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Meaning it was truly and completely ignored.
Bringing my red flag count up to a glorious four, he’s been stiffly smiling out the window ever since. Not another word to me in the past thirty minutes.
I knew his mother lived a ways outside the city. I wasn’t expecting to face the journey in dead silence, though.
Miraculously, however, I survive.
Just in time to experience red flag five through I lost count…
Nerves eat me up with every foreboding step I take toward what I can only call a modest mansion. Compared to Finn’s and mine, the structure could pass as a normal house. If it weren’t the only building at the end of a long, cobble drive past a gate, I could be convinced it belongs in a regular community, just perhaps the sort of community that winds up on a magazine cover.
The sticking dread that something is wrong pools in my gut as Finn knocks on the front door.
I’ve spent the past forty minutes gaslighting myself out of overreacting.
Finn’s human. A person. With feelings, and so forth. He’s allowed to be a little nervous about my meeting his mother days before we’re scheduled to get married.
I do not need to make it my fault he’s acting strange.
He has a life outside of me.
Besides, what’s one ignored text? He probably saw it, was busy, forgot about it, and remembered the moment he came to pick me up. It’s not like we talk constantly whenever we’re together. This falls into the realm of normal behavior.
I’m just anxious because I’m getting married in a few days to someone I’ve only known for half a year.
I mean.
Come on.
I invited my entire family. I can’t just say sorry, no in a back room now.
Ever since Finn made me feel safe and secure in the loudest, most chaotic, most awful place I have ever been, I’ve kind of…known. I had fun with him at the Halloween town. In the sort of place I wouldn’t want to be within fifty miles of, I had fun.
Because I was with him.
Believing in something as idealistic as finding the one isn’t like me. Logic dictates that many sorts of characters and personalities mesh with many other sorts. Finn isn’t special and unique in a sense that no one else could ever make me feel safe and happy…but he is special, and he is uniquely him, and now that he has been the first person to put in the effort, he is my one.
Or something like that.
I don’t know.
Barf.
How long have we been standing out here?
As though reading my mind, Finn clenches his fist and knocks on the door again.
This time, a woman with a tight smile greets us. “Mr. Marsh,” she says, “I’m sorry. We were trying to get her settled in the dining room. Today’s…not a good day.”
“Is she all right?” Finn asks.
The woman opens the way for us to enter. “For right now. But…you may want to cut your visit short.”
Finn’s smile trembles, then—barely audible—he says, “Okay.”
Sirens explode in my head as a chill soars down my spine. Without warning, Finn reaches his hand back, for me. His lips part, but I clasp on before he gets a chance to say anything.
His grip bites into my bones, but the pain is minimal compared to the shock my whole system is going through right now. With every step, the stillness buries into my flesh. With every step, the wrong mutates into something insurmountable.
