I stood there for a couple minutes, trying to understand my agitation, but it warred with the memories of sweeping up the glass and the porcelain from the vases and the photo frames I’d thrown at Lena.
Cringing, I retreated to my safe place, the kitchen, but as I did, I found myself looking at the part of the floor where I’d collapsed.
I’d never asked who cleared it up, but I knew there’d been blood. Jen had told me that earlier.
Why did this place feel haunted?
This was my home.
My haven.
So why didn’t it feel like that anymore?
Tired, I trudged over to the counters and cleared away the mess I’d made. It didn’t take me long to load the dishwasher and clean up, just enough for Finn to come back.
“Jesus Christ, it’s cold out there,” he grumbled as he stripped off, loud enough for me to hear over the dishwasher.
Stepping into the hall, I greeted, “Louise was a bit much, wasn’t she?”
I almost winced at how bitchy that was, but Finn popped his head around the closet door. “You’re talking to me?”
I huffed. “Apparently.”
His brow furrowed as he closed the door behind him, stepping over to me as deliciously bare as he’d been earlier.
Which reminded me.
“Why are you armed?”
“I always am.”
“In bed?” I scoffed. “Who do you think can get to me here?”
“There are several active threats we’re dealing with right now,” he rasped. “But the gun has nothing to do with it.”
Wiping my hands on a dishcloth, I asked, “Why then?”
“Because I’m on edge. Because my woman is in danger. Because I want to kill anyone for even thinking about hurting her. Because I love you and need to make sure you’re safe.”
I tipped my chin up. “Okay.”
“Okay?” He frowned his confusion. “Really?”
Thinking about Louise, I said, “Yes. Okay.”
His consternation was clear, but he surprised me by asking, “Earlier, Jen said she shouldn’t have dropped her news on you… what news?”
I pursed my lips. “She’s dating. She told me she loved him.”
His brows rose, and he said, “Knew there was something different about her.”
“What?”
“She was happy.”
Now that he mentioned it, he was right. She had looked… content.
“Louise is always like that.”
It took a second to figure out what he was talking about. When it registered, I sputtered, “What?”
He shrugged. “You never noticed before?”
“No, of course not,” I sniped. I thought back to the last time I’d seen her with Finn, but it had to be last summer. “You’re not together that much, so I don’t think I’d have noticed.”
“No. I make sure of it.”
His wry remark put me on edge. “Does she make inappropriate comments?”
Finn scoffed, “Aoife, I handle it. Don’t worry. You need her for the bakery. I get it.”
When he started to walk away, shocked, I almost watched him go, then I called out, “That means she does make inappropriate comments!”
You need her for the bakery. I get it.
What was that supposed to mean?
He looked at me over his shoulder. “You have nothing to be jealous about.”
“I’m not jealous,” I disregarded.
“Well, then? What’s the problem?” he retorted, no longer looking back at me, just heading to bed.
Uneasily, I watched him go.
My husband was a beautiful man. I knew women looked at him. I knew they wanted him, but I wasn’t jealous because he never gave me reason to be.
He hadn’t done a damn thing to encourage Louise; if anything, his scowl should have had her running for the hills. But the idea that she’d been drooling over him for a while was creepy. At least, it sure as hell creeped me out.
Turning off the lights, I dashed down the hall too. When I found him getting into bed, I demanded, “What inappropriate things has she said?”
“Aoife, I’m a grown man. I can handle this.”
His tired tone just pissed me off even more. “Finn, answer the damn question.”
His stare turned bewildered. “I’ll answer yours if you answer mine.”
“Fine,” I snapped, folding my arms across my chest.
“Did you notice that she’s made herself look like you?”
“What?”
“She was blonde before, now she’s a redhead. She wears green contacts—”
“Lots of people wear colored contacts and have dyed their hair.”
He studied me a second then shook his head. “I asked, you answered. Your turn.”
“Is she coming onto you?”
“What do you think when she looks at me like she’s a starving dachshund and I’m a steak? And no, I’m not interested.” He punched the pillow a couple times before he rammed it beneath his head and turned away from me. “The day I met you was the day I stopped seeing other women.”
Another man might mean that in the figurative sense. That he didn’t date anymore.
Not Finn.
He was being literal.
He didn’t see other women because I was all he saw.
The simplicity of his statement packed more of a punch than Hiroshima. It had me closing my eyes a second as I hovered there, torn between anger and concern and a desperate need to go to him. To feel his arms close around me.
When the tears came, I didn’t know. But I stood there, bawling my eyes out for no particular reason aside from the other million reasons I had to weep.
It took him less than thirty seconds to register what was happening, and once he did, he was out of the bed and storming toward me.
When he dipped down and grabbed a hold of me, I let him. I climbed him like a tree, legs around his hips, arms around his shoulders, and I burrowed my face in his throat.
The second his arms were around me, it was like coming home.
The agitation I felt when he’d left the apartment disappeared, and as he clambered into bed—a move that was made awkward when I wouldn’t let go of him—he shifted us around so that he was sitting up with his back to the pillows so I could keep burrowing into him.
I had no idea how long I sobbed for. It might have been a few minutes or an hour, but the scent of him, combined with the cold touch of his body from having left the apartment, the strength of his arms around me, it soothed something in me. Something that would always respond to him.
He didn’t say a word.
Not to calm me down, not to annoy me, not to make me laugh.
He was just there.
Like I knew, no matter what, he always would be.
My nails dug into his shoulders, but he didn’t complain, and rawly, I whispered, “I’ll never divorce you.”
“I know you won’t.”
He pressed a kiss to my temple then carefully lowered us both deeper into bed. I had to shuffle around a bit, but he didn’t make me get off him.
If anything, he grabbed the covers, tucked them around us, encouraging me to stay exactly where I was.
“How do you know that?” I breathed, my face still pressing into his throat where I could feel the slightest trace of his pulse against my forehead.