Page 31 of Best Friends, Tennessee

“Shut up,” I told him. “All right. Now you have to tell me a secret.”

“I don’t have any secrets.”

I hummed. “Nowthat’sa lie if I’ve ever heard one.”

“What?” Finn protested. “You want me to say I secretly look for celebrities when I’m driving around town to give people massages, or something?”

I laughed. “Not that kind of secret.”

It was unspoken in the air between us. Finn and I were both probably thinking about the secret he’d told me, but neither of us were going to bring up the fact that he’d gotten blown by a dude.

He groaned, lying back on the blanket. He propped his hands behind his head, looking up again, the muscles in his arms highlighted in the glow of the fire.

He lookedstrong. In this light, I could see the way his face had subtly changed over the years, too. He still looked young, but he didn’t look like a kid anymore. He was tired tonight and it softened his features a little, as if he wasn’t trying to put on any sort of mask right now.

He was just being himself.

It was the best I’d ever seen him look.

“Fine. I’ve got one,” he said. “Remember when I said the breakup with Christina wasn’t a big deal to me?”

“Yeah.”

He cut me a glance. “It wasn’t that easy.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Seriously?”

“Shocking, right?” he said. “For once, I was in… kind of a serious relationship, I guess. I liked her a lot. She was smart, but also knew how to laugh, you know? I had started thinking about long-term stuff. Proposing to her, maybe. I mean, not anytime soon, but one day. The breakup was pretty shitty.”

A strange feeling made its way through my chest.

Finn had been close to proposing to her?

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I had no idea.”

“Not your fault.”

“It sounds like she was special.”

There was so much I didn’t know about Finn’s life, these days. I hadn’t even known he was dating Christina, let alone that he’d even started consideringproposing.

He’d always talked about it, but he was actually ready for that?

This Finn?MyFinn?

“This might sound bad, but I think I just wanted to feel like I was making some fuckin’ progress in my life,” he said. “Like itwas moving forward. The idea of having someone around, living with me in my house, was so tempting.”

“I’m sorry it was so hard.”

“Now I’ve gotyourass, though,” he said. “I like having someone around. Even if that someone is a punk who wants to fight me every three seconds.”

“I thought you’d want to kick me out right away.”

He furrowed his brow. “What? Why?”

“Because I’ll… you know. Get in your way.”

“Ain’t exactly like I’m doing defensive lineman drills in my house or something, Ori. You’re not in the way.”

---