Page 75 of The Dangers of Daydreaming

“I’m so sorry, Finn. I wish there were something I could do.”

His hand constricted around mine. “You’re helping.”

I swallowed. “Tell me more about him,” I asked. “What was it like when you first moved in?”

To my surprise, he actually chuckled. “He had no idea what to do with me. I think in his head, he’d lumped me a little with my dad, who was obviously a full-grown adult, so the night after I got there, he sat me down with his expectations. No girls, no drugs, and no drinking. Since I was thirteen, that wasn’t a problem.”

I grinned at that, imagining the cute older man I’d met trying to lay down the law.

“Was he like the bad cop and your Gram was the good cop then?”

“Not at all. After that, he was fantastic. Always snuck me home candy bars from the gas station, even though Gram said they were bad for my teeth, let me drive the tractor, and taught me how to fix stuff. Gram wasn’t really a bad cop either, but she was definitely the backbone of the household.”

“They are a great couple.” Not for the first time, I thought about how they reminded me of my grandparents. Grandma Sue was a force to be reckoned with, but Grandpa was just a good time, always the easygoing one.

My heart broke all over imagining my own grandpa in this position. And he hadn’t raised me.

Cars zoomed past us, headlights blinking in the approaching dusk. How interesting it was to know how everyone’s lives just kept going while Finn’s seemed to have ground to a halt… a moment in time where things were suspended until he had answers. Until his grandpa improved… or didn’t.

“Turn here,” Finn said, pointing.

I turned where he directed, letting the steering wheel unwind beneath my hands as it straightened out. He gave me a few more directions until I was in the hospital's parking lot. I pulled into the drop-off zone by the main entrance, parking the car just past the doors.

“Can I help with anything?” I asked.

Finn unbuckled as he shook his head. “No, you’ve been great. I’m so tired. I don’t know that it would’ve been smart for me to make this drive.”

I gave a small smile. “Text me when you’re ready to come home tomorrow, I’ll come get you.”

He nodded. Then, as if it was almost instinctual, he reached out, cradling my face in his hand and leaning towards me. His lips landed on mine. Soft. Sweet. He pulled back, then pressed one more kiss to my mouth.

I ran my fingers down his cheek, feeling the stubble there.

“Thank you again,” he said in a whisper. Then he left, grabbing his and his grandma’s bags from the back and walking into the hospital.

I waiteduntil the automatic doors closed behind him, staring at the large expanse of black glass, my mouth pinched in thought.

My eyes hurt. My heart hurt—physically hurt. It was like my chest had begun to collapse, pressing in on it. The grief that I felt not only for the health of a man I’d only met once, but also the pain of his family, threatened to wash over me now that I did not need to be strong or brave for Finn.

My mind fixated on him as I drove, instead of on the pain that nothing could be done for his grandpa. It fixated and struggled to make sense of him and me.

Somehow, things between us seemed like so much more than two people who had just reconnected barely ten or eleven days ago. There appeared to be more to our relationship, and this situation had made it seem like we were more important to each other than we were. In some alternate universe, I would have been going into that hospital with him, hugging his grandma, kissing his grandpa’s cheek. Being there for him like I wanted to be, but didn’t feel like I had the right to because all I really was, when it came down to it, was a girl he’d taken on one date. My imagination may have gotten away with me and made me feel like I was more, or could be more, but the reality was what it was. One date. No more than that.

This was why I preferred books. There was always a happily ever after around the corner, no matter how gut-wrenching a scene might be.

But there was no guaranteed happily ever after here. Not for Finn’s grandpa, or Finn and me.

I blinked back tears, pushing them aside but not disregarding them because somehow, even with all the pain and confusion, I didn’t want to be driving back to the inn alone right now. I wanted the alternate universe.

Lights from other cars flashed past me with the same sudden illumination I was experiencing internally. This wanting to dive headfirst into the pain for the sake of the people involved was unexpected. I’d been avoiding the hard stuff. For years now, when life gave me a painful plot twist, I’d run.

Like when my parents broke the news of their impending divorce to me, and the first thing I did was hop on my bike and ride down the street to my cousin’s house. When Michael broke up with me, and the first thing I did was solo road-tripped to southern Utah. Like when my mom said they were moving up the wedding. Or when she first told me she was engaged.

I didn’t even like when big, bad events that didn’t affect me happened. How many times had I not been there for a cousin going through a breakup or a job loss? How many times had I dropped off cookies at a friend's house who was going through a rough time, but had made sure not to ring the doorbell so I wouldn’t have to talk about it with them.

I was a jerk.

I was not one of those nice heroines in my stories.

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