Page 108 of Rules in Love
Nothing she was saying was making sense. “Is this about Brett? ‘Cause if it is—”
“Okay. You need to leave now.”
“I’m offering you everything you wanted.”
That cracked her. Silver lines of pain—the pain I caused—streamed down her face. All too late, I was hit with the clarity that fear and grief had stolen. “Finn, if you love me like you say you do, I am asking you to go away right now before one of us says something we are going to regret.” I wanted to argue. To fight. But I knew she was right. “Please, Finn. Please just leave.”
In hindsight, what I did next was the first right thing I’d done all day. I left, whispering, “I’m sorry, Scar,” before heading out the door.
Finn
Drunk on my own stupidity, I lay in my own putrid filth. The longer I marinated, the more idiotic I became, and the more the stench seeped from my pores. I reeked of it, and I knew I did, but I was too far gone to be able to do anything about it.
I’d had no intention of proposing to Scarlett. Moving in together? Absolutely. That was the plan, hence the key. The whole marriage thing was like an out-of-body, knee-jerk reaction to a mega-dick’s massive ego being wounded.
With every grinding tick of the second hand, I replayed my words.
“I decided that, yeah, we should get married. Iris needs a mum, right?”
“But the signatures!”
“It’s brass.”
Nonsensical ramblings of a desperate man.
Watching that fuck knuckle, Brett, touch my Scarlett sent a spark of dumb ripping through me that sizzled all the way up my spine before exploding my brain.
My asinine decision left Scarlett in tears, fracturing what I was so desperate to hold together. It had Brett laughing at me and inspired him to say the only smart thing he’d ever said in my presence. I was a clown. To make it all worse, when I finally did the right thing—shut my mouth and left—Brett was waiting outside. He said nothing as I passed. We just shared a glare before he pushed off the wall, stomped out his cigarette, and stalked back toward Scarlett’s door.
I had no idea if he went inside, and I wasn’t sure if I would ever find out.
The thought of seeing her after what I did was simply too traumatic, so I did what I did when Mum, Dad, and Shelby died. I avoided it all and hid like a coward. Each call, door knock, and texted plea that was ignored only dug my hole deeper. The guilt joined with the pain of my past that I thought I had begun to release, to form a massive ball of shit that pinned me beneath it in the dark.
It was crippling, and it seemed contagious.
I wasn’t sure how many days had already passed, but my melancholy isolation was on its last legs while listening to Evie and Nate fight with my ear pressed against the wall, and it was kaput by the time I drove him to the airport and backed up his decision to leave. Well, the isolation was kaput. The melancholy lingered.
“Nate, you and me. Me and you. We’re better off batching it like we did in the old days. Women are trouble…love is trouble.” Hoping to find some depressing grunge to back me up, I changed to a newly discovered radio station,Smells Like the 90s, and struck gold. “Something in the Way”—the most depressing Kurt Cobain warbling ever. Perfect. “If you look at it one way, Evie refusing to say she loves you is a good thing. Trust me, it’s better to make the break now, because every day you spend together will only tighten the vise-like grip she has on your heart till you walk in on her kissing her ex, and she refuses to marry you, and then it all explodes in a shower of vibrant, sticky, bloody confetti.”
That charming thought was finished off by another brilliant idea popping into my mind. An off-the-cuff comment that was enough to plant a seed. “Going home is the right thing to do…and maybe not just for you.”
Sadly, my shenanigans with Scarlett and almost driving off the freeway from tear-induced blindness were not my lowest point of the week. That was still to come.
With Evie and I both moping around and turning on each other, Jocelyn swung into action. Iris was packed off to stay with her friend Cole for two nights, and she booked her favorite house in Tarrytown. This meant I could continue to cry like a baby, and Evie could drink like a fish without scarring Iris for life.
Book-ending me in the luxurious backseat of Jocie’s town car, the women in my life turned on me when I finally caved and told them what I’d doneandwhat I was considering doing. Well, I felt like they did anyway. Their reasoning may have been as true and solid as the gold decorating Jocie’s fingers, but I was in no state to appreciate it.
“Maybe Scarlett refusing to marry me was a sign.” I sighed. “I’ve lost sight of why I’m here. I’m supposed to be making life better for us and honoring Shelby as I promised. But all I’m doing is fucking everything up. Maybe it’s better this way. For everyone.”
Evie leaned in, I thought to give me a cuddle, but no. She slapped me in the back of the head and launched into a tirade. “You’re a freaking idiot, Finn. Honestly, you’re lucky she didn’t knock you out. I would have. I’m tempted right now.”
“Well if you’re such a romantic genius who knows all the rules in love, why are you sitting here with us while your boyfriend is waiting for a flight to get away from you? Come on, let’s hear it, Evie.”
Punching me right in the face was what I expected Evie to do—and perhaps what I wanted. Watching her fall apart, making her sob and cry and almost panic chuck, was not.
I really was an asshole.
Things went from bad to worse. Within hours of arriving, Evie, who rightly refused to speak to me, lost her mind and left to chase Nate. Then, as I scoured the wine cellars for the good stuff I knew Jocie had hidden, the already shaky ground beneath my feet slipped or was dragged away.
