Page 67 of The Dangers of Daydreaming

“Finn!” She spread her arms wide as she walked into the entry, but not for a hug, more just like ayou’re here!

She didn’t seem surprised to see us, and I thought back to the photography sign in the yard. So help me… If he had just roped me into some awkward photoshoot, I was walking out.

Her smile included me, and curiosity but not animosity was sparkling in her eyes while her gaze swept me from head to toe. She looked back to Finn, her smile growing. “The back studio is open.” She crossed her arms and tilted her head to the rear of the house.

“Thanksso much.” Finn looked down on me, smiling as he squeezed my hand and tugged on it. “Come on.”

Trish went back to whatever she’d been doing as Finn led me the other direction, down a softly lit, wood-clad hall, through a door, and—

“What did you do?” I glanced from the table in the center of the room to Finn. He was holding back a smile pretty unsuccessfully.

“You claimed not to like any of the food options I presented… so I didn’t know where we should go.”

“So, you… what?” I walked into the room that appeared to be an unused studio with white walls, a warm wood floor, and several photography props lining the back wall. A round table with a tablecloth and a dozen to-go boxes was in the middle. “Burglarized half the restaurants in the city?”

“Pretty much. Minus the stealing.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“Too much?” he asked. “You look a little horrified.”

I swung to face him. I might not have exact words, but I needed him to know that this was not too much. Not at all. “No.” I shook my head to punctuate the single syllable. “No, I just never expected this.” No one had ever done anything like this for me—not even close. Had I just been picking a bunch of lemons? Or was Finn some rare specimen of man I’d never met? “I hope you don’t go on too many first dates. Your wallet would feel the pain.”

He was standing at one of the chairs, hands on the back, waiting for me to approach the table. The expression on his face would best be described as chagrined. “This isn’t what most of my first dates look like, Lucy.” He watched me, letting that sink in. “Come on, let’s eat before it all gets cold.” He pulled the chair out for me. To see that this date meant as much to him as he’d been acting like it did—to really see it outside of charming words and excessive flirting that could easily have been turned on any other attractive female—somehow made the remaining nerves I’d held onto on the drive slide right off.

Suddenly, surrounded by the wafting scents of so many amazing meals, I was ravenous. I sat and Finn explained, with a smile on his face that would have been just as appropriate on the face of a little boy who’d gotten a bullseye with his brand-new BB gun, what each of the dishes was. There were ten in total. Ten different meals and two plates onto which we shoveled heaping spoonfuls while we talked about life in the past ten years. Finn told me about his dad, including that he was apparently coming for a visit despite not doing so for almost four years. I told him about how my mom had only known Brian for two months before they’d gotten engaged, though they’d been friends in high school. We talked about what college had looked like—me in the States at the University of Utah and him in Canada at McGill University.

I leaned my chin onto my palm, resting my elbow next to my plate that still had the remains of about seven different food types. “And you were able to walk away from your dream to help your grandparents? Just like that?”

Finn stabbed a piece of orange chicken, staring at it for a moment before he answered. “I think it was a revenge dream.”

My brows lifted. “What?”

He met my eyes. “Becoming a doctor. I wanted to show my dad that I sided with the people he screwed over. He was a business guy—one of the bigwigs writing the doctors' checks. And he embezzled from them. From the hard work they did, taking care of people. Saving literal lives.” He shook his head, eating the chicken with an expression of disgust that I don’t think had to do with the food. He swallowed. “In the end, I wanted it to be clear which side I was on. When the seed was planted, I couldn’t let it go. All through college. Up to the end.”

“So, you didn’t want to be a doctor at all?”

His shoulders lifted and fell with a sigh. “No, I did. I really did love the subject matter. Several more years of school didn’t exactly appeal to me, but do they ever appeal to anyone? I did well, too. Had great grades.” He paused, mouth parted as if he was going to add more to that. Then he just shook his head.

“But then you came home.”

He nodded. “They needed me.”

I waited, pushing food around my plate. “And now?” I was hesitant to bring it up. Last time, he hadn’t been thrilled.

His eyes met mine. “I don’t know. It’s pretty scary, honestly.”

I nodded. “With your dad… how did that all happen? You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but… did cops show up? Were your grandparents already there?”

His gaze didn’t leave mine, but flicked between both my eyes. Was he deciding how much to share? If he really wanted to get into it all with me?

“Social workers came by while my dad was at work. Cops, too, I think, but they let the social workers take the lead. They brought me back to their office—I remember thinking it looked a lot like our cafeteria. Clean. White. Kinda old but in good condition. Then they called my grandparents.” He cleared his throat. “Gram got a flight within a couple of hours. Pops had to get things in order here, so he came the next day.”

I reached out and grabbed his hand across the table. Immediately, he locked his fingers around mine, and all the tension he must have been feeling but was barely showing revealed itself in that grip. “I’m so sorry. It must have been terrifying.”

“For a preteen kid, yes. But mostly I remember all the disappointment. Obviously, I didn’t grasp the whole situation, but I did know that it meant all our plans were going to be disrupted. He was taking me to Disneyland the next day, which never happened. He’d promised this big party for mybirthday, which I knew wasn’t going to happen. Years later, I felt some guilt over how selfish I’d been.”

“But you were only a kid. Your dad was the selfish one.”

---