Heartbreaker(47)

I smile, remembering. A girl from my class was having a birthday trip to their beach house up the coast, so my cover was all set up. All I had to do was meet Finn that night, and we’d have the whole weekend to ourselves. I was giddy with it, so in love I couldn’t see straight. Until six o clock turned into seven, and eight, and I was all alone in the dark crying for the boy who never showed.

“I remember,” I say sadly, and Finn places his hand over mine.

“When I got back to the house, my dad was there.” His words are slower and deliberate now, full of something ominous. “He was wasted again, but this was something worse. The way he talked, it was like a goodbye. Like he was getting it all off his chest before the end.”

I freeze. What does he mean? I don’t dare take my eyes from Finn’s face as he slowly tells me the rest of the story.

“He said the usual, about how I was f*cking up your life too. That I’d get you pregnant, and ruin everything the way he ruined my mom’s life. That you’d leave me the way she left us, and I’d be left with nothing but a disappointment for a kid.”

I have to bite my tongue to keep from interrupting. How could Hank have done this to him? How could he have made the strongest, most loving man I’ve ever known feel like he was worthless and a waste of space?

“I told him to go to hell, and went to pack my things,” Finn continues, still so tense and cold beneath my hands. “I had my bag, I was on my way out, when.” he stops, like he’s watching the scene play out in front of him all over again. “He was in his chair, that f*cking chair in front of the TV. But he had the shotgun in his hands, and… and…”

Finn takes a ragged breath. I hold him tight. God, what did he go through?

“He said this was my fault. That I’d never learn. And then he pulled the trigger.” Finn lifts his eyes, so full of pain. “He put the gun in his mouth and he pulled the trigger, right in front of me. And for a split-second, I was relieved. Do you hear me, Eva? I was glad, because it would all be over. I’d finally be free.”

There are tears in his eyes now, but he clenches his jaw, holding them at bay. It’s all I can do to just hold him, hold him as he relives the nightmare all over again.

“I guess the bastard didn’t even keep his own gun clean, because the damn firing mechanism jammed. I didn’t give him another chance. I got it away from him. I was yelling, and he, he was past caring.” Finn’s voice is raw. “I knocked him out, took the gun with me, and I bailed. I just got in my car and drove. I was shaking so hard, I didn’t even see where I was going. I pulled over, miles out of town. I couldn’t even keep hold of the wheel.” He gulps in another breath of air. “I was sitting there on the side of the road when I realized he was right.”

“No, Finn—”

“He was right about me,” he insists, looking at me now. “If I’d stayed, if I’d tried to build that life with you, I would have been no better than him. Holding you back, dragging you down. Don’t try to tell me otherwise. We both know the truth. I had nothing to offer, no future, no ambition. So I just kept driving—”

“You had everything to offer me!” I interrupt, suddenly spitting mad. I’ve listened to his tragedy, all the things I couldn’t fix, but I won’t have him believing this. I can’t. “You loved me, and that was all I ever wanted.”

“Love wouldn’t have paid the bills,” Finn counters. “It doesn’t put a roof over your head, or get you to drama school, or give you the thousand things you should have to make a start in life. Come on, Eva. We were a couple of teenagers. How were we ever supposed to make it work?”

“So maybe we would have failed,” I shoot back fiercely. “Maybe it would have all fallen apart. But that was my choice to make. Mine. It was my life, and my heart, and you took that choice away. You didn’t let me choose you!”

My voice echoes into the dark. Finn looks at me, with such sadness in his gaze I could turn the clock back and wipe all this pain away. Make it so he never had to doubt himself or suffer. Make it so the last words he ever heard from his father weren’t cruel and twisted blame.

Because I see it now, the impossible choice he thought he had to make. I’ve been blaming him all this time for leaving me, searching for his reasons and coming up empty handed. I thought it was selfishness, or cowardice. I thought it was my fault, or that he just didn’t love me enough to stay.

But in the end, it was because he loved me more than enough, and too much to believe he deserved happiness. Everything in his life had told him that he was no good, so was it any wonder that when it came to that razor’s edge of indecision, he picked the darkness? The fear.

The road alone.

He wasn’t to know the burden he left behind. I ache to think of him out there on his own. I had my parents, Lottie, even Gracie, trying to blot out my broken heart in all the wrong ways. But Finn? He had nobody, and nothing but the life he built for himself from scratch, piece by piece, with only his own determination and talent to light the way. I wasted my chances, but he conjured his own out of thin air, and look what he’s made of them now. Success, admiration, the whole world at his feet.

He made it all happen, because that’s just the kind of man he is.

I hold him close. “Thank you for telling me,” I whisper. “I’m just so sorry I didn’t know. I wish I could have been there for you, helped you somehow--”