Page 25 of Hands off his Dudette

"Of course I'll go with you to the wedding. And I know exactly what you mean. My brother's getting married, most of my friends got hitched. But it's just their paths, not mine." He shrugged.

"Don't you think..." she bit her lip. "Don't we think we hinder each other?"

Finn frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Maybe if I didn't feel so comfortable with you, here at home, I'd want companionship. But we get it from each other, so we don't even try."

To her relief, he thought it through instead of getting angry. "You're probably right. So what?"

"So, maybe we shouldn't buy the house. Maybe we should date people and see how it goes. Maybe I should move out and we could..."

She lifted her eyes to Finn'sand shut up. Funny, but she'd never thought that Finn bore much resemblance to his mother, until now. That was before she saw his light brown eyes flash that way. Like they'd seen something they wanted to destroy piece by piece.

When he did talk, however, his voice was very gentle.

"Is that what you want, dudette?"

Anna shook her head. "No."

"Then what do you want?" Barely a whisper.

A dangerous question, especially when he was so very close, her hands still clasped inside his.

"I want to buy the house, and move in there, soon." A safe enough answer.

Finn smirked. "So, how about we stop letting society dictate what we should do, and we do what we want instead? Beside, we're adopting a dog. That's totally a grown-up move."

Just like that, the heavy air dissipated. Finn walked back to the lounge and unpaused his game.

And eventually, Anna started breathing normally again.

"What do you want?" he'd asked. As she fell asleep, Anna wondered what would have happened if she'd told him the truth.

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