Spin (16 page)

It did sound that way, didn’t it? I stayed
silent.

Murph’s dark eyebrows went up. “You’re
selling yourself short, Finn.”

I shrugged.

He got to his feet and shook his head. “It’s
not like you, buddy. I don’t get it.”

I watched him walk off to join the others. I
heard whoops and hollers as Beck let go of the rope and careened
into the water. I sat down on the cooler. Murph didn’t get it, and
I barely did either.

All I knew was I wasn’t going to lose Janey
over being a pawnshop guy. And I also wasn’t going to try to make
it okay for her. It either was okay in her eyes or it wasn’t, and I
wasn’t going explain myself to make it so.

I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be okay with
her.

And that scared me way more than it should
have, considering she’d only been in my life a few days.

Which put me in a tight spot.

Janey’s spot was tighter, though, because
she was scared of everything.

I was only scared of losing her.

When I thought of all the shit I’d had to be
afraid of in my life, and that list was long, starting with my dad,
going straight through to Afghanistan, it was humbling and fucking
annoying to think that Janey Mac could spin me up like this.

~ Jane ~

TURNS OUT KATIE’S event had been overbooked too.
Guess it was becoming an epidemic in the annals of Destiny Falls
catering.

Katie and I exchanged a look as the mother
of the bride tried to explain how it had happened, her face red
from drink and exertion. She wasn’t doing a good job and finally
hissed, “Just make do,” and marched off to dance with her new
son-in-law.

In unison, Katie and I turned to survey the
larger-than-anticipated crowd picking lobster appetizers and
champagne spritzers off of trays.

“Make do with what?” Katie murmured.

“I can run out and grab more champagne,” I
offered. “And put out lobster traps.”

“Where is Sid?” she muttered, and as if in
answer, her phone rang. It was Sid, her most experienced staff
member. He’d been in a car accident. He was okay, but he was not,
definitely not, going to make it, Katie stared at me, blank-faced.
I knew that look. It was the same thing as nodding as if you had a
plan, when inside you were screaming.

I grabbed a tray and started serving. I saw
it as pre-karma. Also, I liked her.

It’s best to build emotional debt in people
you like because why do it to the people you don’t? Who wants to
stick around to collect?

I came home midday with food on my clothes
and the deep-down satisfaction that comes from knowing your clients
weren’t the only insane ones.

My car crunched up to the house and Max
bounded out to greet me. I petted him, and he drooled on me, then
hurtled around the house to chase innocent things around the
meadow.

I started to go inside, then stopped. Finn
was inside, playing guitar.

I stopped and listened. Rich and ghostly, it
drifted out to where I stood in the warm afternoon air. I didn’t
know the tune. It sounded entirely improvised, building off some
core bluesy beat. It was sexy, dark, rough-edged, both simple and
complicated, with long rhythms and complex riffs, so soulful it
almost felt reverent. A sultry prayer. I stood and let his music
pour over me like a force of nature, coming down through the
blue-and-gold summertime day.

Music was
in
Finn. Inside of him,
deep, moving through him like a river. You could feel it in every
thread of sound and note.

Damn. He was really, really good.

I need to be tapped in like that
.

I suspected it would not come during the
Sandler-Ross’s event.

Which is why it felt so good knowing Finn
was inside, making that music, waiting for me.

The house was cool from the shade of a huge
oak and the fan overhead and the river breeze coming up through the
open windows. Finn sat on the couch, guitar in his lap. He was
barefoot, wearing faded jeans and a loose black T-shirt. He hadn’t
shaved, and his jawline was dark and scruffy. He was playing, one
ankle kicked overtop his knee.

“Hi,” he said, looking up, still
playing.

“Everyone gone?” I asked, bending over to
unstrap a shoe.

“All gone.”

“Good. I need to rest my eyes.”

“Right.”

The silvery-steel song changed, became
slower and more bluesy. I held on to the back of a kitchen chair
and kicked off the shoe while he watched.

“Those are nice shoes,” he said.

“They are.” Four hundred dollars of nice,
and worth it. They were comfortable and looked great. Also, they
were Fluevogs. “Fluevog,” I told him.

He paused in his playing. “
G
ü
ten tag
.”

I laughed. “
Gesundheit
. Fluevog. It’s
the name of the shoe company.”

“Ah. Does all your stuff have a name, Janey?
Your sheets and your shoes and your clothes?”

“Yes, Finn,” I said patiently. “Your clothes
have names too. Hat, shirt, pants.”

“Keep going.” He swept his thumb down the
strings and a steely cascade of notes tumbled out.

I grinned as I reached down to undo my other
shoe.

“You need cowboy boots,” he told me, and I
said, “I absolutely do not need cowboy boots. Why do I need cowboy
boots?”

“Because they’ll be comfortable, and you’ll
look sexy as hell.”

Hm. He had a point.

I slid off the other shoe and crossed to
him. He looked at my shirt more closely. “Some wedding.” I stood in
front of him and he touched his index finger to one of the stains
on my shirt. “Food fight?”

“I helped Katie out. I like her.”

He pinched my shirt and pulled me down to
his mouth. “I don’t think she likes you.”

We kissed and he revved me up with one hand
on my hip, the other at the nape of my neck, his tongue doing its
thing in my mouth until I simply surrendered and lowered myself to
straddle him, a knee on either side of him, guitar clumsily between
us.

When we broke apart, I was breathless.

“Hm,” I said. “I think I’ll get in more food
fights.”

His return smile was good. He rested his
palms on my knees.

I reached down and touched the neck of the
guitar between us, strumming the strings awkwardly. “Were you
serious about teaching me to play?”

“Sure. If you were serious about
learning.”

“Very. I loved listening to you play outside
just now.”

His gaze became more appraising. “Did
you?”

I nodded. “It was like a prayer.”

He looked startled.

“A sexy prayer.”

He grinned. “Janey, you’ve got quite a way
of seeing things.”

“Yeah. Nuts. I know. But you pray with your
music, Finn. I’ve never heard anything like it. It’s amazing.”

“You think?” Beneath me, his thighs shifted,
like his body couldn’t contain movement. His head tipped to the
side.

I nodded firmly. “I know. You’re tapped in.”
I strummed the guitar again.

“To what?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.” For some
reason, the words came out much softer than I’d intended. Our eyes
were unwavering on each other. I didn’t know what Finn was tapped
into. Just that it was deep and soulful, like an ocean, and that I
wasn’t even close.

He slid his hands up the tops of my thighs a
little more, until the guitar stopped his journey.

I strummed the guitar again and murmured,
“Can’t believe some girl didn’t marry you off before now.” I slid a
sideways glance up.

His blue eyes were waiting for me. “Lots of
girls have wanted to marry me."

“Oh really? Well, aren’t you something?”

He laughed. “But I didn’t want to marry
them. I’ll bet you’ve had guys after you.”

Well, no. Being “after” someone was
different than wanting to marry them, and no one had ever asked or
even hinted at marrying me. Because if you never slowed down, no
one could catch up enough to even make it to a third date, let
alone pop the question.

His thighs were hot and hard beneath my
bottom. His thumb stroked my knee. “And babe,” he said, “you got to
remember: The people praying the hardest are probably the ones
who’ve got a lot of answering to do to God.”

I considered this skeptically, then nodded,
because what did I know about any of it, except that I was like a
kid at a candy-store window, peering in.

I reached down and gave the strings another
clumsy strum. “So, will you teach me?”


“Yep.”

And he did, right then, kept me sitting on
his lap and just turned the guitar around, and taught me “Pride and
Joy.” I didn’t play it well, but I played it, and once I did it
straight through, I lifted my head and grinned at him. “Hey, I got
it. And I played all four of them!”

A corner of his mouth tipped up. “Yeah, I
noticed that little one-chord shortcut you did on ‘Born Under a Bad
Sign.’”

I lifted my eyebrows at him. “But I sang it
good.”

“Yeah, Janey.” His gaze traveled down my
chest and back up. “You sang like a rock star.”

Our grins met in the middle. He was quiet a
minute. “You should come watch my band play.”

All the laughter went out of me. I
swallowed. “Sure,” I said vaguely. “When?”

“We have a gig at the Red Cat next
weekend.”

“The Red Cat…
Tavern
?”

One dark brow arched up. “You know the
place?”

“The Sandler-Rosses don’t like the Red Cat
Tavern,” I told him.

He laughed. He thought I was joking. “The
Sandler-Rosses are a bad source of information.”

Yeah, but I didn’t need their opinion to
guide me. I had history.

I’d spent a lot of time in dive bars and
taverns, dragging out my mother, who’d originally gone in thirty
years earlier to drag out my father. The dragging didn’t work. But
good ole boys didn’t mind. My father was a big talker, a fair
mayor, a shitty father, an abusive spouse, and the most powerful
man I’d ever known. He had charisma, and he cast it out like a
weapon, a big, burning orb of charisma, and somehow no one ever
noticed he was a righteous sonuvabitch who needed to be taken down
a few times more and a whole lot harder than anyone had ever had
the guts to.

Certainly not my mom, and hell no, me.

But I still didn’t go into bars. They were
the past. I was done with it. And soon, it would stop hunting me
down.

Right?

Finn watched me. “So, want to come?”

“I don’t think I can.”

“Okay,” he said quietly. Like he understood.
Like I wasn’t an asshole. Or a coward.

Which I wasn’t. I was just determined. Never
to be like my mom.

I
knew
this was going to happen.
Finn’s blue eyes were going to start seeing straight through to the
empty center of me.

His gaze was still on me. I felt exposed and
embarrassed. Then, instead of saying,
Okay, well, this has been
fun, but you’re too much of a whack job, so see you around
, or
something understandable like that, he leaned his head back against
the couch and said, “Are you going to live your whole life in fear,
Janey?”

I straightened sharply on his lap.
“What?”

“You heard me.”

“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Look at me.” I touched the stains on my shirt. “I can handle
anything. I served a party of one hundred this morning in those
heels.” I pointed across the room. “Nothing can stop me.”

He wasn’t smiling. “That’s stress. You
handle stress. You rock stress. You eat stress for breakfast. I’m
talking about fear.”

Oh.

“All that”—he touched the stains—“is surface
stuff.”

“They’re battle scars,” I told him
proudly.

He slid the tip of his index finger to one
of the stains, which happened to be directly overtop my nipple. He
looked at me and slid finger over, then pinched, very lightly.

I let out a breath, and my head dropped back
a little.

“See, Janey, here’s where I’m stuck.”

“I feel as though you’re moving right
along.”

He slid the guitar out from between us and
pulled me forward until our groins were smashed together and my
knees were sunk deep into the couch, sliding under the back
cushions.

“You’re wound so tight you whirr,” he
said.

“Tightly wound is not necessarily a bad
thing,” I explained, arching my back so he could touch me somewhere
else. “Tightly wound means being in control and getting stuff
done.”

“Yeah, you’re a human motor of getting shit
done, Janey,” he agreed. “But you’re not honest.”

I went still, like a deer in the woods.

“You like dirty, but you won’t admit it. You
want more, but you ask if I can be the one to make you. Push you
into it.”

I swallowed.

“You care way too much what other people
think, you’re scared of losing control, and you’re still
running.”