Page 67 of Code Name: Harbor

When he came back inside, he was alone, and while his expression was composed, his eyes were not. He locked his eyes on me, crossed the floor and didn’t stop until he had his hand at the small of my back.

“We have to go,” he announced and then turned to Marcus. “Tell Janelle she can close out the night.”

“Got you covered, boss,” Marcus said, his expression tight with worry. I could see he wanted to ask Finn a million questions about what happened in that alleyway but didn’t dare.

I had a million questions too.

I take a breath. I press a finger against the dip between my eyebrows where the headache lives.

I close my eyes and the rest of last night comes back to me whether I want it or not. I sink down into it, searching for clarity.

I dropped the keys in the bowl by the door and turned to face Finn.

The ride home was silent, but he’d walked me inside. He hadn’t quite crossed into my house all the way, one hand still on the door, like he was deciding whether to go back through it.

“Finn?”

He blinked at me. “Yeah.”

“Come in or go. Don’t stand in the doorway.”

He took a step in, rubbed at the back of his neck. He was tortured, but then again, so was I.

“What did she say to you out there?” I asked.

“Nothing you need to know.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Josie—”

“You don’t get to decide what I need to know on my behalf. Not tonight.” I pulled my heels off, one by one, and dropped them in the corner. I didn’t take my eyes off him. “I spent the last hour completely lost as to what’s going on and I held it together because I’m very good at being composed when I need to. But it’s just you and me now, and you don’t get to stand in my foyer and tell me I don’t need to know what was said in that alley.”

His jaw worked back and forth. I could see the indecision in his eyes, but then he sighed, almost in defeat. “You’re right.”

Finn walked past me into the living room, where he didn’t sit. He stood by the window looking at the framed photograph on the mantel of me and my parents at my UW graduation. “She wanted me to admit out loud that I don’t feel about her the way she feels about me,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” I said, stepping into the living room but not going to him. He looked wound tight. “That had to be tough.”

“I should have done it years ago,” he admitted softly. “I told her she’s family. I told her she’s crew. But I also told her I’ve never felt about her the way she’s wanted me to.”

“How did she take it?”

Finn grimaced. “Badly.” His eyes glimmered from the light over my mantel, making his green eyes luminescent. “Then she asked me what I feel for you.”

I felt the air go out of the room. “And… um… what did you say?”

“I told her I’ve never felt anything more real.”

The thing about being a person whose job is composure is that sometimes the composure cracks at the worst possible time. Mine cracked there and my eyes must have revealed all the ways in which my insides softened. Finn watched it happen, but he didn’t move toward me.

“Then she crossed a line that can’t be uncrossed.”

Images of Connie throwing herself at Finn, plastering her mouth to his, assaulted me. I felt sick and enraged.

Finn must have clocked my feelings because he came to me, took my hand and led me to the couch. I sat beside him and watched as he put his elbows on his knees, hung his head and stared at the rug. “She threatened to call Mikhail’s people and give you over to them.”

The air whooshed out of me and a cold trickle of fear went down my spine. “Um… okay,” I muttered, trying to pull all my training back into my body. “What did you say to her?”