"Ow," he said when I ripped them off.
"And by that you mean 'Thank you for saving me from cramps, headaches, vomiting, rapid heartbeat and breathing, confusion, restlessness, weakness, convulsions, and coma'."
"Yeah, that's what I said, isn't it?" he shot back, smiling, making my lips curve up as well.
I had to admit, if there was a person in the world I could see myself having a good time on a road trip with, it was Finch.
It seemed impossible not to have a good time around someone like him. A man who radiated light and warmth.
Maybe a small part of me was worried that, if he shined too much in my direction, tried to brighten all my darkness, I would dull his light in turn, that I would take something away from him.
"Chris," he called, snapping me out of my negative thought cycle.
"Yeah?"
"Say yes," he demanded.
"It's not that easy."
"Sure it is. You just want to make it complicated."
"I don't want to make it complicated. It is complicated."
"Or you're just scared that you are going to have the absolute time of your life with me and when we get back, you are going to fall into a deep, dark depression because you won't be able to see me every waking moment of your life again."
"Yeah, that must be it," I agreed, chuckling.
"Alright how about this," he said, putting both his arms out at his sides like justice scales. "If this is the side that is your resistance," he said, raising his right hand a little. "And this is the hand that is your desire to go," he went on, raising the left. "Which one has a lot more weight?" he asked as he tipped the left side lower and lower.
"Just... let me think about it."
"If I let you think about it, you'll talk yourself out of it."
He wasn't wrong about that.
"I have a lot to figure out."
"I'm not saying we have to leave right this minute. I am saying you have to decide right this minute. What do you want more? Your status quo, or a little adventure?"
Don't get me wrong, I wanted my status quo.
Because I had trained myself to crave it.
But that said, I wanted adventure just a little bit more.
More specifically, I wanted an adventure with Finch just a little bit more.
My arm lifted, finger pointing to the left.
"That's what I thought," he declared, hopping to his feet, holding his left hand down to me.
And this time?
I didn't look at it like it might hurt me.
No.
When I looked at his hand, all I saw was freedom.
So I put mine in his, and I let him drag me to my feet.
"Oh, Finch, one thing," I called out a few minutes later when he was on the outside of the gates and I was on the inside.
"Anything, dollface."
"There's no smoking in my car."
"Well," he said, nodding. "I guess you're going to have to add a trip to Costco to that to-do-before-we-leave list I know you are already creating.
I was, too.
And I liked it a little too much that he knew that.
"Why?"
"Because you're going to need to get me a giant bag of lollipops."
With that, he was gone.
And, I realized, as I watched him walk away, he was taking a small piece of me with him.
What's more, I felt completely comfortable letting him do so.
I could trust him with it.
I could trust him with me.
That was the most profound and amazing and terrifying thing I had ever realized.
"Go to Costco," I mumbled to myself as I reached for my phone.
There would be time to muse more on all that other stuff another day.
Right now, I had a list to make.
Chapter Eight
Finch
She hadn't told me much.
Really, she didn't have to.
That file folder sure spoke for itself.
The amount of detail in it was telling, too.
It said that regardless of how long it had been since she got away, that it was eating at her, that she was far from free of it.
Likely because those bastards were still out there, living, breathing, daring to have the carefree kinds of lives they had deprived her of. And likely countless others.
I wasn't a vigilante. By nature, that wasn't how I operated. I left that to the darker souls. Like Ferryn. Like some other people I'd heard about in Navesink Bank.
I had killed, yes. But because I needed to. Because someone was coming at me. Because they were a threat in ome way or another.
I didn't seek them out.
But if they found me, I could handle it without much remorse.
I had only three to my name.
Why I had volunteered to join in on Chris's mission, sign up to take down a dozen more, yeah, that was a bit of a mystery to me.
I hated traffickers. Who didn't? They were the lowest of the low. When it came to crime, there was a hierarchy.
Those with moral compasses went toward the top right under the white-collar shit. And then a good part of the Cosa Nostra was also up there. Below that came other organizations. Like the gun runners. The loan sharks. The counterfeiters and general forgers. But way, way at the bottom were the trafficker shitheads. No one above them had any respect for them. But we also all accepted that they were like a hydra. You cut off one head, two more appeared.
I wasn't going to take down all traffickers. I would leave that in the very capable hands of Ferryn.
But I could take out the ones who had hurt Chris.
And in doing that for her, I'd get to spend more time with her, would get to know her better, would help her come out of her shell more.
Did that make sense?
No.
Of fucking course not.
It wasn't like me to get so invested. But it also wasn't like me to hem and haw shit to death, to deny myself something that I wanted. I'd always been more the sort to follow my wants, my desires. Even if those desires weren't what I was used to.
Discomfort was how you grew and all that sage advice crap I'd heard a million times.
So, I was into Chris.
And it wasn't just a physical thing. Though, let's face it, there was that. I wanted my hands all over that woman.
But it was more than that.
I liked her as a person.
I wanted to spend time with her.
So that was what I was going to do.
The whole murdering rapists thing, that was just a perk along the way.
"Angel, are those sheets?" I asked a week or so later when she rolled up my driveway, popped open the trunk for me to drop my bag in.
And there they were.
Three sets of off-white sheets. All in their packaging still.
"Hotel rooms are cesspools," she insisted, shifting from foot to foot.
I expected her to pack heavy. Some stereotypes were stereotypes for a reason. Like women over packing for everything.
But I figured it would be shoes and clothes and makeup.
Not sheets.
And I was pretty sure there was a big, fluffy comforter in a purple color in the backseat too.
"We're staying in the presidential suite. I'm pretty sure they clean those sheets. What the hell is this for, doll?" I asked, reaching for a three-pack of canned air that she'd likely picked up on that Costco run I'd mentioned to her. I'd spied the giant bag of lollipops on the front passenger seat. "How dusty do you think your electronics are going to get on this trip?"