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“Fine,” I said. “Thirty thousand.”
She was shouting now. Her roommate was probably wondering what was going on. “What is wrong with you?”
“Thirty-five thousand, but that’s my final offer.”
“You asshole!” She grabbed a pillow and hit me with it, right in the chest. I emitted an oof sound. “You spoiled piece of shit! You think that just because you’re a rich sellout has-been, you can throw money around to get what you want. You can’t buy people, Finn!” She hit me again, and I grunted. “You can’t buy me!”
She dropped the pillow, panting, and she seemed to be finished, so I ignored the sting of the phrase has-been and said, “You drive a hard bargain, Juliet. Forty thousand it is.”
She launched herself at me, but I was faster. I spun her to her back and pinned her to the bed, my knees bracketing her hips and my hands on her wrists. She bucked, but her breath was coming hard, her lips were parted, and her pupils went dark.
I braced over her, our lips only inches apart, and I knew. I knew, as I felt the rush of her pulse in her wrists against the pads of my thumbs, that we would be so good together it would be unlike anything else. I knew what the skin at the notch of her collarbones would taste like, how she would arch beneath me when I twisted my hand in her hair. What it would feel like for her skin to slide against mine, what her teeth would feel like on me, exactly how I would put my mouth to the crook of her neck and taste her sweat after she’d just come. I knew it all.
We stared at each other for what felt like forever and like no time at all.
In a voice that was almost a whisper, she said, “Get off me, Finn.”
I let her wrists go, shifted my weight back. Juliet put her hands on my lower stomach, just below my belly button, her palms hot through the cotton of my shirt. Her fingers splayed to notch just into the waist of my jeans, behind my belt.
That contact blasted through me with the heat of a furnace. Her hands were just there, and if she moved a few inches, we would cross a line with no turning back. We would catch fire. I wouldn’t stop her. All she had to do was slide her hands down, down.
Instead, she drew back and shoved the heel of her hand hard into my stomach, surprising me. I let out an undignified grunt and unbalanced, shifting back and catching myself just in time. My knees freed her hips, and she pulled her legs from between mine.
“I’ll think about it,” she snapped. “Now get out.”
I regained my breath and my dignity. “Alistair’s wedding is going to go perfectly,” I said, warning in my voice. “I’ll make sure of it.”
“I don’t care what you do. Just leave me out of it.”
I shook my head. “Not possible. You’re in this, Juliet, whether you like it or not.”
“Finn, get out of my bedroom.”
I did. I picked up my coat, walked past the still-oblivious roommate in the living room, put on my boots, and walked out the door.
I had let her win, just a little. But I still felt triumphant.
She had said my name four times, as if she couldn’t help it.
And before she took her hands off my belly, she hesitated. As if she didn’t quite want to let go.
SIX
Juliet
I seethed at Finn Wiley for a week. Just overwhelming, pissed-off rage.
I had my reasons.
First, forty thousand dollars? Who the fuck did he think he was? He had sat on my bed like a gorgeous, unconcerned god and tossed that number out like it was nothing. Which, to him, it was.
It went without saying that I wasn’t going to take money for going to my own sister’s wedding. It didn’t matter how broke I was. I had never sold myself for money, and I wasn’t going to start now. Not even for Finn.
The reasons to hate him kept piling up. When I went to bed that night, I could smell Finn on my pillow and on my comforter. His aftershave or something—I had no idea what. The scent made me remember the shocking sight of him in my parking lot, looking so much like the boy I’d met and yet nothing like him at all. Finn was a man now, tall and lean and confident. He’d lost his nineteen-year-old hesitance and replaced it with a subtle, graceful swagger that made me drool.
Younger pop-star Finn had been clean shaven, his hair carefully colored and styled under his ball cap, his limbs still stringy. This Finn leaned against the wall of my building like a cowboy, his hair naturally dark brown, his jaw stubbled, and his gaze had shadows that hadn’t been there before. I wanted to drown in them. In all of him.
His stomach had been flat and firm, the skin warm to the touch. I could still feel it against my palms.
