Inside, Finn drops the keys on the little table by the door and looks around. My apartment has two bedrooms off a large main loft area with a view over a couple of city blocks and out across the ocean.

“Wow,” he says quietly. “Nice investment.”

Laughing, I push his shoulder from behind, making him take a step forward into my living room.

“I’m going to ask something that’s going to make me sound like kind of a dick,” he warns, looking over his shoulder at me.

“For once.”

With a little smirk at this, he says, “What was it like growing up never having to worry about money?”

I smile at Finn and let him stew in what he’s just asked for a bit. Because... seriously? “What makes you think we always had money?”

He looks around the apartment and then back at me, raising his eyebrows meaningfully.

“When my mom first started out in television, I remember my parents really scraping by,” I tell him. “She commuted for filming. Dad was here doing, like, little indie movies and stuff in his friend’s backyard. Maybe when I was in junior high they got more comfortable.” I shrug, holding his gaze. “When Dad won the first Oscar, it sort of took off. But that wasn’t until I was a freshman in college.”

He nods, and the silence stretches for a long, weird beat until he says, “I’m going to go use your restroom.” He looks down the hall and then back at me, gaze moving from my face down to my feet. “You go get a big glass of water, a piece of toast, and a couple of ibuprofen or something. I’m not going to fuck you until you’re steady.”

He turns without waiting for my reaction to his bossy tone, walking down the hall and ducking his head into the bathroom before slipping fully inside, closing the door behind him with a quiet click.

Because it’s a good idea and not because Finn told me to—a fact I have to restrain myself from shouting over my shoulder—I go to the kitchen for water, food, and two ibuprofen.

I hear the faucet turn on, the bathroom door open, and then he calls from the hallway, “Where do you keep your sports and surfing shit?”

“My what?” I ask around a mouthful of toast.

“I don’t mean your board.” I hear him open the hall closet and mumble an “Ah. Got it.”

I chug my water and watch him emerge from the hallway. My heart trips. His shoulders fill the doorway and I feel oddly intimidated. It’s only odd because I like it. I like the idea of him being a little scary, a little out of control. I like the idea of him crashing into my life and pushing everything else out of frame.

He’s got a spool of bungee cord in his hand.