bonnie asks me, sitting down on the couch in our shared apartment and handing me a glass of ice water. She’s all dressed up to meet a client, in her sparkling wrap dress and dangerously high heels, while I’m ready for bed, hair wet from the shower and completely comfortable in my favorite pair of sweatpants.
“I’m not going to do anything with it,” I say, setting Finn’s card on the coffee table. “I have a boyfriend.”
