Chapter Thirty-Two

Chessly

M aybe there was something to Orch OR theory. Maybe Finn and I were connected on another universal plane.

Or maybe after being so physically and emotionally connected to him less than twenty-four hours ago, I was experiencing a kind of intuition.

Whatever it was, when Finn's roommates exited the stadium without him, a terrible sense of doom descended over me. If someone had asked me to explain it, I doubt I could have. I only knew Finn was facing serious trouble, something life-altering, and he was terrified. More than anything, I wanted to march into the stadium to stand right beside him as he confronted whatever danger was threatening him.

Then he'd walked out behind a massive man in a fancy gray suit whose thunderous expression could put the fear of God into the Devil. Beside him walked Penelope Walker. The reason I hadn't seen her around Hanover much protruded from the front of her long wool coat, which she couldn't button at the moment. Next came the head coach with Finn in the rear. The pleading expression on his face had dropped a ten-ton ball into my stomach. Whatever was going on with Penelope involved Finn?

Silently, Piper and Jamaica flanked me, one rubbing her hand across the tops of my shoulders, the other wrapping her arm around my waist and hugging me close. After Finn called out to Callahan to join them, Bax narrowed his eyes, his thoughts on the tableau in front of us a total mystery.

When a second coach joined them, things heated up with Finn shouting, forcing Callahan to lay a restraining hand on him. Then everything stopped. The coaches flanked Finn and Callahan, and the four of them disappeared back into the stadium. After a minute of the man—apparently her dad—flexing his hands while Penelope stared back at him with a jutted chin, he wrapped his hand around her upper arm and led her to a fancy Porsche SUV. As he pulled out of his parking space, he laid a patch of rubber, and I felt a little sorry for the girl whose father was super angry with her.

"Do you know who that girl is?" Piper asked Bax.

"Seen her around a few times last fall with Tory Miller and the band of jailbait she hangs out with," he answered, and my heart threatened to make a permanent move to my throat.

"Of course whatever is going on has something to do with that Miller witch," Jamaica said, her tone pure acid.

"Not helping, J," I managed to say over the lump in my throat.

"Finn's an idiot." Bax shot me a look. "Sorry, Chessly. I'm not dissing you in saying that. But he's always been too nice to people who don't always deserve it. Maybe he gave that girl a ride home or something last fall and now she's ‘repaying' him," he explained with air quotes. "Wouldn't be the first time a jersey chaser has tried to trap a football player."

I couldn't tell from his tone who he was more disgusted with: Penelope or Finn. But something about how Bax didn't believe Finn had anything to do with her round belly let me breathe.

By the time Finn and Callahan finally walked out of the stadium again, more than hour had passed since the scrimmage ended. All my happiness at seeing Finn's return to the starting lineup had evanesced in the intervening sixty minutes as I'd prayed that what I'd seen was not what I thought I'd seen.

"Hey, Chess." Finn's voice was low, tentative. "Sorry for making you wait out here so long." He stepped in front of me but kept his hands to himself. Then he said the worst four words in the English language. "We need to talk."

With a nod, I fell into step beside him as we headed over to his ancient truck. As usual, he held my door open for me before jogging around the front to hop into the driver's side. For a long wordless minute, he stared out the windshield. As the silence closed in, weighing me down and making it hard to breathe, he whispered, "I'm not the father of that girl's baby."

"But she accused you?" I whispered back.

He blew out a breath. "Yeah."

"Could you be? The father, I mean."

With way his shoulders slumped, I hated to ask, but I had to know.

Tipping his head back against the back window, Finn stared up at the ceiling, and I worried he wasn't planning to answer my question. Then he turned his head to the side, his eyes on mine. "I barely knew her name before she made the accusation. I saw her around a few times with Tory Miller last fall. At the library. She seemed too quiet to be hanging out with the rest of the jersey chasers." He pulled in another long breath as though the entire situation had made breathing painful.

I could relate.

"Bax and 'Han have warned me for the past two years to stay away from those girls."

"I know. You told me."

"After they interrupted our first time alone together during finals week, I've stayed hell and gone away from jersey chasers. But I did hook up with a couple of them last fall."

Before we met, which meant it was none of my business, but I couldn't help the stab of betrayal I felt.

He sat up and turned in his seat, facing me. "I never went far enough with any of those girls to knock one up. While I'll admit I liked their attention, I also had no doubt my friends were looking out for me when they warned me to stay away. I played somewhere in the middle." Running a hand through his hair, he added, "Which was obviously the wrong move. I'm sorry, Chess."

Somewhere along the way, I'd crossed my arms over my chest, holding myself together. But Finn's pain and remorse worked their way into me. Consciously letting my hands drop into my lap, I said, "You don't need to apologize to me."

"Yeah, I do. I can't imagine what was going through your head when you saw us all come out to the parking lot, that girl and her dad and Coach." He clapped his hand over the back of his neck. "Honestly, I wouldn't have blamed you if you'd left the second you saw us." Dropping his hand to his knee, he added, "You should never have to wonder if the guy you're dating is honest and decent and not going around knocking other girls up."

"Finn." I covered his hand with mine. "You are honest and decent. Maybe that's why she chose to accuse you."

Squeezing my hand, his eyes narrowed. "No. She chose me because Tory Miller put her up to it."

I tugged my hand from his and crossed my arms over my chest as I stared unseeingly out the windshield. "What is it with that bitch? First she tried to have me fired from my RA job and kicked out of school last year. Then she went after Jamaica and Callahan. Now she's siccing her friends on you?"

"She tried to have you fired—and kicked out of school? Why?" The shock in his voice drew my gaze to his.

"Because I wouldn't look the other way when she broke every single dorm rule in one rowdy party. I called the dorm supervisor who called the campus police. Tory's dad's money kept her out of jail for drug possession and underage drinking, but she had to move out of the dorm." Mirroring Finn's earlier posture, I tipped my head back against the window and looked up at the ceiling. "Tory insisted I had her kicked out of the dorms, so she bribed some girls to say they saw me participating in the party, taking shrooms and breaking Tory's bed by dancing on it. During the investigation, I was barred from my RA duties, and there was some discussion about me having to move out of the dorms too.

"Tory had a safety net in her father's money and her mom's sorority legacy at Delta Chi, so when she moved out of Hanover, she had somewhere to go. If I'd been forced out of the dorm, I would have had to drop out of school."

"Fuck, Chess."

"Anyway, another girl Tory had delighted in torturing all year somehow found out about the bribes and tipped off the dorm supervisor to have the girls' bank accounts checked. Again, Tory's dad smoothed things over with a generous gift to College Services for dorm improvements, and it all went away."

His hand on my arm drew my eyes to his face. "I'm sorry, babe. I had no idea she and her friends could be so vicious."

Twining my fingers with his, I said, "That's because you're the guy who makes a life plan for easing little kids' suffering after seeing a TV commercial."

His brows came together in confusion.

"On the field you're a take-no-prisoners badass. But in real life, your soft heart only lets you see the best in people—even people who have no redeeming qualities—like Tory Miller."

"Um—"

I squeezed his hand. "Don't ever stop seeing the good in others. I love you exactly the way you are."

The silence in the cab thumped at my chest as it dawned on me what I'd revealed. It was too soon. We were barely a couple. I must be out of my mind.

Then memories of those miserable weeks without him crowded my brain, and I couldn't deny the truth of what I'd said.

Finn slid closer on the bench seat, his hand coming up to palm the side of my face. "You love me?"

Swallowing hard, I nodded. "It's okay if you don't feel the same—"

His lips on mine cut me off. The kiss started off as soft, sweet, a gentle acknowledgment of my words. Then his other hand, firm on my hip, pulled me closer to him as he explored the seam of my mouth with his tongue. With a tiny sigh of happiness, I wrapped my arms around his neck and opened for him, kissing him back with all the love I'd finally allowed myself to show him.

Soon, moans and whimpers filled the silence. The way the man kissed sizzled my blood. The molten heat in my core threatened to become a volcano of desire as his left hand roamed along my thigh and hip while his right hand held the back of my head as he devoured me with his lips and tongue. When I moved closer, something hard pushed against my ribs followed by a loud thunk .

"Finn?"

"Mmm?" He pressed his lips to mine.

"I think we're moving."

With a curse, he sat up so fast he bumped his head on the window. Scrambling back into the driver's seat, he slammed his feet on the clutch and the brake and jammed the truck back into gear from where we'd pushed it into neutral with our fooling around. Just in time too, or we would have made someone's compact car, parked directly in front of the truck, into a hood ornament.

Though I tried, I couldn't stop the giggles that erupted at watching this big, strong man desperately trying to keep his truck from rolling into another car.

"Put on your seat belt, Chess. And text our friends we won't be able to make it to Stromboli's with them after all."

"We won't?"

"No. We're finishing this conversation. In my bedroom."