Third Time Lucky

by Jayce Carter

  “Oh, poor Finn.” Jasmine winced slightly as the small, enclosed office made her realize just how loud her voice was. “I need quiet to be able to work,” she snapped.

  Finn held out his hand, gesturing around them, that eyebrow still lifted as if she’d missed something.

  “What?”

  He shook his head. “You always did miss the obvious solution. Work here, Jas. This office is air conditioned, private and most importantly, quiet.”

  She went to argue with him over it, but not a single downside came to mind. Finally she went with, “Well, what about you? I can’t take your office.”

  “I’m always down there. You know me, I’m not an office sort of guy. There’s even a second office behind the main desk that I keep all the day-to-day stuff in. Now, will this work, or do you want to yell some more?”

  How does he always do that? He managed to say one little thing and make her realize she was being a bitch.

  Still, Jasmine wasn’t quite ready to give in, especially to Finn. It was easier to resist him if she held fast to her anger.

  Finn curled his lips into a smile, then let out a soft chuckle. “You are one mean woman, you know that?” He shook his head and left, allowing Jasmine to finally bask in the quiet of the office.

  * * * *

  Hours later, Jasmine had finally finished everything. She’d have to set the office up properly the next day, because she really needed the extra monitors.

  Still, it had been perfect. She didn’t feel trapped, since the windows allowed in plenty of light, but given she sat above the shop, she also didn’t have to deal with any distractions. It was quiet and no one bothered her.

  In short? A perfect little sanctuary to complete her work. She wasn’t sure if she’d been that productive in a long while. It reminded her of her office back at her old house, where she’d had a window facing the ocean, and that background had always relaxed her.

  She closed the laptop and slid it back into her backpack, needing to bring it with her just in case she got a call in the middle of the night.

  She left the office, the shop still busy even though it was five. Then again, Finn had often worked late in the time she’d stayed with him.

  It was hard to believe it had already been almost a month since she’d first stepped foot in the small casita. Despite their fights—and there were a lot of them—she rather enjoyed moments of it.

  Living with Aaron had been difficult at best. There hadn’t been fights often, but the space between those fights had been long and full of tension.

  That was what she’d hated—that tension, that quiet unease. It was what she’d lived with growing up. Moments of uncomfortable, fearful waiting between explosions of violence. It left her on edge with any sort of tension, just expecting it to fall apart.

  Even when she fought with Finn, even when they yelled, she never had that same fear. He didn’t make her feel as though something violent lurked in the shadows, just out of sight.

  He was the only person in her life who had ever made her feel that way.

  It almost terrified her more than the worry about violence did.

  Finn’s voice came from the front of the shop, loud but calm, over even the tools and general hustle of the place.

  Jasmine followed it, needing to let him know she was leaving.

  “Why don’t you get out of here?” A stillness in Finn’s voice brought her up short. He was normally so cheerful, the first to smile, the first to laugh. There was no cheer in his tone.

  “Fuck off, asshole,” responded a man’s voice who lacked that same control Finn had.

  Still, she inched forward, even as her feet didn’t want to move.

  “I want to see him,” the man demanded, then a bang. It was skin against an object. Jasmine’s childhood rushed through her, and her ability to identify what skin slapped against made her breath short and choppy. “You can’t keep him from me.”

  “He doesn’t want to see you, so yeah, I can. The police are already on their way. I suggest you get out of here. Pretty sure they’ll lock you up for breaking a restraining order.”

  Jasmine turned the last corner to the customer waiting area to find the man in question.

  He was in his thirties, his hair short and nicely done, a suit on. He looked like Aaron, or maybe money always looked the same. A fitted suit, an expensive haircut—they never failed to make some people morph into the same template. Add to it that arrogance and she knew the type.

  Finn, on the other hand stood there, his back to her, larger than the other man but lacking that arrogant edge.

  “He’s coming with me,” the man said, leaning forward.

  Even still, Finn didn’t rise to the occasion. “You are getting nowhere near him. Turn around and leave, now. This is the last chance I’m giving you.”

  The man went to go around the desk, to push past Finn, but Finn shifted to block the man’s path.

  The man shoved hard, and when that didn’t work, he threw a punch. The sound of skin on skin made Jasmine’s stomach sick. She wrapped her fingers around the doorframe as waves of nausea rushed over her.

  Finn’s head went to the side, but he reacted quickly. He drew his hand into a fist and threw a punch back, though his made a mockery of what the man had done. The hit landed on the man’s jaw and he went down hard. When he hit the floor, he didn’t move.

  That was about the time everything went fuzzy.

  Finn’s knuckles hurt, but damn, hitting the asshole had felt good. He never went looking for violence, but he’d wanted to hit that man since the first time Ricky, one of the younger men who worked for Finn, had shown up with a black eye.

  Ricky had finally decided to leave the asshole, but it seemed, like most abusers, this one wasn’t ready to let go.

  Thomas, Finn’s office manager, rushed in. “Police are almost here.”

  Finn nodded. “Good. Keep an eye on Mr. Wonderful here and get the security tapes ready for when they get here.”

  A tiny sound made Finn’s lips tip down. Wheezing?

  He turned to find Jasmine huddled back in the corner of the small front room, her already pale skin ashen, her breath fast. Fuck.

  He knew without askingthat she’d seen the exchange.

  “Shit,” Thomas said, clearly having noticed her as well.

  She was easy to miss, curled up in that corner as if she could become part of it, as if she could turn herself into the smallest ball possible and be completely invisible.

  And Finn had seen that pose before from her, back when she’d been younger, when he’d realized the hell that lived inside the walls of her house. He froze for a moment, taken back to when they’d both been kids and he’d had to face her demons alongside her.

  He didn’t close the distance but crouched down until he cut off her line of sight to the man’s body on the floor. “Hey there, sunshine. Come on, let’s go back to the office, huh?”

  She didn’t speak, and he wasn’t entirely sure she even saw him. Nah, those eyes of hers were empty. Wherever she was seeing, he’d bet it was years in the past.

  If this had happened back at the house, he’d have kept his hands off her, but she needed to not be around the man’s unconscious form, and not in the middle of a bunch of people and some soon-to-arrive cops.

  He came closer and held his hand out. “Let’s go, Jas.”

  When she still didn’t move, he set a hand on her arm. She flinched, but didn’t pull away. Good enough. He tugged her to her feet and led her to the small office Thomas used, not wanting to risk the stairs with her like that. He took the laptop case off her shoulder and set it on the desk. He didn’t want her to damage that on accident.

  He sat her down in one of the chairs then crouched again, setting his hand on the back of her neck and pressing until she dropped her head. “Nice and slow. You remember this, come on. Five things you can see, four you can hear, three you can smell.” He thought back to when he’d learned how to help with a panic attack—not tha
t she’d had all that many, considering. He hadn’t needed those skills in a while, but they came back as if second nature.

  She whispered, and it took a moment to realize she was doing as he’d requested, the grounding technique. “Drills. Your breathing. The shop door. Grease. Old paper. Sandalwood.”

  “Sandalwood?” He frowned as he peered at the cluttered space. He doubted Thomas had any sandalwood-smelling shit in his office.

  Jasmine lifted her head, exhaustion pulling at her features. “You always smell like sandalwood.”

  He laughed softly, his voice low. “Must be the soap I use. Can’t say I’ve ever thought about it.”

  “I like it,” she admitted.

  That alone told him how out of sorts she was. She’d never admit to liking a damn thing about him if she was working on all cylinders.

  Finn set his hands on her knees. “Your color’s coming back. Not that you have much normally.”

  She swallowed hard, a loud gulp in the small office. “Sorry.”

  Finn risked it and set his hand on the side of her neck so he could brush her cheek with his thumb. Damn, I missed this. “Nothing to be sorry about. I wouldn’t have done it if I’d realized you were there.”

  “Who was he?”

  “Abusive prick boyfriend of one of my workers. He’s showed up here before, but this time he wasn’t taking no for an answer.”

  Jasmine’s eyes went to his cheek. She reached for him, her fingers freezing when they touched his skin. “You let him hit you. You could have moved.”

  “It’s fine,” he assured her, despite the fact she hadn’t actually said she was worried. Still, he knew her well enough to read between the lines. “He barely got me. Fact is that if he threw the first punch, in my business, after I asked him to leave, I’m pretty safe. So I let him have his one hit. Fair is fair.”

  Jasmine shuddered, that tiny tremble he knew so well from her. It was her building herself back up, her giving herself a little internal pep talk about how she had this, how she was not going to give in.

  Fuck, he loved that about her.

  He tripped over that pesky L word but didn’t deny it. He’d always loved her. It didn’t mean he was stupid enough to give things another shot, to line up for her breaking his heart all over again, but none of that changed that he loved her.

  He’d grown up in a stable household with loving parents and siblings. She’d endured a home with an abusive stepfather and a mother who cared more about her unhealthy obsession with that man than her own daughter. It was a testament to Jasmine’s strength that she’d come out of it as well as she had.

  And yet still, Finn stroked his thumb against her soft cheek, unable to give up the moment. It had been too long since he’d seen her like this. Not upset—he didn’t care for that—but open.

  Even the last time, when grief or anger or some mixture of the two had left them in bed together after her stepfather’s funeral, she hadn’t been this way.

  “So Ricky will be okay?”

  And there it was, that soft heart of hers that she tried to hide under an acidic tongue.

  “Yeah, I think so. With this, his boyfriend should think twice about trying anything so brazen. He already had a restraining order, so this will at least get him out of the picture for a little while.”

  “You think I could kick the guy once as I walk out?” She offered a weak smirk, as if trying her hardest to show she was okay, that she wasn’t upset anymore, that she was stronger than that.

  And just like that, Finn knew he was fucked.

  But could he really deal with her breaking his heart again?

  Chapter Six

  Jasmine smiled softly at the restaurant. It hadn’t changed all that much, even in so many years.

  One of Finn’s brothers was throwing a party, and while Jasmine had tried to figure out what the party was for, she still didn’t know. In the end, she decided they just liked to get together.

  This time they’d reserved the large back room of an old-school Italian restaurant, with the tables set up and people mingling throughout the open space.

  She almost hadn’t come. Trent had invited her first, but she still wasn’t sure what she thought about that. They’d spoken a few times, and he seemed to come over to see Finn often, leaving her in the middle, but she didn’t feel any spark.

  However, when he’d suggested skipping the event and coming over to ‘entertain’ her, Jasmine had decided going with Finn was the better choice.

  “You didn’t know that? Jasmine was the one to steal the Christmas tree from the grocery store!” Kat, one of the people Jasmine and Finn had gone to school with, said, her voice lifting as if saying it louder made it funnier.

  Jay, a man Jasmine didn’t know, turned his gaze on his. “You did that?”

  “She did,” Kat assured him. “Remember, they had no leads? One of the great unsolved mysteries.”

  “I don’t believe it.” Jay crossed his arms. “Some teenager isn’t going to be able to break into a store, and if they did, they wouldn’t steal a Christmas tree.”

  Jasmine lifted her arm to show the scar on the inside of her elbow. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to move a tree that size? It got me here.”

  Jay shook his head. “Nope. I don’t buy it. I need someone else’s word.”

  “It’s true,” Finn said from her left. “It was my truck she also stole to move the thing. Scratched the roof all to hell.”

  “Well, I’m sorry I didn’t have time to put down a tarp. I was sort of on a time crunch.”

  Finn’s chuckle said he didn’t hold a grudge.

  Jay narrowed his eyes and grunted softly, as if he didn’t quite believe them, before walking off.

  “I never knew why you did it,” Kat said.

  “I was a delinquent,” Jasmine offered with a shrug.

  Kat laughed, as if that made perfect sense, before she left them, too.

  Finn stared at her, and even though she tried to pretend she didn’t notice, Finn was a hard man to ignore.

  They were standing outside, just past the back door that the restaurant had left unlocked for those who needed air or to have a smoke.

  Air was what Jasmine was there for, and Finn had followed because he seemed to do that a lot.

  “Why do you lie about that?”

  “Lie about what?” Jasmine took a drink of her soda. She’d figured alcohol was the last thing she needed. The last time she’d drunk, she’d nearly kissed him. No need to tempt that one again.

  “About why you did it. You didn’t take that tree for no reason, Jas. You like to pretend you don’t care about anything, but I know better.”

  “You don’t know anything.”

  “Come on, be honest, just this once. I never did figure out why you did it, and it wasn’t a spur of a moment. You had to first break into the manager’s house, steal their keys, then break into the store, steal the tree then put the keys back. You could have been caught and gotten into a lot of trouble. Why do it?”

  Jasmine sighed as she swirled the drink in her cup. She hated to be honest. The answers always felt too telling, as if revealing weaknesses she couldn’t afford to let out. But Finn’s quiet way, when he just waited, won her over as it often did.

  “Do you remember Ginny? That little girl who was really sick?”

  Finn frowned softly, reminding Jasmine they were talking about a long time ago. Who would remember some little girl who was ill so often?

  Except, just as Jasmine was about to tell him to forget it, he spoke up. “Black hair, right? Her parents ran that little shop on the corner? At least, they did for a while.”

  Jasmine nodded, a warmth in her chest at him recalling the girl, and her family, that few in the town gave a damn about. “Yeah. They lost the store because of her medical bills. That store did a bunch of donations for them, but the bastards ended up taking the majority of it for ‘administrative fees.’ Ginny and her family got almost nothing. I went over there because the libr
ary would give me books to take to her, and when I got to her house, they didn’t have a tree. They barely had enough money for anything. I couldn’t help them with much, but damn it, a kid should have a tree. I figured the store owed them that much.” Jasmine smiled softly as she remembered setting it up in their place. “It fell out of the truck once on the way, so one side of it was all messed up, and they had to cut the top off because it was too tall, but I’ll always remember how the lights reflected in Ginny’s eyes.”

  Finn stared at her, that same look that always took her breath away.

  He moved a beat later, taking her cheeks between his palms and pressing his lips to hers.

  She dropped her cup, the plastic clicking against the concrete as she forgot all about it.

  She returned his kiss, breathing him in so far he filled all of her. The years apart stopped mattering, as if time didn’t flow in one direction anymore. There was when they were together and when they weren’t, and nothing else.

  Jasmine clutched his shirt, wrinkling the material in her hands before sliding her arms around him. It pressed her chest to his, let her remember just how hard and unyielding his body was.

  That dichotomy had always thrilled her. For a person so gentle, his body had little give. On the other side, her attitude was often acidic, yet her body held a softness at odds with that.

  All those differences somehow melded together as she slid her tongue across his full lips, wanting more, needing to have more. She wasn’t passive—she’d never been passive—and resisting didn’t seem possible any.

  Finn parted, letting her taste the sweetness from the tea he’d drunk.

  She lost herself in the kiss, no longer able to tell past from present, forgetting all the reasons this was a horrible idea.

  Nothing else in her life had made sense, but somehow this always had.

  The door handle twisted, a loud sound that fell over her like ice water. She shoved away, breathing hard, and Finn didn’t follow. He didn’t reach for her, didn’t chase. Instead, his hands fell away from her.

  A groaning of hinges preceded Trent walking out into their space, his expression as unaware as ever. “I was wondering where you’d run off to.”