Chapters (46)
- Cover
- Other Titles
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Friday
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- Saturday
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- Sunday
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- Monday
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- EPILOGUE
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Weeks after Dallas and Finn broke up and she moved back into Victor Street, he came by the house in the middle of the night, throwing pebbles at her window like a smitten cartoon character. He was drunk and sad and full of beautiful words and apologies. He said he had wanted to hold a boom box under her window, but it had run out of batteries. Finn let him in, cringing as he put his foot right down on the creaky step, and led him to her room, where he cried and she cried and then they made out and then they stopped and then they fought and cried some more and he played a song for her on his iPod and then they had sex. Immediately afterward, it was like a veil had lifted from his face, and where before Finn had seen a complex mix of emotions that he was simultaneously trying to express to and hide from her, now she saw only regret.
“Finn,” he said.
“No.”
“This was a mistake.”
It occurred to Finn, then, that it wasn’t Nicki who broke them up. Dallas had been gone long before he ever slept with her. This thought was the only thing that saved Finn, the only thing that let her come home and look her twin sister in the eye, that kept some semblance of her relationship with Nicki alive.
A few days later, she found Nicki sitting on the bathroom floor with one of those pregnancy test sticks in her hand. “No,” said Finn. “Please tell me this is a fucking nightmare.”
“It’s a fucking nightmare,” said Nicki, her voice dangerously low. Finn slammed the door. After all those years, she had finally found something she had in common with her twin sister, something beyond shared DNA. She and Nicki had both been fucked over by Dallas Vaughn.
Now Finn is crying, hot tears falling down her face and breaking dark and wet on the rug like little splatters of blood. Ross sees her cry but doesn’t say anything – with three teenaged sisters and Nicki as his mom, he is probably used to seeing women cry for no reason, exploding with emotion as incomprehensible to themselves as it is to their dumbfounded little brother. Finn feels a stab of pity for Ross.
Resolutely, she wipes her eyes, watching Ross as he steadily builds his Lego tower, placing a piece, removing it, pressing it to his lips thoughtfully, then putting it back where it was, then removing the piece once more.
“Come on,” Finn says. “Let’s go.”
Ross puts down the Lego piece. “Where are we going?” he asks.
Finn takes his hand, hot and clammy and soft. “To meet your father.”
FOURTEEN
