“Your actual job is photographing naked women?”
He presses his lips in a flat line. His agitation is briefly apparent before it disappears. “I’m really good at helping women find their confidence.” Finn extends a hand to me. “Do you trust me?”
“Who? You? As in the stranger I’ve met all but three times who watched me undress through the window.”
He narrows his eyes at me.
“I’m kidding,” I add. “I trust you.” It’s the truth. Finn somehow toggles the line between making me feel unnervingly embarrassed and yet comfortable at the same time.
I take his hand and he leads me toward the staircase. I stop in my tracks and snatch back my hand. “Everything else aside, I’m actually on my period, Finn. Hence the need for more tampons. I’m not having sex with you tonight.” If nothing else I’ve said has scared him off, that certainly should do the trick.
He grabs my hand demandingly. “Calm down, we’re not having sex. Come on.” He tugs me up the stairs, ignoring my begrudging footsteps. “Are you staying in the master?”
“Yes.”
Finn knows his way around Dex’s home. They must be closer than I realized. “I don’t know how you sleep with that giant fish tank in your face.”
Dex’s bed and the sitting area in his master are divided by a partition, which is one giant fish tank. It’s one of the most magnificent things I’ve ever seen. “I find it comforting. It makes me feel like I’m not alone in the bedroom at night.”
“Dear God, woman, you really do need to get laid,” he mutters under his breath. I debate telling him I heard that, but I don’t think he was trying to be subtle about it.
We waltz right through Dex’s bedroom and into his enormous master closet. It’s so large it could easily be another bedroom. A sizeable nursery. That’s what I’d do with this room if I could ever afford a house like this. But as we weave past the counter in the center of the room, it’s obvious where Finn is taking me and I crumble inside. The ceiling-to-floor mirror in the back corner. It’s humongous. There are fluorescent lights surrounding the frame. It hides nothing. It’ll spit your insecurities right back in your face.
“Finn, no,” I protest.
“Hush,” he says, spinning around to face me. He drops my hand and holds five fingers in my face. “Five. Just give me five minutes. No arguing, no hesitating, no silly jokes. For five minutes, let me talk you through this.”
“Talk me through what?”
“Your first baby step.”
“To what?”
He sighs. “Good sex, Avery. You said you were never going to share your body with a man ever again. That’s no way to live. First step is to let a man see you naked and believe him when he tells you how beautiful you are.”
I freeze in place, the nerves prickling every centimeter of my skin. See. Me. Naked. Under this fluorescent lighting? Hell no. “That’s not a baby step, that’s a fucking leap to the moon, Finn.”
He snorts. “I promise you, you need this. Trust me. And if it makes you feel bad, I won’t bother you for the rest of the summer. I won’t go near the hot tub. We’ll never talk about it again. You’ll go back to California and all this will become a distant memory.”
I cringe when he mentions home. I forgot that my summer hideaway will eventually end. The part of me that believed Mason and I would be back together by fall is long gone. So what am I really going home to? If Palmer’s pilot gets picked up and this becomes a series, she’ll end up in New Mexico permanently. All that’s waiting for me at home is the constant reminder of the withering messy version of myself I now can’t stand. I can’t go back to that.
I won’t.
Finn’s right.
I need to reinvent myself and I have exactly one summer to do it.
“Five minutes.” My voice is small, so I blow out a breath and with a little more bravado say, “No hesitating.”
“Good.” There’s a little glint of excitement in his eyes. Grabbing me by the shoulders, Finn positions me directly in front of the mirror. He takes his place behind me, watching me through the mirror. I instinctively smooth my sloppy hair that’s so unruly it looks more like a messy bun than a ponytail. Jesus. What am I wearing? What the hell is on my shirt? Is that sauce from the pizza pockets from yesterday? How do I let myself exist like this? Finn, noticing my squirming, pulls my ponytail holder out. He runs his hands over my hair from my scalp down my back.
“You have the most gorgeous eyes I’ve ever seen. It took me forever to figure out the color. It’s called seafoam green. Did you know that?”
“Only sometimes. In direct sunlight, they look—”
Reaching around, Finn presses his finger against my lips. “My bad, that was misleading,” Finn says. He’s purposely changed his tone. His cheery tenor is gone. He’s all but growling in my ear.
Finn’s talking to me like…
Stop. It’s ridiculous. There’s no way.
Like he’s hungry for me.
His breath against my neck stuns me. I freeze like a deer in the woods after the sound of a twig snapping breaks the eerie silence. He’s too close. The hairs on the back of my neck rise and I try to decide whether I should bolt or just succumb to my fate.
He continues, “I technically did ask a question, but here’s how the next five minutes are going to go. You’re not going to speak. I’m going to talk to you. I’m going to strip you down and point out all the things I love about your body. For five minutes, you are going to just enjoy a man, who you think fucks like a porn star, worshiping you. How’s that sound?”
I open my mouth, then clamp it shut. I don’t answer his question. I don’t say anything at all. I just nod.
“Okay, good, arms up,” Finn says as he cups my elbows and guides them upward. It’s taking every ounce of strength in me to keep myself steady enough to stand. The pangs of nerves flood my body, but I hold my breath to combat the trembling.
I force myself to follow his command as I fully extend my arms. He immediately reaches for the hem of my T-shirt.
“There you go,” he mutters. “Good girl.”
8
Avery
“Will you please hurry up?”
I feel Finn’s light breathy chuckle against my neck. My shirt is off and tossed aside. I’m shivering, but it has nothing to do with the temperature in the closet. Why did I agree to this? What was I thinking? The mirror is taunting me with every loose, wobbly part of my torso. I want to run and hide—but I can’t. Finn’s large body is behind me, steadying me, locking me in place. There’s no retreat.
“What did I tell you about talking?” he grumbles from behind me.
“But you’re moving at a snail’s pace.” I wish he’d just undress me already. Rip it off, like a Band-Aid. Maybe it’ll be less painful that way.
“Yeah, Avery. That’s what you do when you’re savoring something…” He blows on my naked shoulder, causing a sea of goose bumps to pebble my skin. “You…go…slow,” he whispers into my ear.
In this moment, I understand three very important things.