Page 39 of Persuaded

“I got yoga slippers!” Liz said, slurring the words a little. “Look, to stop me from slipping.” She made a show of narrowing her eyes as she guessed, “Dee, was this you...?”

Dee played innocent and so it went on around the room as everyone exclaimed and laughed. Finn took the general confusion as an opportunity to slip away into the kitchen. He needed a breather; it was too much, sometimes, all the people. He just needed to be alone for a while.

But even in the kitchen he could hear Liz calling his name and knew she’d be heading his way. So he grabbed his coat and ducked outside. The snow gleamed blue under an indigo sky, daylight fading and the first bright stars waking up. And it was freezing—too cold to stand around.

Across the garden he saw a glint where the garage windows caught the light bleeding out of the house. Curling his fingers into fists, he thought,To hell with it,crunched over the snow and slid open the garage door. He didn’t switch on the lights because he didn’t want to advertise his presence. Besides, he wouldn’t be there for long. He just needed a few minutes to center himself.

Weaving his way between the cars, a familiar path even after all this time, he reached Newton’s vintage Mustang.

That car...

He walked around her, trailing his fingers along the cold metal. The things they’d done in that car. He hesitated, but then opened the driver’s door and slipped behind the wheel. It still felt familiar under his fingers, a sense-memory burned into him like everything else from that summer, smooth and sensual. Beautiful.

And then the memories came, vivid after being repressed for so long: Josh, straddling his lap, biting his shoulder to stifle his cry when he came, fingers drawing circles on Finn’s bare skin as they lay entwined on the back seat, their plans for the future whispered into the golden space between them. They anchored him, those memories, trapped him in the past, tethered to something that still beat in his chest.

Love.

I still love him.

“I don’t,” he whispered, aloud. “Iwon’t.” His breath misted as his words faded into silence—a silence broken by the garage door sliding open.

Finn caught his breath, watching as someone slipped into the garage. There was only one person who’d come out here tonight and he wondered whether Josh had followed him or whether this was just a terrible coincidence. Finn couldn’t move, torn between jumping out of the car and leaving, or staying still and hoping Josh didn’t realize he was there. Or hoping that he did...

As the door slid shut again, Josh sank back against it. His relief at escaping the party was so apparent it made Finn smile. He could relate—parties were great until, suddenly, they were too much.

But it was getting weird now, him sitting there without Josh knowing. The longer he stayed hidden, the stranger it would be if Josh saw him. But he couldn’t bring himself to move, afraid of what he might do alone with Josh in this place where it had all begun between them.

Fuck, he shouldn’t have come here.

Josh sighed and pushed himself away from the door. His boots scuffed on the concrete floor, his face all light and shadows. That nose, so straight, those cheekbones, so fine—thoseeyes. He couldn’t see them in the dark, but he could picture their vivid blue. God, how he’d waxed lyrical about those eyes—how he’d kissed those delicate eyelids, the bridge of that nose.

Fuck, fuck. Fuck.Just get out of the damn car.

Josh perched on the hood of an old Chevy near the door, arms braced on his knees. Head bowed, he took a deep breath. He wasn’t wearing a coat, just that scrappy sweater that Finn couldimagine beneath his hands, warm over Josh’s strong back. He closed his eyes, fingers tight on the steering wheel.

Get out of the damn car and run.

“Damn it,” Josh said suddenly, ruffling a hand through his hair. “Damn and fucking damn it.”

Josh had always been a hopeless curser—raised too refined for it—but his vehemence wiped Finn’s amusement away before it could form. His instinct to find out what was wrong had him twitching, but he checked himself with his hand on the car door. He couldn’t go to him. Hewouldn’t.

“Okay”—Josh slid off the hood, boots hitting the floor with a thud—“stop being stupid. It doesn’t matter why. It doesn’t mean anything, anyway. Just smile and—” He sucked in a breath, breathed it out. “Okay. Okay...”

And then he headed back to the door and Finn watched him, frozen until the decision was taken away from him and Josh was gone. Whatever might have happened in that dark garage hadn’t, and Finn was glad of it. He was.

The fact that he ached inside only made him more certain. Josh had already broken him once—he sure as hell wasn’t giving him the chance to do it twice.

* * *

After more food and an impromptu bout of drunken dancing, which Joshua carefully avoided by helping load the dishwasher, Ali and Lexa got everyone organized for a protracted torture session—aka: Truth or Dare.

Joshua was a heartbeat away from fetching his coat and fleeing—Don and Jude had already made their escape; running a hotel had some benefits—when Dee grabbed his arm. “You sit with me, Newt. Us old folks gotta stick together.”

He couldn’t think of an excuse so ended up sitting on the floor in front of the sofa, with Dee squeezed behind him and Lexa next to her mom. “Okay!” Lexa said. “Who’s first?”

“Wait, wait!” Liz waved an empty glass from the other side of the room, where she and Finn were crowded together in one of the love seats. “I need more punch for this!” Matt was nowhere to be seen—wise kid.

More punch was the last thing Joshua needed, and he passed on both it and the beer. He was still sober enough to drive home and planned to keep it that way—he wanted to have an escape route. On the floor next to him sat the gloves he got from his Secret Santa. Beautiful soft fur-lined leather gloves. Expensive. His heart spiked as he set a hand on the leather. For the hundredth time he told himself that, even if theywerefrom Finn, it didn’t matter why he’d given them to him because it didn’tmeananything.

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