by Kit Rocha
One look at Finn’s face blew that to hell and back. He was too serious, that blank, careful look from his earliest days in Four back on his face.
He rose from the couch. “Trix.”
“Rachel said…” She let the words trail off. They didn’t matter, anyway. “What happened?”
“Beckett.” He rubbed his hands on his jeans with a sigh. “Come sit down.”
She did, but only because her knees felt wobbly already. Weak. “What about Beckett?”
“The sector leaders met.” He sat close to her—but not too close. Not touching, as if he wasn’t sure he had the right. “They demanded Dallas hand me over to Sector Five. If he doesn’t…”
Dallas would never do that, not in a million years. “You don’t— That’s not anything to worry about,” she reassured him. “You may not have your ink yet, but you’re here. You’re one of us.”
“Trix…” His hands curled into fists. “Do you know what it will cost Dallas and Lex to protect me? What it will cost this sector?”
Her mind spun in dizzy circles. He was saying something important, vital. Something so terrible she couldn’t quite grasp it. “They wouldn’t send you back there, Finn. They wouldn’t.”
“They wouldn’t send me,” he agreed. “But they need to.”
A chill swept over her, a stark counterpoint to the acid heat twisting her gut. No, Dallas and Lex would never send him back to Five. It was tantamount to marching him off to certain death.
They’d never do that to him. But Finn would do it to himself.
Maybe the universe had a sense of humor, after all, some sort of lopsided version of karmic retribution. Four years ago, she’d walked out on him. Now, he was about to do the same to her.
“You’ll never leave me, huh?” She stared at him, everything going numb and still except for the wild, frantic rhythm of her heart.
He flinched. “I don’t want to. I swear to God, Trix. But fuck, you’re the one who wanted me to like these bastards, and now I do. Would you want to be the reason half of them end up dead?”
Never, not in a million years. “Then we’ll split. They can’t demand Dallas turn you over if you’re not here. We can pack up and go tonight—head west and drive until we hit the ocean.”
His words, thrown back at him. And he remembered it, because something wistful flared in his eyes before he shook his head. “This is your home. And if we cut out, they sure as hell will come down hard on Dallas for letting me go.”
“Finn—” Her hands had started to shake, and she squeezed them still between her knees. “They’ll kill you.”
“Maybe not.” He half-smiled. “I’m pretty tough to kill. But if I manage to take Beckett down once we’re back in Five, no one can pin it on the O’Kanes.”
Is that what he was telling himself? That he was gonna play the hero, fix all their problems with one more bullet, one slice of a blade? “Beckett will be ready. He won’t give you the chance. If you can’t own that that’s true, you have no business even thinking about this.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know.” She sprang up off the sofa. “Anything but sacrifice yourself.”
“So sacrifice everyone else?”
“No. Give us time to think of something.” The words tumbled out, and she didn’t try to stop them, just threw them recklessly in his lap. “I’ll go with you.”
“No.” Finn lunged to his feet, lunged at her, his fingers closing around her shoulders. “Don’t fucking say that.”
“Why the hell not?” She struggled against his grip. “Does it scare you, Finn? Make you want to throw up? Because now you know how I feel.”
For the first time, he didn’t release her. He held her tighter, clenching hard enough to bruise. “If I go to Five, they might kill me. If you go—” He choked on a snarl. “Do you know how long they can string out dying over there? Or maybe Beckett wouldn’t get fancy. Maybe he’d just addict you again and see how many times you can survive the withdrawal.”
Her tears spilled over, burning her cheeks. “Can’t hurt worse than staying behind.”
“Yes, it can,” Finn whispered roughly. “You were happy without me for four fucking years, Trix. You’ll be happy again, as long as you’re here, with the people who matter.”
He may as well have slapped her. The words hit her like a blow, stinging and nauseating. “You bastard. You don’t deserve to know how miserable I was without you. You think I wanted to leave?” She wrenched away. “Since we’re laying everything out, I almost didn’t. I almost gave up. But knowing what you’d do—what Mac would do to you—I couldn’t.”
“Beckett would do things to you that Mac never dreamed of,” Finn replied, flat and harsh. “And you know what? Not even because he’s a sick fucker. He’d do it to hurt me. And he’d do the same shit to me to hurt you. I would put a bullet in my own damn head before taking you back there.”
“Right. Because I’m a victim, and you’re a hero.” She couldn’t look at him anymore, so she turned away. “It would be different, you know, if you just admitted it. That you don’t believe losing you would hurt me. That you don’t believe.”
“Your friends had to fight themselves to accept me at all. How long can that last after they start dying for me? Because of me? When some bastard hits Six with a lucky shot, how long before Bren wants me gone? Don’t tell me I’d still belong here. Some dreams are too perfect.”
“So you want to let it go before it gets snatched away.” The hell of it was, she could understand that. Some part of her screamed for her to do it now, to shove him away before he could leave her.
“I want to keep it whole. For you.”
“And to hell with how I feel about it.” Her stomach ached, and she pressed one hand over the throbbing pain, as if that could ease it. “Mac was right. I’m a weakness, and it’s never going to stop. I’ll have to live the rest of my life knowing that it was all because of me. That I’m the one who got you killed.”
“Trix, no.” He touched her arm. “You’re the one who gave me something worth dying for.”
It was so horrifying she almost laughed. “I’m sure I’ll find that very comforting when Beckett sends me your head in a box.”
“Fucking hell, I thought—” His voice caught, so rough he sounded like he was broken on the inside. “I thought you’d understand. I’ve never been a part of something good before. I ruin things. I ruin people. Don’t make me ruin this place. It’s like a pre-Flare fairy tale, and we need the hope. The whole damn world needs it.”
She couldn’t do this. She wasn’t strong enough to give him what he needed—acceptance even in the absence of understanding, reassurance without breaking down. Her throat ached, and her hands itched. She could beg him with her words and her touch, but that was the coward’s way, just like the anger was.
She had to love him, and let him go anyway.
Trix swallowed her tears and faced him. “You’re determined to do this?”
“If Dallas can’t figure out a different way, yes.”
“No,” she told him firmly. “We both grew up in Five, Finn. We don’t have the luxury of lying to ourselves.” She reached for him, laid her hand on his cheek. “I need to know your head’s on straight. That you understand what you’re doing.”
He stilled, staring down into her eyes forever before laying his hand over hers. “I will do everything I can to come back to you. But I know what the odds are, baby. I know—” He swallowed. “Maybe I can take him down with me.”
“You’re not coming back.”
“I’m not coming back.”
The ache grew, digging deeper into her soul, but there would be time for that later. Forever, even. As long as she lived. “You’ll always be the best thing that ever happened to me,” she whispered, knowing he wouldn’t believe it.
He touched her lower lip. “Coming here is the best thing that ever happened to you. I’m glad I got to see you like this. I’m glad I got to meet Tr
ix.”
She cracked, just a little, and she had to close her eyes to hide a fresh wave of tears. “When?”
“I don’t know. It could be soon.”
It could be tonight. Trix clenched her hands in his shirt. “Not yet.”
He exhaled roughly and cupped her face. “I’m yours for as long as I can be.”
It could never be enough, but she’d take what she could get. She tugged at his shirt as he slid his hands toward her hips, and they tumbled back to the bed.
Finn had no patience this time. No finesse. Maybe he heard the same invisible clock ticking down the last seconds of their happy ending as loudly as she did. He rolled her beneath him, coming down with his hips between her thighs, and claimed her mouth in a hard, starving kiss.
The ticking never wavered, not as his tongue slicked over hers, and not as she dragged her shirt over her head. It didn’t quiet until his bare skin was pressed against hers, generating a heat and tension that had nothing to do with pain or loss.
He kissed her everywhere. Her lips, her chin, all along the bare skin of her throat, skin that would never carry the ink that marked her as his. Skin that would never carry any ink at all.
His mouth paused at her collarbone as he fumbled with her pants. “I love you.”
Don’t. She bit her tongue and slipped her fingers into his hair, holding his lips to her skin. “I know.”
He got her pants open before his mouth found hers again, kissing her as he tore at her jeans and then his own. She kicked hers to the floor and helped him, shoving at the rest of their clothes until they were naked.
More kisses. Frantic and fevered, his mouth touching everywhere and lingering nowhere, not an exploration but a prolonged, yearning farewell. Every touch was a brand, seared into her body as surely as her ink.
So she marked him in return, the only way she could. She scratched her fingernails down his back, up his sides, along the back of his neck, leaving red welts that would take days to heal.
Days he might not have.
He slid down her body, pushing her thighs wide, and even this was different. His fingers, quick and demanding, two and then three working into her as his tongue found her clit. No time for teasing.
And no need. She responded as surely as she ever had, her body attuned to the inalienable truth that she belonged to him. That it would never stop, this need, this craving, even when he was gone.
Trix gave in to it, embraced it. Let go and came apart as he groaned his encouragement against her skin. One swift, hard orgasm, clenching tight around his fingers as pleasure smashed through her, and her fingers and toes were still tingling when he crawled back up her body and thrust home.
“Finn!” His name tore free of her on a harsh cry.
“Feel me,” he rasped, tangling both hands in her hair to pin her in place. “Feel me tonight. Feel me—”
He didn’t say the words, but she heard them, felt them. One last time.
“I do,” she promised, locking her legs around him. “I will.”
He kissed her and drove deeper, making her feel the stretch, the need. His muscles flexed under her hands, every part of him focused on fucking her, fast and hard. Trix met every thrust hungrily, their hips slamming together again and again.
It was everything she’d wanted all along, raw and messy and real, and she reveled in it, even knowing it would hurt more later. Especially when he pressed his cheek to hers, his breath falling hot with every panted word. “Love you, baby. Forever.”
Then don’t leave me. She held back the words because they were selfish, horrible. She couldn’t stop them from existing, but she could keep them from hurting Finn.
He raised his head and met her eyes, and she knew that even her silence hurt him. But then he was kissing her again, muffling anything she might say. Taking away the chance that she might not say anything.
Then she couldn’t, because the frantic pressure was building once more. She tried to stave it off this time, but Finn slipped one hand beneath her ass and lifted her hips, tilting them so that his next plunging thrust tipped her over the edge. She came hard, insensible to everything—her own cries, the room, the world. Everything but Finn and the way he rode her release, prolonging it as long as he could before his restraint cracked.
He came with her name on his lips, on her lips, whispered against them so bittersweet she couldn’t hold back the tears. They streamed from her eyes, soaking into the hair at her temples as he dropped kisses to her lips and cheeks until his mouth tasted like salt.
He didn’t speak as he rolled them over, cradling her to his chest. The tears gave way to sobs, just as her pleasure had yielded to sadness, and she cried. She cried until the muscles between her ribs were sore, until her throat was raw. Until she was exhausted, and the world drifted away into dreamless sleep.
Chapter Twenty
The buzzing sting of the needles had faded into a surreal sort of aching pleasure by the time Noah held up a tablet in front of Finn’s face. “I’ve mapped out every tunnel in Five on here. Coming this way, going toward Six, and even the ones headed into Eden.”
Not something he could take with him, but he and Bren had spent hours poring over the maps, figuring out the best places to hide supplies, along with the most likely route of Finn’s impossible escape. “Thanks.”
Bren reached out and tapped the edge of the tablet. “Memorize it, hot shot.”
Finn had a good memory, but he couldn’t fix the ridiculous labyrinth under the city and sectors into his head in a few hours. But he’d promised Trix he’d try to come back, even if she didn’t believe it. If there was a scrap of a chance—
He grabbed the tablet with his free hand.
“Quit moving, new guy,” Ace grumbled. “Don’t make me strap your ass in.”
“Sorry.” Finn looked to where the artist bent over his right wrist, filling in the last lines of his second cuff.
O’Kane ink, because Dallas wasn’t going to let him die for the O’Kanes without the highest honor the sector had to offer. It should have been an empty, stupid gesture, but Finn couldn’t look at them without feeling a weird jolt in his chest.
“Don’t be such a perfectionist, Ace,” Jas said from where he leaned against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest. “Those maps are at least as important as your line work right now.”
“Fine, if you’re going to be practical about it.” Ace grinned up at Finn. “Since you’re getting wobbly lines now, I’ll give you a free tattoo when you get back.”
“Deal. Now I’m gonna come back just to collect,” Finn replied, appreciating the chance to step back from the weight of the moment. Not that it lasted for long. His brain kept circling back to Trix, sobbing herself out on his chest…
It shook his resolve. Her pain always did. In his gut, Finn knew she could have made him stay. Even if it felt like turning his back on everything she’d taught him, even if it meant dooming everyone she loved to a brutal, bloody war.
Trix could have forced him to sacrifice everything else before himself. And she hadn’t.
God, he had to come back. He glanced down at the tablet, trying to focus on the first section of the map. “I went to Six last time. If I get away, they’ll expect that.”
Zan glowered at the tablet. “You’re gonna be armed, right?”
“No.” Pulling a weapon would defeat the damn point. Dallas had to play by the sector leaders’ rules to avoid blowback, and handing over an obvious assassin instead of a prisoner would bring shit down on Sector Four as fast as not handing Finn over at all.
Bren shrugged. “We’ll take care of that when we plant your supplies.”
“Thanks.” He met Bren’s gaze. Even though they weren’t saying goodbyes, weren’t saying anything at all that acknowledged the probability Finn would never reach those weapons, he couldn’t leave it at that. “I mean it, Bren. For everything.”
“You’re welcome. And I mean that.”
Finn gripped the tablet until the edg
es dug painfully into his palm. “You’ll look out for her, right? Take care of her. Until I get back.”
“Yeah, man. We all will.”
Cold comfort. For Trix and for Finn.
“There we go,” Ace said, swiping Finn’s wrist one last time before straightening. “Too bad we don’t have time to drink you in, but you probably don’t need to be puking up sixteen shots right now.”
“Probably not.” Finn lifted his wrist and studied the tattoo. The O’Kane skull insignia sat front and center, but it was surrounded by pistons and gears and edged with lines of what looked like chain-link fencing. “Shit, Ace, you’re as good as you think you are.”
“I know.” Ace rose and slapped him on the shoulder. “You’re ours now. You know what that means, right?”
“O’Kane for life,” Jas said as the miniature tablet in his hand beeped. He glanced down at it, and his jaw tightened as he shoved it in his back pocket. “Time to roll.”
“Let me wrap his damn wrists before you slap cuffs on them,” Ace grumbled, coming back with a tube of med-gel and two bandages. Finn suffered through the pointless exercise because he recognized the manic edge to every word out of Ace’s mouth. He felt it, too.
Having time to say goodbye didn’t make shit easier, it just drew out the suffering. Which was why he didn’t ask Jas if Trix would be there, didn’t let himself consider going to find her one last time.
They’d had their moment. Anything else he took now would be selfish, more pain for her to sweeten whatever hours he had left. Too high a price.
He just wished he could have heard I love you one last time.
Ace finished wrapping his wrists, and Finn rose. “Let’s go.”
Noah shoved open the door to the studio. Finn followed him through, only to stop abruptly inside the courtyard. People were standing around, faces he’d never even seen interspersed with the ones he knew well. They were silent, grave.
Respectful.
Lex stepped forward with a pair of handcuffs dangling from one hand. “Hang on to these. You can wait and put them on when you get close to the rendezvous point.”
Finn took them. “Thanks, Lex.”