“Is that what you want?”
Finn held a breath, chest broad. He swallowed, exhaled, and tapped his fingernails against the side of the mug.
“I want lots of things, Sophie.” He glanced at Daniel, then me. “Lots of things.”
“Tell me.”
“Not my place.” Finn pushed to his feet with a groan, dislodging my hand. “Is it all right if I shower? Since we’re going out?”
“You remember your way around the bathroom?”
“I do,” Finn confirmed. He stepped over Daniel’s legs and headed down the hall.
I watched him go, a little unsure of the change in tone that caused his sudden departure. Daniel pressed his fingertips against the side of my face and drew my attention to him, his expression worried, but knowing.
“What was that about?” I asked.
“We talked about getting tested,” Daniel admitted. “After we… you know.”
“Fucked.”
He scrunched his nose. “That’s a word for it. But, yeah. We talked about getting tested, going without condoms. He asked if you and I were seeing other people.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“I told him he was the only one.”
There was a weight to the admission, and Daniel and I both stared at each other in silence while we wrestled with what it meant. This…thing…whatever this relationship we’d found ourselves in with Finn was more than a casual hookup. It was more than a fling. There were real feelings involved all around, and because of his past, Finn kept getting spooked. It was much easier for me to ease into the idea of marrying Daniel and dating Finn, but every time things leaned too close to that sort of commitment, Finn startled like a skittish horse.
“I like him, Danny.”
“I like him too.” Daniel took another drink of his coffee, leaned forward, and set it down on the table. He grabbed my hand, hauled me to my feet. “Come on, then.”
“Where are we going?”
“Fixing it,” he said simply.
Daniel walked me down the hall to the guest bathroom. The water was running in the shower already, the door pulled closed. He rapped his knuckles against the wood hard enough to be heard.
“Yeah?” Finn called out from inside.
“Can I come in?” he asked. “Can we?”
There was a pause.
“It’s not locked,” Finn said.
I didn’t know what Daniel’s plan was, but I understood what needed to be done, and being a person who had been on the receiving end of Daniel’s determination, I knew Finn didn’t stand a chance against whatever was about to happen. Finn wanted to trust what we were offering, but he was also too scared to do it. I couldn’t begrudge him that. It was a scary thing to trust after being hurt. Whatever had happened to him before the day I’d met him at the store had no bearing on my relation to him, and he and Daniel had made peace with their own history. The only thing left for me to concern myself with was the future, with making sure my actions backed up my words. With balancing how to be devoted to the man I wanted to marry and the man I wanted to fall in love with.
“Oh,” I murmured, stepping behind Daniel into the bathroom and closing the door behind me.
The shower curtain was closed, and as soon as the door clicked shut, Daniel was on me. One hand slammed against the wall and the other grabbed my waist, hauling our bodies flush. He hadn’t brushed his teeth yet, and he tasted like sleep andcoffee, and I wanted him. Daniel crashed our mouths together, and I moaned, muscles clenching from the ongoing arousal.
I thought Daniel had brought us into the bathroom to talk to Finn or do something physical with him. I hadn’t expected a high school makeout session while the man who wasn’t quite sold on us was naked on the other side of a relatively sheer cotton shower curtain. The metal hooks rattled quietly as Finn slid the curtain back, and Daniel dragged his mouth from my lips down to my throat. I tilted my head back and caught Finn looking, snagged his stare and held it.
I couldn’t see much of him in the shower beyond his bare chest and the top of one arm, but his muscles were tense, and he held his breath. Finally, Daniel broke the kiss and gave me a gentle shove toward the shower. Finn’s stare darted between us, and he pushed the curtain aside further to make room for me to join him.
“Take your clothes off,” Daniel said to me, lifting himself up onto the counter and sitting down on the edge. He crossed his legs at the ankle while I stripped out of my pajamas and kicked them toward the door.