I close the distance between us before my mind can catch up to my body.
My hands find his face, pulling him down to me, and my mouth crashes against his. The kiss is graceless and urgent and nothing like the careful one we shared in his office, because I am done being careful.
Finn's arms wrap around me instantly, crushing me against his bare chest with a force that drives the air from my lungs. His hands splay across my back, fingers pressing into my spine like he is trying to memorize the shape of me through touch alone.
The heat of his skin burns through the thin cotton of my pajama top. I feel every ridge of muscle pressed against my breasts, my stomach, the entire length of my body.
The pressure is almost painful.
I cannot breathe, and I do not care.
His tongue slides against mine, tasting and claiming, and the sensation shoots straight down my spine to pool low in my belly.
His mouth moves against mine with a hunger that matches my own, and I feel the groan that rumbles through his chest more than I hear it. The sound vibrates against my lips, travels down my throat, settles somewhere below my ribs where it will live forever.
Then I pull away because the intensity is building toward a destination I am not ready to reach while standing in my mother's yard.
The neighbors are close, the walls are thin, and Theresa next door has been known to peer through her curtains at any hour.
I start walking, my bare feet carrying me away from the trailer park and toward the empty field that stretches behind the property line. The grass is cool and damp against my soles, the May night air wrapping around my exposed skin like something alive.
The scent of honeysuckle drifts from somewhere nearby, sweet and heavy, mixing with the earthy smell of recent rain.
Finn follows.
His footsteps are steady behind me, the soft crush of grass marking his pace, and I walk until the trailers are small shapes in the distance and the only witnesses are the stars scattered across the dark canvas above us.
When I finally stop, my breathing has turned ragged. The hyperventilation builds again without permission, my body rebelling against the overload of emotion I have been suppressing for a decade.
"This is too much." The words come out fractured, broken into syllables that do not fit together properly. "I do not understand how you could have loved me for ten years and I never saw it, not once. Not a single sign that registered in my thick skull."
Finn reaches for me, but I am already pacing, my feet carving a path through the tall grass that I cannot seem to deviate from.
The blades whip against my bare ankles, leaving trails of moisture on my skin.
"Every late-night study session, every time you brought me coffee without asking, every moment you sat beside me and listened to me ramble about books and dreams and that stupid novel I never wrote…"
"Aubrey." he says carefully.
I press the heels of my hands against my eyes, but the tears are already spilling through my fingers. "How did I miss all of it?"
"Aubrey, look at me."
I cannot look at him. If I look at him, I will shatter completely, and I am already cracking at every seam.
"I am so stupid." The word tears out of me with a sob attached. "I am the most oblivious, self-absorbed, tragically dense woman who has ever walked this earth. And I wasted ten years of both our lives because I was too afraid to believe that someone like you could want someone like me."
He moves toward me again, and I dodge around him, my pacing accelerating into something almost frantic.
"I ghosted you, Finn."
The tears are flowing freely now, hot and messy, salt stinging the corners of my mouth, and I cannot wipe them away fast enough.
"I did not invite you to my wedding because I could not stand to see your face when I said vows to another man. Because some part of me knew that if you were there, I would not be able to go through with it."
My voice breaks on the last word, shattering into a sound that is more animal than human.
"And I am so sorry, Finn. I am sorry for every phone call I did not answer, every text I pretended not to see, every year I spent married to the wrong person while the right one was probably trying to forget I ever existed."
Then his arms are around me. I try to pull away, to continue my spiral in peace, but his grip tightens and refuses to yield.
He holds me against his chest while my body shakes with sobs I cannot control. While the decade of suppressed grief and regret and longing pours out of me in waves that threaten to drown us both.
His chin rests on the top of my head, and I feel his breath moving through my hair, slow and steady, an anchor in the storm I have become.
The trembling subsides gradually, my muscles releasing their tension in stages until I am leaning against him more than fighting him. His heart beats beneath my ear, a rhythm so familiar it might as well be my own.
When I finally lift my face to look at him, his expression stops the remaining air in my lungs.
The moonlight catches the planes of his face, illuminating the certainty written across every feature. Silver light pools in the hollows of his cheekbones and traces the strong line of his jaw.
His eyes hold mine with an intensity that leaves no room for doubt or deflection or the self-protective lies I have been telling myself for years.
"I do not want your apologies, Aubrey." His voice is rough, stripped raw by the weight of what he is saying. "I want all of you. Every broken piece, every bruise, every scar."
His hands frame my face, thumbs brushing away the tears that continue to fall despite my efforts to stop them. His calluses catch against my skin, a texture I want to memorize.
"I want the woman who dreamed of burning her hometown to the ground, and I want the woman standing in front of me now." The words are a confession and a promise braided together. "And I want every version of you in between."
I rise onto my toes and press my mouth to his.
This kiss is slower and deeper, a conversation conducted entirely through touch. His hands slide from my face to my waist, pulling me closer until there is no space left between us.
One palm slides beneath the hem of my pajama top, his fingers spreading across the bare skin of my lower back, and the contact ignites a trail of fire that makes me gasp against his mouth.
My fingers thread through his hair, the strands silk-soft and cool from the night air, anchoring myself to him while the world dissolves into sensation.
His teeth graze my bottom lip, and the sharp pleasure makes my knees buckle. He catches me, one hand cupping the curve of my hip, holding me upright while his mouth devours mine.
When we break apart, my lips are swollen and my lungs are burning and every nerve ending in my body is screaming for more. His forehead rests against mine, our breath mingling in the narrow space between us.
His thumb traces circles against the sliver of exposed skin at my hip, and the touch sends shivers cascading down my thighs.
The words rise from somewhere deeper than thought. Somewhere I stopped accessing years ago when I convinced myself that wanting things was too dangerous.
"Please take me to bed," I whisper.