"You don't know what you're talking about."
The words leave my mouth before I've decided to say them. Finn's hands are still on me, his thumbs resting tenderly against my cheekbone and drawing small circles on the skin of my neck.
"Ten years." He says it again, slower, as if repetition will make me believe it. "I think that’s enough time to figure out what I want. And I want you, Aubrey."
My pulse is doing something erratic and completely unhelpful. His words bounce off the walls of my mind, refusing to settle into meaning. Finn is looking at me like I'm supposed to know what to do with this information.
I step back, and his hands fall away. The absence of his touch is immediate and specific. I move toward his desk, putting the solid mass of mahogany between us.
"Then why didn't you say anything?" My fingers find a pen on his desk, something to ground me. "Ten years is a long time to stay silent, Finn."
The irony coils tight in my throat. I swallowed the same confession for the same decade.
You are a goddamn hypocrite, Aubrey.
"Because I was a coward." He doesn't follow me, but his gaze does—tracking my movement across the room. "I convinced myself that having you as a friend was better than risking losing you at all. I told myself that one day I'd find the right moment and…"
"And you never did." I click the pen open, closed, open again.
"No." His jaw tightens. "I didn't. And believe me I've regretted it every day since you disappeared."
The laugh that escapes me is bitter and hollow. "Disappeared. That's a dramatic way to describe it."
"What would you call it?" His voice hardens now, the first edge of anger breaking through. "You stopped answering my calls. You stopped responding to my texts. You got married without inviting me, without even telling me, and I had to find out from Tim after the fact like I was nobody."
I set the pen down too hard and the crack ricochets through the quiet office. I feel it in my teeth, in the tight hinge of my jaw that hasn't been unclenched since he said ‘I want you.’
"I didn't owe you an invitation to my wedding."
I say it like it's true. Like I believe it. Like I didn't spend my wedding day scanning the pews for a face I knew wouldn't be there.
"No." He takes a step closer. "But you owed me a reason at least. We were best friends after all"
My body registers him in seconds. Every nerve ending tilts toward him like a plant toward sunlight, and I hate the involuntary nature of it while the truth whispers inside me.
I couldn't look you in the eye. Seeing you would have meant admitting what I felt, and I was already carrying another man's child.
And I am so fucking sorry.
"I was busy." The words scrape out of me like something being dragged across gravel. "Planning a wedding is difficult. I didn't have time to send announcements to everyone I'd ever known."
"Is that what I was to you? " He repeats it flatly, and I watch the hurt land before he covers it with anger. "Just someone you'd known?"
"What do you want me to say, Finn?" I move away from the desk, toward the window, needing distance. "That you deserved better? Fine. You deserved better. Is that what you need to hear so we can move past this?"
I stare at the city lights blurring through glass, but every nerve ending is tuned to the space behind me where he stands. But the thought that is echoing in my mind horrifies me.
Push me. Don't let me get away with deflection.
I want him to break through, and I want it so badly that I have to press my palm flat against the cold window to keep from turning around and breaking through myself.
"I want you to tell me the truth." His voice shifts position, and my ears track the muffled rhythm of his footsteps getting closer. "I want you to explain why you went from being my best friend to being a stranger who couldn't even pick up the damn phone."
"Because I got pregnant." I spin to face him, and he's closer than I thought—close enough that my breath catches on the inhale. "I got pregnant by a man I'd known for two months, and I married him because it was the right thing to do. Because I felt..."
The rest of the sentence catches in my throat.
Because I felt like I didn't deserve you. Never will.
"Because you felt what?" Finn takes another step, closing the distance.
"It doesn't matter what I felt." I wrap my arms around myself. "What matters is what happened. I was pregnant, and Daniel offered me stability. A future that made sense."
"God, that's adorable, Aubrey." His mouth curves, but there's pain in his expression. "Almost convincing, actually. Did you practice that in the mirror, or does self-deception come naturally to you now?"
"Go to hell, Finn."
"You got pregnant, you got married, you disappeared." He crosses his arms, leaning against the edge of his desk. "That's the ‘what.’ I'm asking about the ‘why.’"
"Maybe there is no deeper ‘why.’"
"There's always a deeper ‘why.’" His eyes don't leave my face. "You're just too scared to say it out loud. Which is ironic, considering you used to tell me everything. What changed?"
You. You changed. Or maybe I changed—maybe I finally stopped lying to myself.
What changed was that party, that night. Serena's fingers curling around your forearm while I stood there alone and understood that I was in love with my best friend I can’t ever have.
I can still feel the exact texture of that realization, the way my lungs forgot their function, the way the room tilted sideways.
"Serena Owens." I lift my chin, meeting his gaze with defiance I don't feel. "Let's talk about the party where she had her hands all over you. Let's talk about how comfortable you two looked together while I stood across the room wondering why I even bothered showing up."
"Serena?" Genuine confusion crosses his face. "Serena was my friend. She's been my friend since high school, we grew up together. There has never been anything—"
"She was whispering in your ear." My voice rises despite my efforts to control it. "And you were smiling at her, holding her by her waist."
"Because she was telling me a joke about Professor Richardson’s toupee." He stares at me like I've lost my mind. "That's what you've been carrying? A joke about a toupee?"
"Don't patronize me, Finn."
"I'm not patronizing you. I'm trying to understand how you built an entire narrative around my five-minute conversation with someone who has been engaged to her girlfriend for the past two years."
The information lands like a slap.
Serena is... she's not...
"That doesn't change what I saw." My voice wavers, and I hate it. "Or how it felt to watch you with someone who fit into your world so effortlessly."
"Someone who fit into my world." He repeats it slowly, and I watch understanding dawn across his features. "You were jealous?"
"I was realistic."
"You saw Serena at that party, and you convinced yourself that I wanted her?" He asks it with certainty, moving toward me again. "And you ran straight to Daniel because you couldn't stand to watch me with someone else?"
"That's not what happened."
"Then tell me what did happen." He's close now, too close, and the air between us has become difficult to breathe. "Tell me you didn't feel anything. Look me in the eye and tell me that watching me with other women didn't make you want to scream."
My gaze darts past his shoulder, searching for escape. The office floor beyond the office is almost empty. No witnesses, no interruptions, no convenient excuse to end this conversation.
Finn tracks the direction of my eyes. His jaw sets as he crosses to the door with a window in three strides and pulls the cord. The blinds descend with a soft whisper, sealing us inside amber light and shadow.
I lunge for the door the second after he turns around and goes back to me.
My hand closes around the handle, and for one desperate second I think I've made it. The door swings open a few inches before his palm slams flat against the wood above my head and it crashes shut.
His breath is warm against my ear, and then he speaks. "Stop running from me, firebird."