“Finn?” I start, and he looks up from where he’s wiping a spot off the back of his hand to meet my eyes.

“Hm?”

“I came here because the way you left town was really hard on me. I think I needed to tell you that.” Swallowing, I say, “But the main thing I had wanted to tell you is that I feel really horrible for what I did.”

His eyebrows slowly inch up but he doesn’t say anything.

“I should never have gone to Sal without talking to you first. I should never have offered your boat up to anyone. It was wrong, and I’m sorry.”

Nodding slowly, he says, “Okay, then.”

I close my eyes, wincing at the sharp pain in my chest. He’s so closed off. He’s so finished with me.

“I just want you to know that I didn’t do that because I thought you needed my help. I did it because that’s what we do in my family when we love someone. It wasn’t about trying to save you, it was about trying to find a way to save us.”

He swallows thickly, his eyes dipping to my lips for a beat. “Yeah?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

I was hoping there would be more said. I was hoping he would give me more than this, more than a handful of words that leave me nowhere to go. He’s standing like a brick wall at a dead end, his posture telling me there’s no emotion to be found here.

As we stand in silence, he looks me over, from head to toe, and under his inspection I realize how my outfit must look to him: cream jeans, navy sweater, red scarf. I must look like a WASP portrait of Out for a Day on the Boat. And I know I’m right when his lips curl into a sharp smirk and he says, “You look so out of place here, Snap.”

Fire ignites in my belly and I suck in a breath, so wounded by his tone and his complete one-eighty and his ability to shut off his feelings like a switch. My problem? He was capital-I It for me. I don’t know where to go from here.

“I might have thought the same thing once about you, in my town,” I tell him, “but I never would have said it. I liked seeing you there too much. I liked the way you stood out.”

“Harlow—”

I wrap my arms around my middle, turning to leave. But then I stop, and look back at him. “Before I forget,” I say, “I’m not pregnant. Thanks for checking in.”

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter SIXTEEN

Finn

“SHE DIDN’T EXACTLY look happy when she left,” Levi notes, leaning back against the wall of the wheelhouse and studying me as I climb up the ladder.