Rylie

I KICK OFF MY EXPENSIVE HEELS AND tuck my feet under me in the passenger seat of Finn's Jeep. The stale air from the heat vents is stifling, and I have this very strong urge to stick my head out of the window and scream. I'm afraid if I scream, I may never stop.

Also, it's frigidly cold today with the windchill making the temperature feel more like negative nine degrees Fahrenheit. That and the big fat snowflakes swirling around as we cruise along the interstate won't make for a pleasant experience with my head out the window. Although, I suppose, the experience isn't really meant to be pleasant if I'm screaming my head off like a lunatic.

I sigh; and Finn swivels his head to glance at me quickly, his hand finding my leg and settling on my bare knee. His warm palm feels good—too good—and I battle my inner thoughts on accepting his comfort by entwining our fingers or shunning it by shoving his hand away. In the end, I choose neither, allowing his hand to stay put but go unacknowledged.

I don't have the mental capacity to multitask with my emotional state today. One battle at a time, and the most present one is a few interstate exits away.

"So," Finn says in a way I can tell he's working his way up to a subject neither of us really want to discuss, and I visibly bristle. His calloused thumb brushes over my knee in response and he risks another glance my way. "How would you like me to act?"

I sigh, looking behind me where my brand-new winter jacket and boots taunt me from the backseat. Finn was true to his word after my accident. He took me shopping and now I'm the hesitantly proud owner of a reasonable winter jacket complete with a fur-lined hood and equally reasonable pair of snow boots. Since our destination is my very judgmental parents' house, I opted to wear my peacoat with the compromise that I bring the more appropriate winter wear in case of an emergency.

"Wy?" Finn's voice brings my attention back to the view out of the windshield as we cruise along the interstate that is about to dump us out in a wealthy suburb of Minneapolis. Home sweet home.

"I never want you to be anyone other than yourself, Finn," I say, not being able to stop another sigh from escaping on the tail end of the sentence.

"Ok," he says, brushing his thumb across my skin again, erupting the gooseflesh on my legs. "How about we compromise and I'm just a watered-down version of myself?"

I cover his hand with mine, stopping his caresses. "Please don't, Finn. Just be you."

I turn my attention out the side window, ignoring the little voice inside my head reminding me that I've asked him to be "less Finn" in the past. It sours my stomach, and I lace our fingers together, bringing our conjoined hands into my lap as I turn back to face him.

"Look, Finn. My parents are not going to be nice to you. They're going to be passive aggressively rude to you. I wouldn't put it past them to introduce me to other men right in front of you. Not bothering to introduce you. That kind of thing. I'm starting to regret bringing you. I don't want them to be mean to you."

Finn grins, and he risks another glance in my direction. "I think that's the sweetest thing you ever said to me. Are you worried about me, Wy? Because I can handle your parents. I don't care what they think about me because I don't respect them. Anyone who treats you badly doesn't deserve my respect. So let them be mean to me, but you know I'm not going to just let them be mean to you."

"Finn," I say on a sigh. "You can't make a scene. We're not here to make a scene."

"Then why are we here, Wy? Help me understand. I want to understand." His voice is laced with contained irritation, and had I not spent the past however many weeks with this man, I might have completely missed it.

I drop my head into my hands and groan. "I don't know anymore. I think I made a mistake. Should we just go home?"

"We're already here," he says as he drives along a familiar road that causes my stomach to lurch in a Pavlovian response to being near my childhood home, "but you say the word and we go. You want to go? This is your call, honey."

He noticeably slows down as if giving me time to decide, but I shake my head. "We've already come this far. I guess we might as well keep going."

Moments later, he pulls into the circular drive to a hubbub of activity. A catering van idles in the front, along with other vehicles one can assume belong to vendors my parents have hired for their party. "Uh," Finn says, slowing the speed of his Jeep to a near crawl, confusion lining his features. "This...?"

I sigh, but the contained emotions get lodged in my throat instead of being exhaled with my breath. "This is my parents' house," I confirm while I try to see the expansive house through his eyes. If only he was seeing it for the first time in the summer with the perfectly manicured hedges and the water cascading from the sculpture in the water fountain. As it is, the tall arched windows and the towering portico are enough to set the tone. It oozes with old-money elegance and excessive grandeur. I run my tongue around my dry mouth trying to rid it of the sour taste in my mouth. I hate everything about this place. Every single thing.

"Just pull up over there." I point to the open spot behind the catering van. As soon as he comes to a stop, a man I've never seen before appears at the window. I roll it down and eye him with disinterest. "Rylie Foss, the not-so-prodigal daughter returning to the scene of her nightmares."

The man's face is schooled into an expressionless mask, as always, as he opens the door and offers his hand. Ignoring his hand, I slide out and turn to look back into the cab at the man with his mouth slightly agape. "You coming?"

"Uh...." Finn looks around and then his eyes find me again. "What...?"

"Rich people have valets, Finnegan. He'll park your car and bring our bags in." With that statement hanging in the air, I slam the door and take a few steps in the direction of the house, the enormous set of double doors with intricate brass handles awaiting me, the entrance to my personal hell.

By the time I enter the house, Finn has caught up to me. I feel the weight of his hand on the small of my back, and I take some comfort from it. "Wy," he says, looking around him as he takes in the room. "This is..."

I take in the grandeur of the foyer with the double-height ceiling, quickly turning my back on the ridiculously sweeping staircase, my heels screeching against the marble floors to find Finn with his head arched back to take in the massive crystal chandelier. "Excessive? Pompous? Pretentious? Ridiculously stupid and unnecessary? Took the words straight from my mouth."

A grin forms slowly on his lips as he dips his head back to face me, the dimples blinking in and out of existence while he tries to control his amusement. "Definitely all of those things. You actually lived here? Like this? With...that..." He waves behind him as if indicating the scene outside.

"Unfortunately." My face reveals nothing, but as he takes the single step that erases the space between us, I realize he sees more than I reveal. His warm hand cups my cheek, his thumb immediately finding my mouth.

"You suddenly make much more sense, Wy." His thumb drags across my bottom lip, and I shudder under his intense gaze.

I take a step back, causing his hand to fall, the smack as it hits his leg echoing in the expansive room. "I surely hope not. This," I say, indicating the excessive show of wealth in this single room of this large house, "is everything I despise."

"And yet your parents view you as another one of these things..." He runs a finger along the pointless round table propped in the center of the room with a large floral arrangement. "What they don't seem to understand, though." He turns to face me, leaning his butt on the table as though he isn't a regular Joe transplanted in a foreign palace of wealth. He tugs me between his open legs, his hands instantly framing my face. "You're the prize, not the decoration."

"You can't just say things like that, Finn." I clasp my hands around his wrists trying to pry his hands off my face.

"Why the fuck not?" Instead of releasing his grip on me, he slides his hands into my hair, securing me in my place.

"Because..." I hear a noise behind me and instantly snap to attention, my spine straight. I yank Finn off the table just as a smartly dressed woman enters the room, her heels click-clacking on the marble floor.

"There you are," she says, her nose lifted in the air as if pretending to be the tallest in the room makes up for her short stature.

"Claudia." I nod at the woman who has made my life hell for as long as I can remember. Officially, she's my mom's personal assistant, but unofficially? She's the daughter my mother wishes she'd had instead of me.

She appraises me the way she would a slab of pork at the meat market, and judging by the way her noses scrunches as if she smells something sour, I don't meet her standards. When she moves her eyes over to Finn, I take a few steps to stand in front of him, suddenly overcome with the need to block him from her critique. Her perfectly groomed eyebrow arches just the littlest bit as she clocks this, and I'm sure if years' worth of Botox hadn't erased the ability to communicate feelings via facial expressions, her face would be saying a whole lot of things I'm not interested in hearing.

"You're expected to be in the drawing room at 7:00 sharp for cocktails. Oh, and don't worry," she pauses as she takes in my appearance a second time, "we've arranged clothes for the weekend, of course."

When she tries to peer around me at Finn, to assess his clothing situation, no doubt, I snap to get her attention, knowing very well how much this annoys her. I'm not a dog, Rylie. The thought of these past conversations delights me, and I allow the smug smile to adorn my lips. "Why are we doing cocktails? I thought the party was tonight. Not some fancy dinner."

She sniffs, clearly bored with this whole exchange. "It's not my job to relay the itinerary to you."

"Actually, Claudia, I'm pretty sure that is exactly your job as my mother's assistant." I emphasize her job title knowing perfectly well how she thinks the term is beneath her.

"Tonight," she says, her nose again pointed at the chandelier, "is dinner with the Canes. Tomorrow is the party." She turns on her heels and begins walking away as if the conversation ended at her announcement.

"Wait!" I call after her, taking a few hurried steps in her direction. "What do you mean? Why is there a dinner with the Canes?" But Claudia ignores my questions, and I suppress the growing urge to scream.

My back stiffens the moment I feel Finn's hand on me, and I twirl around to face him. "They tricked me," I whisper. "They fucking tricked me."

"What's going on, Wy? And who was that evil ice queen?" He places a tentative hand on my hip as if I'm a skittish dog he's afraid to scare off. When I don't bolt, he places his other hand on me, bracketing me in his warm arms.

I drop my face into his chest and groan, the sound muffled by his puffy winter coat. "Kill me now."

"Wy." His voice is deep, filled with the familiar warmth I've come to love. "Talk to me."

I lift my head, my gaze going to his eyes, noting the light gray of his irises. I wonder if he knows his eyes give away his emotional state. Any shade outside of his usual blue means distress of some kind. "The party was supposed to be tonight. They tricked me into coming today just for this stupid formal dinner with the Canes. They knew I would never, ever, under any circumstances come to this dinner on my own."

"The Canes? Who are they?" He brushes the hair off my face, keeping his hand tangled in my locks at the nape of my neck.

"It's more what they represent, and how they can benefit my parents. They've been trying to forge a deal between their two companies for years, and the plan has always been for a merger by way of marriage between me and their son, Lance."

"Lance?" His brows shoot up. "And how do we feel about this Lance?"

I laugh, the sound echoing in the room. "We do not like him. Even a little bit. He's a weasel. A gross, crusty weasel."

I'm greeted with his dimples. "Good. I can compete with gross, crusty weasels."

"As opposed to...?" Finn's jealous side intrigues me, and I like feeding the flames.

"A rich, handsome dude. Obviously."

"Well, he is definitely rich. Like the kind of rich that's disgusting. But I never said he wasn't handsome." I fight to suppress my grin, but it's no use when Finn's reaction is so entertaining. Both his eyebrows shoot up, causing deep wrinkles in his forehead to form.

"Oh, he's handsome now, huh? What happened to the gross, crusty weasel description?"

I laugh as I wiggle free of his arms. "The two can coexist. I was describing his personality before. But even weasels can wear attractive skins."

"And now you're upgrading him to being attractive? You're attracted to gross, crusty weasels, Rylie?"

I laugh again, looking at him over my shoulder as I make my way to the grand staircase. "I never said I was attracted to him, Finnegan," I say as I take the first step, my hand gripping the ornate banister for support. "It would seem my tastes are less refined than my pedigree."

His eyes widen showcasing the deep blue color just before he acts, lunging for me before I can take another step. With his arms wrapped around me from behind, his mouth finds my ear. "You best be talking about me, Wyatt. I better be your less refined taste."

I shiver at his words but manage to keep up the charade, shrugging my deference. The act falls the moment his lips meet my neck right at the spot he discovered weeks ago that drives me crazy. "I may not be rich, Wy. I'll never be able to give you this." His hand sweeps out to encompass the grandeur. "But this obviously isn't what you want, or you'd be with Lance fucking Cane already. So you can stop with your BS any minute and be nice to me."

His teeth graze over my skin before his tongue darts out to taste me; and just as I'm sinking into his touches, he straightens and slaps my ass. "Now get moving. We have a fancy smancy dinner to get ready for."

He follows me up the stairs, no doubt checking out my ass the entire time, and then latches onto my hand the minute I navigate the second floor to my childhood bedroom. As soon as I push open the door, Finn pauses just beyond the threshold, his eyes blinking at the blinding white of the room. The bland, colorless décor was never my taste, but it wasn't a battle I won.

"Uh," he says, taking a few more steps into the room, spinning to get the 360-degree view. "This was your bedroom? Like the one you had as Itty Bitty Rylie?"

I croak out a laugh. "Yes. This was my room."

"But...it's so bland. There's no evidence of you anywhere. Has it been cleaned out?"

"I took everything I wanted when I moved to college. I've never been back here to live. This is essentially the way it always was. Except I kept sneaking posters on the wall to see how long I could get away with it. Once I had a poster of Adam Brody up for three whole weeks before the Ice Queen herself—you just met her—ripped it off the wall. I did manage to keep a collage on the back of my closet door for years. I wonder if it's still there."

I walk across the large room to the walk-in closet, flipping on the light to reveal the mostly empty space. A few dresses taunt me, and I resist the urge to tear them off the hangers. My weekend wardrobe, no doubt.

Once Finn is inside, I close the door, sealing us in the ginormous closet—a space I spent a lot of time in as a teenager, hiding from the demands of a life I never wanted. I smile the minute I see cut out magazine images of my teenage celebrity crushes. My little act of rebellion remains.

"Ta da!" I motion at the collage and laugh as Finn glares at all the famous men staring back at us.

"These were what got Itty Bitty Rylie hot and bothered?"

"Grown Ass Rylie wholeheartedly agrees with Itty Bitty Rylie. You should see most of these guys now. I told you before, men age well." I smirk the minute he turns his narrowed eyes at me.

He stands in front of the pictures, blocking my view, and I laugh at his ridiculousness. "Oh, come on, Finn. Who was Itty Bitty Finn's celebrity crush? Pamela Anderson during her Baywatch glory days?"

He grabs my ass in both hands, tugging me into his hard body. "When have I ever gave you the impression I was a boob guy?" He glances down at my chest. "Ok, so maybe I really enjoy Cindy and Barbara Jean, but that's an exception to the rule because they belong to you, and I'm obsessed with everything you related. But I think I've made it perfectly clear what kind of guy I am."

I hook my right leg over his hip, and without missing a beat, he grabs it and hikes it up higher. My dress parts to reveal more of my thigh, his hand running up and down the length of it. "So whose legs starred in your teenage fantasies, Finnegan?"

"That's one secret I'll never tell," he whispers gruffly, and when I wrinkle my nose in annoyance, he laughs. "No, Wy. That's the clue. 'That's one secret I'll never tell. You know you love me. XOXO, Gossip Girl.'"

My nose wrinkles further. "Blake Lively?" And when his smirk grows, revealing the dimples, I roll my eyes. "Blondes are your thing?"

"Pretty sure I wasn't looking at her hair, Wy." He laughs as I struggle to extricate myself from his grip.

"Gross."

He laughs again, the dimples blinking in and out of his handsome face. "You have a whole door full of your teenage masturbation material, but you're mad at me for admiring some legs?"

I finally manage to free myself and I walk over to the dresses hanging on the rod. "Not mad. Just disappointed in your choice. I mean...Blake Lively?" I glance at him over my shoulder, but his eyes aren't focused on my face. As usual, they're latched onto my legs, hungrily taking in the view.

"I like your legs better if that makes you feel any better," he says, finally meeting my eyes. He takes a fake picture with his fingers. "For my masturbation material."

I roll my eyes, but I quickly turn away to hide the smile I can't contain. Because yeah, Finn, it does make me feel better.