When I did, tears pricked my eyes.
“You think I didn’t try to find a way?” he asked, stepping more into my space. He was just inches away, his eyes searching mine. “You think I didn’t scour my brain for any possible chance I could have both — you, and the restaurant? But like you were so quick to point out that night on the beach, there’s no yachting season in Dublin, Firefly.”
I closed my eyes at the nickname, at how it still made my stomach flip.
“I knew it wasn’t the place for you to chaseyourdream.” He swallowed, waiting until I opened my eyes again before he continued. “And still, I asked you. I asked you to leave your passion so I could chase mine. It wasn’t fair, and I can see now why it hurt you. I didn’t get it then, even though I should have, because you shared everything with me. I was just angry and thought you were choosing yachting over me.” He shookhis head. “Feckin’ eejit, I was — thinkin’ what I was buildin’ mattered more than what you’d spent years fightin’ for. It was selfish and I’m sorry. But what I regret most is that I never asked the obvious next question.” His eyes flicked between mine. “I asked you to walk away from yachting. What I never asked was if you’d make Dublin your home in the offseason.”
My heart cracked.
“I never asked,” Finn repeated, nostrils flaring. “AndJaysus, do I regret it. I was just… young. Scared. Pissed off. Wanting it all. I convinced myself that if I waited to tell you until everything was set in stone, until I had this grand plan… I thought…” He shook his head, dropping his gaze to the ground.
“Finn…”
“I didn’t want to ruin what we had. It was… fecking magical, wasn’t it?”
I covered my shaking lips with one hand, squeezing my eyes shut and freeing the tears that had been pooling.
Finn thumbed one away, and I choked on a sob as I leaned into that touch, into what we used to be.
“Maybe naïvely, I thought by the end of it all… I don’t know. I thought maybe we were so in love, you’d come with me.”
For the first time since that night, I wondered why I hadn’t.
I’d been so angry, so hurt. He’d hidden his true intentions from me all season. He’d let me think we were leaving together when that was never his plan.
I understood now why he did it, but it didn’t make it hurt any less.
And why hadn’tIthought about the option of being in Dublin in the offseason? Why hadn’t I looked for any way to make it work?
I was just as guilty as he was for turning my back on us.
I was the same — young, angry, wanting to prove a point.
God, it seemed so terribly stupid now.
“But listening to the way you talked about your dad tonight,” Finn said, snapping my attention back to him. He shook his head. “About how you’ve risked disappointing him because you love yachting so much, because it makes you so fucking happy… I knew you two had a strained relationship, but I didn’t realize, Em… I didn’t realize how much this all means to you.”
“You didn’t realize how much you meant to me, either,” I shot back, pushing off the wall to stand straight again. My chest brushed against his sternum when I did. “You still don’t.”
Finn swallowed, staring down at me over the bridge of his nose. He opened his mouth, and then we both jumped, a high-pitched scream ringing out in the night as footsteps barreled toward us.
“There they are!”
It was Palmer’s voice, he and most of the crew spilling out from the bar. The footsteps and scream belonged to Gisella, who threw herself into Finn’s arms with a wide smile and me still standing just inches from him.
Finn caught her easily, swinging her up into his grasp as she locked her ankles behind his lower back and started kissing him all over.
His eyes were still on me until I peeled my gaze away, blinking over and over as I struggled to clear my mind through the haze of the alcohol.
“Babes, you okay?” Eli asked, slinging his arm around my neck and grinning down at me with tipsy eyes. “I’ll go bliksem that oke if he was getting too handsy.”
He hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward the bar where I’d been dancing with a stranger, but I shook my head, forcing a smile.
“He was harmless. I just… needed air. I was about to get sick.”
“Ag, that must be why Cheffy hauled you outside, hey? He saw the signs from when you two worked together before.”
Finn caught my gaze again, and I swallowed. “Exactly. And he got me out here just in time. That last shot was my death warrant.”