Deeper Than Destiny

CHAPTER 3 | Finn

CHAPTER 3 | Finn

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Libby comes down like I’ve shattered her. She rolls over, breathing hard and fast. Her eyes swing briefly to me and then immediately away, like things are still too intense.

I get that. Looking at her right now, I feel like my chest’s just cracked. My d**k is straining hard enough to hurt, but it’s like it’s happening to someone else because I can’t stop staring at her.

Like a freak, I realize and shift onto my back, giving her some space. To my delight, Libby rolls closer, turning onto her side and running her hand down my stomach.

And then lower.

“Can I...?” she whispers and the want in it makes my d**k damn near stand up straight.

I fold my hand over hers, pinning it tight against my stomach. “No way. First time I come with you? I’ll be buried inside you.”

She shivers, eyes going starry again. Briefly, I think I might have gone too far and then she says, “We need a box of condoms. Let’s go.”

I nearly burst out laughing. “You want to leave already? I didn’t do my job right.” I grin up at her ceiling, trying—and failing—to slow my breathing. The girl is like a shot of adrenaline. I’ll have blue balls for days, but I still feel like I’m flying.

“Oh, but you did do a good job.” She sinks into the mattress, snuggling closer to me. It feels f*****g fantastic even if I’m afraid to touch her anymore. My d**k is still a hairsbreadth away from coming. “You did a great job. I don’t think I’ve ever been this relaxed.”

I don’t think I’ve ever been that hard. My brain still feels foggy. “I had no idea you were so...”

I realize how that sounds only after it escapes my mouth, and for about a nanosecond, I think Libby’s s*x bliss is going to save me.

Then she flips over and I can feel her laser gaze bore into me. “So what?”

“So uninhibited.” It’s the truth, but it sounds cheesy as hell. I shake myself and look at her. “So brave. You knew what you wanted and you took it.”

She smirks. “I took you.”

“You f*****g did.” I had no idea she wanted me like this, no idea she wanted me at all. It’s mind-blowing.

Then she runs her fingertips up my chest and I realize there’s a lot to Libby that’s mind-blowing, like the way she’s touching me right now. “You make me brave,” she says softly. “Wanting this...made me brave.”

I grab her hand and lift it to my mouth, kissing her knuckles. “You make me brave too.”

She does too. She always has and I’ve always known it and now...

“I mean, you always have, right?” I clear my throat and pretend I’m interested in looking around her bedroom. My eyes skip from the black and white pictures she’s covered one whole wall in to the shelf full of showjumping trophies. “You kick my ass whenever I need it. Remember that college interview I wanted to blow off?”

Libby grimaces. “How could I forget? I thought I was going to have to drag you in there.”

Honestly? She would’ve. Thankfully, it didn’t come to that, but only by the narrowest of margins. After finding out I was up for early admissions to Harvard, my dad had freaked. It was nothing but talks about making the family proud and living up to expectations—which were really just code for making him proud and living up to his expectations.

By the time Libby caught up with me, I was on a three-day bender, medicating my panic attacks with booze. No surprise it wasn’t helping, but I couldn’t seem to stop. Then she got there and my world re-centered.

“You can do this,” she’d told me as we’d staggered to the master bathroom. She’d opened the shower door and shoved me under the water. Coldest moment of my life.

Lowest moment of my life—and she was there.

“Don’t let your brain get in the way of what your heart knows you want,” she’d said and for a second, I actually managed a smile. No one had ever put it like that and it was so true. Then and now, I’ve always felt like my brain is trying to kill me.

I’d taken her hand and pressed her palm against my chest and I knew she felt my racing heart when her face softened. She looked like I’d broken her.

Or worse, disappointed her.

“I’m scared shitless,” I’d muttered, staring at the water circling my feet and the drain. “I hate feeling like this. I hate being this guy.”

“Finn.” Her voice had wavered like it did whenever she was about to cry. “Look at me.”

It had taken everything I had to.

“You got this,” she’d said.

“I don’t feel like I do.”

“That’s because your head is lying to you right now.” She’d tried to make it funny, but we both knew it was true and it was horrible.

Water had kept getting in my face, blurring her and smearing her, and I still couldn’t look away. I’d needed to see if she was lying to me and...she wasn’t.

“I’ll believe in you until you can believe in yourself,” she’d added.

I hadn’t been able to manage a single word. No one, then or now, has ever believed in me like Libby believes in me.

And for probably the billionth time in the twelve years I’d known her, I’d wanted to kiss her. I’d wanted to pull her into the shower and never let her go.

I’d settled for a towel

And now you’re in bed, I think, focusing on the ceiling fan so I can get the courage to say, “You’re the one who’s always believed in me. Always.”

She goes quiet, gaze pinned to her bedroom’s floor-length windows, and for few beats, I get to enjoy naked, warm Libby squeezed in next to me—and then she sits up, fingers pulling at the tangles in her hair. “Oh, I bet you do this all the time.”

“You know I don’t.” Briefly, I’m confused and then I realize she’s making this lighter. It’s to help me. Somehow I’m sure of it. But I’m not going to let her dismiss this—especially with a dig at me being a slut. “Man-whoring has never been my problem.”

“Yeah. True.”

“Spend the weekend with me,” I say, studying the pictures of Libby’s best friends, Ally and Laurel, that are hanging above her desk. I’m trying for casual and doing a great job for someone whose entire insides are suddenly knotted. Don’t say no, I pray. Don’t say no.

“We live together.”

It’s true, of course. I’ve been living with Libby since my dad threw me out a few months ago, but that’s not what I mean and she knows it. I turn to her and she’s grinning.

“We’re already spending the weekend together,” she adds.

Again, she’s making this light and it’s anything but. I hold her gaze and say, “You know what I mean. Let me take you out. Let’s see where this...” My words dry up. There’s too much at stake.

“Goes?” Libby finishes and her voice turns it into a squeak.

“Exactly.”

And it’s like the air sucks out of the room. Libby stares at me and...trembles. She feels it too, I realize, but before I can say anything, she whips up a devilish—and familiar—smile. Wherever she wants this weekend to go, I will not be able to help, but to follow.

“I want it to go to the drugstore for condoms,” she says.

I grin. “I want it to go back to bed.” And I grab her, I drag her down to me, rubbing her bare breasts against my chest and enjoying her delighted gasp. I can’t keep my hands off her. I rub down her shoulder blades...down her spine...I cup her ass and urge her close so I can whisper, “I want your pretty legs spread for me. I want you moaning. I want to hear you scream my name again.”

She goes boneless. Hot.

She wants more, I realize and triumph punches through me.

Libs looks down at me. “I want...”

And I give it to her.

It feels like the beginning of everything. Libby is perfect and she’s mine and in less than forty-eight hours everything will be ruined.