Page 76 of You Weren't Mine Then

She prepared herself.

“Apparently, my lawyer agrees with your father. He thinks we shouldn’t meet until this whole thing is resolved. He doesn’t know how long it will take because she seems happy to drag it out.”

“Nothing is worth it if you lose Max, Finn. You and I won’t work if this is the cost. Neither one of us could live with that. So, we’d better—”

He shook his head. “I need you to hold on, Jane. To wait with me until this is over. Because I’m not giving it up. I’m not letting her ruin Max, me, you. I won’t let her. I spoke with Max, and he’s fine with us being together, so this gives me hope. It might take time, but I need to know that you’re waiting it out with me.”

“You know that I am.”

“I came here because I needed to hear it and see you when you say that.”

“I’m saying it. Finn, I love you. I’ve never loved anyone else. Whichever way this turns out, I just want you to be happy. I always have.”

He leaned closer. “I also came here because I needed my sunflower drug one more time before—”

He didn’t finish the sentence because, with those words, he had already pulled her to straddle him and kissed her hard and deep, like a man preparing for a withdrawal.

He carried her to the bedroom, and they took it long and slow, hoarding love and touch to last them as long as necessary.

“I’d do it all a thousand times over just so I could have those moments with you,” he said.

“Now who’s talking like it’s over?” She chuckled, though her heart felt like it was made of gravel.

She let the tears fall only after he had left.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“What did you expect, Annie?” Linda asked when she told her parents.

“Not this!” Anne pushed the kitchen chair back, abruptly standing up. The sound it made was like fingernails on a blackboard. “I thought she’d at least want to spare her son.”

“Maybe she thinks she is.”

“I bet she does, and I bet your sister doesn’t tell her that she’s hijacking everyone’s lives. Is Noah coming for Christmas, by the way, or is his mother still giving up on him and his kids for Avery’s sake?”

“It’s not like that, Janey. Family is complicated. Siblings are complicated. You don’t know because you don’t have any, and that’s our fault.”

“Mom, I love you, but are you real?”

“Annie, I’m just trying to see this from all sides, but I will always be on yours.”

“Good to know!”

Linda stood up and hugged her. It took Anne a moment before she hugged her back.

“Finn doesn’t deserve this, and neither do you,” Linda said quietly, hanging on to Anne, and not letting her out of her embrace. “Divorces are ugly. I’m not justifying what she did, but the bigger the eruption, the more time it takes for the dust to settle, for the debris to be cleared.”

Bert, usually calm and pleasant, looked like atypical steam was rising inside him. “I’m of a mind to march over there and give them all a piece of my mind,” he said, getting out of his chair, too.

“No, Dad, it won’t help right now. Let Finn handle this the legal way.” Anne extricated herself from her mother’s hug. She wrapped her arm around her father’s back. “But thanks, Dad.”

On her way home, she called Libby.

“I need your advice as a social worker. It’s confidential. Can we meet?”

Libby bit her lip when they met for coffee at Life’s A Beach an hour later. She inhaled, then spoke over a sigh. “A restraining order, that’s not something to trifle with. These things are taken very seriously, especially in this county after … after that shooting in Wayford in the summer.” A few months back, Libby’s job had her involved in a custody dispute where a man held her and his ex-wife at gunpoint. “Though the cases are nothing alike, courts tend to go with better safe than sorry. He’d better do what his lawyer tells him.”

“So, except for attending the hearing, there’s nothing he can do about any of this?”

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