Daring the Wild Sparks (27 page)

“Ugh. He’s brooding,” Simone announces loudly above the crashing waves, and Finn looks to the sound of her voice. The breeze has ruffled his even messier, faux-blonde hair and the sun glints off his glasses. As Simone and I approach him, he drops his arms from his chest and walks over to meet us.

Not stopping, he grabs my hand
. “My turn.” Leading me away from Simone, he walks us only a short ways before he abruptly stops and pivots to me. “Becks, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that in the car. I honestly didn’t mean to humiliate you like that. As I keep telling you, I’m a total dick. I thought you knew that.”

I shrug and glancing down to the ground, something catches my eye. To get another perspective, I tilt my head to make sure I’m seeing what I think I see. In the wet sand, a large heart is drawn. Inside of it reads:

Finn Wilder

loves

Hadley Beckett

for eternity

I unwillingly smile and he pulls me to his chest, hugging me, his cheek on top of my head. He says, “I love you. I’m so sorry for earlier.”

I close my eyes. “Were you only that loud when we were having sex so that you could piss your mom off?”

Pulling back, his brown eyes are expansive and beseeching. “No! I didn’t do that on purpose. I was so lost in us that I forgot there were other people in the house. I would never hurt… Shit. I can’t even say that because of what I did in the car or what I did to you last Sunday. Hell, not to mention what’ve I’ve been doing to you for three, fucking years.” With his arms still around my back, but space between us, he peers out to the ocean, quietly contemplating that statement. I watch as his gaze flickers uncertainly from behind his glasses. Finally, he mutters, “Why in the hell do you put up with me?” Cautiously looking back to me, his eyes anxiously fly over my face, searching for my answer.

Reaching up, I pull on the gray strings of his hoodie, bunching his hood and jerking him to me. “I have no idea, Mr. Wilder. Must be the tattoo.”

Not laughing at my joke, he tersely intones, “I’m serious, Becks. All I ever do is fuck up. Why do you even want me in your life?”

Staring up at the remorse and disquiet taking over his handsome face, I let go of his hood strings, sliding my hands into his hair and inching toward his lips. His dark eyes drift down to my mouth. Before our lips touch I whisper, “I am still mad at you.”

He nods, his full lips lightly skimming mine. “I know.”

Still resisting the urge to kiss him, I impart, “I’m also madly in love with you, Sparks.”

I feel his crooked, doubtful smile against my lips, along with seeing the skepticism in his eyes. “You are?”

Tipping my head back, I ask, “What? You’re not going to say, ‘I know’?”

He shakes his head as his hair whips against my forehead. “No. I can’t get too cocky or I’ll do something stupid and lose you. I already do enough shit to put us at risk.”

I hesitantly ask, “What do you mean?”

He glowers at me and his tone bores into me just as much. “You know what I mean, Becks.”

“No, I don’t.”
I really don’t
. “Why are you feeling so…” I look around, trying to pull the word I want to use out of the air.

“Unsure, doubtful, worried?”

I nod and lean closer to him as the wind rushes past us. “Yeah. You’re always so confident about everything.”

He frowns, denying, “No I’m not. Not about
everything
. You should know that by now.”

“But that’s it. It feels like we barely know each other sometimes, Finn. You don’t tell me everything and the things I do know, I had to pry out of you. I hate having to nag you so that you’ll talk to me.”

His hair alternates to brown as the clouds hide the sun again. “Baby, if there’s anything I haven’t told you, it’s not because I’m hiding things from you. It’s just that I didn’t think they were important.”

I tug on his hair. “Sparks, I want to know everything about you. Nothing is too small. I want it all.”

He nods. “The same thing goes for you, Becks. I want you to tell me everything. Last night, I had to ask you over and over to talk to me. You can tell me anything and I’ll listen. That’s what I’m here for. I want the good and the bad, the ups and downs.” His lips softly brush mine and he repeats, “I want it all.”

We stare unwaveringly into each other’s eyes, both trying to figure out the puzzles in front of us. Ultimately blinking, he looks over to the picnic area and nods. “Come on. Let’s take a walk before we eat lunch. There’s something I want to show you.” He picks up my hand, claiming my fingers with his. We walk past Julie sitting at the table alone. From my peripheral, I don’t notice Finn acknowledging her, but I give her a small smile that she returns as she watches us walk away.

I shove my other hand into my jacket’s front pocket as the wind picks up. Julie had said it’s supposed to rain later, saying it usually does on Good Friday or Easter. Thinking back, that does seem true.

I take in the scenery around us as we walk onto a sandy path that is still barren from the recent winter months, though there appears to be wild grass beginning to emerge. “Where are we going?”

A smile plays upon his lips, but he doesn’t look at me. “You’ll see.”

“Are you kidnapping me, Finn Wilder? I do know your mother and where you work.” He laughs, but doesn’t comment.

I can’t help thinking about what he just said to me on the beach and everything I learned about him last night. I hold his hand as if I know him, yet he’s feeling more and more like a complete stranger.

We walk in silence a good breadth over a sandy path, a paved path, a scant, grassy path and back to another sandy path before he finally stops, suddenly moving to stand in front of me. “I wanted to bring you over here to show you something really cool that you’ll love.”

“What?” I peer around us, but all I see behind Finn is calmer water, small sand dunes, and a few people walking around. The shore behind him looks rockier and rougher. We must’ve walked more than I realized.

“This.” He steps to the side and sweeps his arm out. Looking to where he’s indicating, I see a small, brown lighthouse situated in the water, not too far away from us.

“Ha! A lighthouse!” My hands fly up to my mouth and I giggle.

He turns back to me. “Yep. I’ll fight you lighthouse for lighthouse, Beckett.”

Dropping my hands, I singsong, “But my lighthouse is bigger than your lighthouse, Sparks!”

He coolly shrugs as his eyes sparkle and his glasses gleam in the reappearing sun. “Maybe so, but I have something else.” He takes another step
away and points past the lighthouse. There, out in the harbor, past the brown one is yet
another
lighthouse. A white one.

“Holy shit!” I laugh, covering my mouth again.

He cocks his head at me and holds up two fingers, while grinning like a son of a bitch. “Let’s see now. My
two
lighthouses trump your sorry, singleton lighthouse. Don’t you think?”

I nod and suspiciously stare at the nautical view. “That is unreal, Sparks. How’d you manage this?”

He raises his eyebrows at me and crosses his arms. “Yeah. I manufactured this whole scheme. I had the Coast Guard inconceivably haul in two lighthouses at my whim to trick you. You know, since I’m so rich and powerful.”

Gazing back at the lighthouses in amazement, I smack his arm. “Where are we? Lighthouses don’t normally sit in the middle of the open sea or come in pairs.”

He looks over his shoulder to the water. “It’s Delaware Bay. We walked to the other side of the park.”

“So, you knew these two lighthouses were here, but you didn’t say anything?”

He turns back to me and smugly inhales, alighting the cocky grin on his face to go with it. “Yep. I had to bide my time, Becks. I guess this means I win our Battle of the Lighthouses.”

I cross my own arms and shake my head as the wind kicks up again. “You’re one cocky bastard!” I shout over the howling gusts.

Grinning even wider, he shouts. “I know!”

Before I can reply with a snide comeback, he puts his hands on my cheeks and swoops in to kiss me.

Wilder wins, yet
again
.

Damn it!

CHAPTER 18

When Sparks and I make our way back to the picnic table, Julie announces that the wind is too much, so we are just going to head home. We each pick up what we carried over, and walk to the car.

During the ride, I lean against Finn and he puts his arm around me. As he soothingly strokes my arm through my jacket, I fall asleep.

Before I know it, I hear a gentle, “Baby, wake up.” I sit up and try to shake the fog from my head. Finn climbs out and holds out his hand for me. “Do you think I could take you somewhere else after lunch? There’s another thing I wanted to show you.”

I yawn and grumble, “What? More lighthouses you have stashed away?”

With his head bent so he can see into the car, he holds onto the dark blue doorframe with one hand, while the other is propped on the roof, and he laughs. “No.”

I stretch and grab his hand as I exit the car. “Okay.”

As we walk to the house, he asks, “Do you think you’d want to see my high school? Where I played baseball?”

I brighten. “Yes. I’d love that.” He smiles and swings our hands between us.

We eat our turkey sandwiches in the kitchen. Julie reads the paper, Simone checks her phone…for the hundredth time today, and Ricky, who hasn’t left yet and was surprised to see us back so early, watches Finn looking out the window, scarfing his sandwich. I suppose I’m watching Ricky watching Finn watching…whatever.

When Sparks is finished eating, he puts his plate in the sink and expeditiously heads out of the kitchen. As usual, I grab his plate and put both of ours in the dishwasher.

Going upstairs, I open the door to Finn’s bedroom, but he’s not there. I sit down on his bed to wait for him when an idea hits me. Jumping up, I nearly run downstairs to ask Julie for her help.

Finn pulls my car into the parking lot of a brown brick, two-story building. He turns off the car and we sit in silence as he stares at the school. I look at it too. Finn used to attend classes here as a teen. It’s a part of who he is now. A part that I need to know.

I ask, “What’s wrong?”

His eyes glued to the building, he subtly shakes his head
, wisps of hair bouncing on his forehead. “Nothing. Just this place brings back a lot of memories. Doesn’t yours when you see it?”

“Yeah, but they’re not all good memories.”

He turns and smiles sadly at me. “Same here.” Glancing back to the building, he says, “I was so fucked up here, Becks, and so alone. There were days that I skipped because I couldn’t concentrate or was frustrated about my number one
fan
. My mom never found out that I cut classes. I didn’t do it so much to one class as to get in trouble, but I did it enough.”

“Did your mom know about that girl?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

He impatiently sighs at the windshield. “Because I didn’t want her to know and to make a big deal out of it. She would’ve gone to the principal and it would’ve drawn attention I didn’t want. The guys on my team would’ve had a field day riding my ass about that.” My poor Finn.

I swallow and reach over to stroke his jaw. “Where’d you go?”

Shrugging and clasping my hand against his face, his eyes fall to the steering wheel. “Shit. I drove around. Sometimes I hung out at the river, watching barges. Sometimes I sat in some store’s parking lot. Anything to get out of here.” My heart aches for him because I know there’s more to why he was having problems then, but I can’t even talk about anything his mom and sister told me.

He tersely inhales before saying, “I wanted to bring you here to share a piece of my past with you and to bring it full circle with my present.” Lowering my hand to his lap, he shakes his head and closes his eyes. “I know it’s idiotic and probably would be classified as one of those crazy things you’ve heard me say, but that’s what I wanted to do. To bring you here so that in a sense, you are a part of my high school past, too.”

I smile even though he doesn’t see it. “That’s not crazy. It’s nice.”

I pull my hand from his thigh when he swiftly looks out his side window to the main road and then back at me. “Do you realize we only lived about an hour and a half away from each other? Annapolis isn’t that far from here.”

Realization of that fact hits me. “No, I guess it isn’t. Wow. We were so close to each other and didn’t know it.”

Absently gripping the bottom of the steering wheel cover, he glances at me, anxiously licks his lips and offers, “We could always go and visit your dad, if you want. We have time.”

“No, he’s working this weekend on a big project for work and then he’s visiting Jared. I’ll go see him soon when I have more time to spend with him.”

He nods. “I’ll come with you, if you want.”

I grin. “He’d love to see you. He has to be one of your biggest Finnatics.”

That fact seems to be a surprise to him. He chuckles and bites his lip, thinking about it. “Really? I never hear from him.”

“Yeah. He liked you from Day 1. He kept teasing me about you after we left the hospital.”

He smiles as he asks, “He did?”

I nod. “He said that…”
Shit
. Again I opened my gaping hole of a mouth.

He probes, “What? What did he say?”

I slide my eyes from him down to my lap. “Nothing. Forget about it. My dad never says anything interesting.”

“Becks.” He’s not going to let this go, not after our recent arguments about being open and honest with each other.

Swallowing what feels like a throatful of glass, I say, “He said it was funny that he was with me when I met my future…husband.”

As I look at the dashboard, I can still see Finn’s body visibly stiffens and his eyes widen marginally behind his glasses. “Oh.”

I shake my head and fretfully play with my jacket’s zipper. “I told you it was nothing. I didn’t mean…” I trail off and am met with silence. How much did that anger him or push him away from me?

Cautiously, I glance up to see him looking out the windshield, rapidly blinking as he deeply inhales. His Adam’s apple dances riotously in his throat and his eventual reply is husky and clipped, “It’s okay.”

Great. I just gave him another horrible memory here.

“Sorry,” I mumble and look away from him to peer out the window next to me.

After a minute, he quietly says, “Becks, I… You have no…” He sighs heavily and is then quiet.

We sit in more silence without him attempting to finish his thought. What’s he thinking? Does he hate that he never can seem to escape the dreaded
M
subject? I worriedly examine him as he continues to stare out at the school. “Are you okay?”

He glides a hand through his hair without turning to look at me. “There’s so much I wish I could change.”

“About?”

Looking somewhat ashamed, he quietly replies, “Me. I wish I didn’t feel the way I do about…things.” He warily glances at me, but his eyes don’t hold mine. “I want to make you happy, but all I do is disappoint you. I know you wish you had a man that would give you everything you want without any doubts.”

“Sparks, I don’t want anyone else. You
do
make me happy. I told you at church I’m not going to bother you with...that…anymore.” Well, once more when I propose to him, but who knows how far off that is right now. At this rate, it’ll be another three years. Not if I can help it, though.

He swiftly shakes his head. “No, you shouldn’t give up on it, Becks. That’s what you want. I don’t want you to give up on it just because of me. If you want it, then…” He stops and bows his head, looking down at his lap. He mutters, “Just don’t give up on it.” He slowly looks up at me
. “I want to be the man that gives you everything you want. I’m trying, baby. You don’t know how much I am. I struggle with this every fucking day. It’s a constant battle for me.” He reaches for my hand in my lap. “Becks, don’t leave me. Don’t give up on me. I’ll get through this and…”

I take my seatbelt off and shift in my seat to face him. “That’s the thing, Sparks. I don’t want you to change your mind out of obligation to me. I want you to change your mind because
you
want to. I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do, even marrying me. I wish we were both on the same page, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to leave you or stop loving you. I told your aunt the truth. We don’t have to be married to spend the rest of our lives together or for me to know that you love me. I won’t lie, it would be the icing on the cake, but I can still eat the delicious cake without it.”

Can I?

It’s like I’m trying to talk myself into believing what Finn believes.

Leaning over to me with a gorgeous smile, he whispers, “I fucking love cake.” I giggle as he grasps the back of my head and gently pulls me to his lips.

Ultimately stealing his lips away from mine, he twists in front of me as he reaches into the backseat, dragging a bulky, blue and white jacket between the seats. Straightening it out so I can see it better, he announces, “This is my varsity baseball jacket.”

I touch the smooth, white sleeves, noticing a number 11 on the front. “You wore this?”

He nods. “I brought it with me from my apartment to show you.”

“Why didn’t you show me there? You didn’t have to bring it all the way here to show me.”

“I wanted to show you in front of my school.”

I confusingly smile. “Oh. Um, okay. How come you never showed me this before?”

He props his wrist across the top of the steering wheel and shrugs. “I don’t know. I never thought of it until recently.”

Painstakingly attempting to sound casual, I ask, “So, how many girls did you give this to?”

He glances up from the jacket, his expression innocent. “Just one.” He told me he had slept with only one girl in high school, the girl he lost his virginity to.

Curious, I ask, “Really? Was she a cheerleader?” I don’t remember if he said she was or not. Probably one of those baseball whores who showed him her tits and he couldn’t help himself.

Cocking his head, he slowly shakes it, his smile even more mysterious. “No.”

“Was it that girl you hid with in janitor closets so she could score an easy A and you could score…well…?” How do I want, and not want to know that at the same time?

Finn narrows his gaze, but his smile doesn’t falter. “Not even close.” He’s being cagey as usual—his specialty.  I know how to play this game too.

I try, “Was the girl you gave this jacket to one of your first Finnatics?”

His smile twitches on both sides and his cryptic eyes sparkle this time. “The very first that I ever noticed.” Hmm.

I press on. “Did you kiss her?”

“Yes.”

“Were you in love with her?”

“Yes.”

“Did she have a nice ass?”

His inscrutable façade slips and he laughs, crinkling his eyes. “Average.”

Definitely playing with me.

“Did you lose your virginity to this girl?”

His laughing ceases, unsure if I’m on to him or not. He intently stares, hesitating before answering, “No.”

Going in for the kill.

“Did you fuck her after you graduated then?” I ask, trying to appear clueless. I’m 99 percent sure I know who he’s referring to, but if not, I probably sound stupid, pathetically losing this round.

Finn’s jaw drops at my audacity and he adjusts his glasses, glancing around the car, biding his time, obviously thrown by that question. Got him! He thought I was naïve to the fact that he’s yanking my chain.

I smile
in glee, knowing I
finally
got one on him, that is, until he nails me with a smoldering look and wickedly whispers, “Every chance I get.”

Damn it. He’s never off his game. I can never beat him.

I lightly laugh, conceding that he’s more astute than I’ll ever be. “Really? Does this slut you’re cheating with have a name?” I joke, but what if he’s been playing an even more complex game with me than I gave him credit for and has me even more snowed than I anticipated?