Falling For Fin (Falling Book 5) Read online

* * *

  Ten years ago…

  The second Fin is out of my room, my mum turns her stare on me. I can’t help my face burning up in embarrassment. I’ve always been very open with my mum about this kind of stuff, but having her walk in on this is pushing the limits slightly, especially as I know there is a used condom on the floor and I know that she’s seen it.

  I can’t quite decipher the look in her eyes. I can see disappointment, sympathy, and a little of her own embarrassment. It’s the disappointment and sympathy that cause me to burst into tears.

  “I’m sorry,” I wail as I put my head in my hands.

  She wraps her arms around my shoulders and rocks me until I calm down.

  “I don’t think Fin was the right choice, love,” is all she says when I’ve quietened down a little, and it makes my tears turn into laughter. Of all the things she could say in this situation.

  “I need to go and find Ruben,” I say, getting up and grabbing some clothes. Mum tries to tell me to leave him to calm down and come home by himself, but I can’t sit here and wait, I need to talk to him.

  Mum leaves me to get dressed, and within minutes, I’m out of the house and heading across the fields.

  I knew he’d be in the barn. It’s where he always goes when things get a bit much. He loves it here, so much that he’s actually planning on buying the barn and land from my parents so he can convert it to a house.

  “Ru,” I say when I find him sat on a couple of pallets with a can of beer in his hand.

  “What the fuck, Con?”

  “I’m sorry, I just got carried away,” I say, willing the tears that are threatening to spill again to go away.

  “Aw, don’t cry. It’s not your fault. Come here,” he says, getting up and pulling me into his arms. “This is all Fin’s fault. He shouldn’t have been anywhere near you. Did he force you?”

  “What? No! It was as much me as it was him. Please don’t give him a hard time about this, Ru.”

  “Too late for that. He knew what would happen if he touched you.”

  “Ruben, please. Just let it go.”

  “No. No I won’t let it go. He had no right to touch you, to do…that.” He runs his eyes quickly down my body, looking disgusted with me. “You’re too sweet, too pure for him.”

  “I-”

  “Can you just leave me to it, please?” he says, grabbing another can and turning his back on me.

  I can tell he’s still angry so I do as he asks, not wanting to rile him up any more. I have somewhere else I need to go, anyway.

  Fin’s house is the other side of the village, so it takes me a while to get there, walking. Life has been made much easier for Fin, Ruben and my parents now they can both drive themselves back and forth. I can’t wait to have the same luxury.

  Fin must see me coming, because he has the front door open before I even lift my arm to knock.

  He looks a hell of a lot better than the last time I saw him. He’s cleaned the blood off and has a couple of butterfly stitches across one eyebrow. Both his eyes are black and swollen, though, and both his bottom and top lip are split open with dried blood on them. I lift my hand to touch his poor face, but he cuts me off.

  “Don’t,” he says coldly, and pushes my outstretched arm away. I flinch back at the coolness of his tone.

  “Can I come in?”

  He glances behind him before saying, “No. We’ll talk out here.” He steps forward and forces me to walk backwards and down the couple of steps to the driveway before he closes the door behind him. I follow him around to the side of the house to a bench and I sit down. I wait for him to join me, but he just stands and puts his hands in his jean pockets. He looks off into the distance before saying, “Nothing is going to happen between us again. It was a mistake.”

  “What? Is this because I’m Ruben’s sister?”

  “It’s because of a lot of things, Connie, things that you wouldn’t understand.”

  “Oh, so it’s because of my age, then. I understand things perfectly fine, thank you very much, so try me. Explain what I couldn’t possibly understand.”

  “No. All you need to know is that it was a one-time thing, and a mistake at that.”

  I try my best to stay strong, to swallow down the hurt that is quickly bubbling up and threatening to spill out through my eyes.

  “Finlay, dinner’s ready. Don’t keep Mum waiting,” is shouted from somewhere.

  “Okay Dad, I’m coming,” Fin responds quickly in a panic.

  “Mum?” I question, knowing full well his mum is long gone, but I just get pulled up from the bench and pushed, none to gently, towards their driveway.

  “You need to leave, now.”

  I walk away a few steps before turning and looking back at Fin, but he’s already through the door and is closing it on me.

  I run all the way home, trying my hardest to keep all my emotions bottled up until I make it to the safety of my room.

  “Connie, is that you?” Mum calls when I start running up the stairs. “Is everything okay, love?”

  “Yeah everything’s fine. I’ll be down in a bit.” I shout back, hoping I sounded fine and that she’ll leave me alone for a while so I can attempt to pull myself together and tend to my broken heart.

  * * *

  Present…

  Emma eventually pulled me up off the hospital floor and took me to where Mum was waiting. She took one look at me and pulled me in for a long hug. They could obviously tell without having to ask that I needed to get out of there, so they quickly gathered their stuff and ushered me out to the car park and into the car.

  No one says anything the whole way home, and I’m more than grateful. I don’t think I could cope with their questions right now.

  When Emma pulls up in the driveway to my parents’ house. I mumble a thanks to her and promise I’ll see her soon before following my mum inside. I can’t go into my house for fear of seeing Ruben. I’m struggling to get my head around the events of the day, and I can’t get the look of his murderous eyes out of my head. I need space and time to think.

  Without even talking, it’s like my mum knows exactly what I need. She grabs hold of my hand once we’re inside, shouts to my dad what we are there and that she’ll be back in a bit, before pulling me up the stairs. I follow along behind her like a little child. She pulls me into the family bathroom and sits me on the closed toilet seat before going about running a bath for me. She leaves the room for a few minutes and returns with my favourite pair of cupcake pyjamas. God know how she got those so quickly, but that is the least of my worries.

  After giving me a kiss on the cheek, she leaves me to it. I strip off as quickly as I can, because the soothing water of the bath is calling to me. I have to blast some cold in because I’ve read somewhere that pregnant women shouldn’t have hot baths. Once I’m happy I’m not going to cook the grape that’s growing inside me, I settle in.

  Ten minutes later, Mum reappears with a giant glass of wine for me. I take one look at it and burst into tears. I want to drink that so badly right now, but I know I can’t.

  “Connie, what’s wrong?” she asks as she places the glass on the side of the bath and kneels next to it so she can grab my hand.

  “I…I can’t drink th…that,” I stutter out.

  “Why can’t you…oh! Connie, are you…” she doesn’t finish the question because she can obviously see the answer in my eyes. Her own eyes fill with tears - I guess in sympathy for me. “Oh love, it’s Fin’s, isn’t it?”

  I just nod at her before clarifying. “Nine weeks. That’s why Ruben went so crazy. He found my pregnancy test in Emma’s bathroom bin. Fin walked in the room after he finished questioning me, and he put two and two together.”

  “Oh shit, well that helps to explain it, I guess.”

  “Yeah,” I say sadly.

  “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but what happened with Fin in the hospital?”

  I let out a huge breath as I muster up the stre
ngth to answer that question. I don’t have secrets from my mum, and I’m not about to start now.

  “He did exactly what he’s done before, and just cast me aside when the going got tough. I thought it was different this time, Mum. He’d told me that he loved me and that I was it for him. Then, one sign of trouble and he takes off running. He said that he can’t stay with me because of Ruben, and he doesn’t want to cause problems for our family. He hasn’t even tried fighting for us,” I say quietly.

  “Oh, baby. Ruben obviously didn’t knock any sense into him them,” she says, trying to bring a little bit of humour to the situation. I manage to twitch the corner of my mouth up at her.

  “I told him that if that was his opinion, then it’s over between us. I’m not going back again, Mum. I can’t keep picking myself up when he drops me. I can’t keep repeating this over and over, it’s too painful.”

  “I think that’s the right thing to do. You need to find someone who is going to treat you right, and let’s be honest, Fin hasn’t treated you right. No matter how much you love him and think he’s the one, he doesn’t deserve you. I hate to ask, but what are you going to do about…” She doesn’t finish her sentence and instead looks down to where my stomach is under all the bubbles.

  Without realising I’ve done it, my hand comes up to rest on top of my still flat belly. “I don’t know. I don’t think I can get rid of it, though.”

  “Oh, I didn’t even think that was an option. Does Fin know?”

  I shake my head, feeling ashamed of myself for not telling him.

  “I know it might not feel like it now, but he does deserve to know, to be part of it, even if you’re not going to be together.”

  “I know. It’s just so hard. I’m scared he’ll think I did it on purpose. I swear I didn’t. It was an accident…but that doesn’t mean I regret it,” I add quickly, not wanting the little grape to know I might not want it.

  “He knows you better than that, Connie.”

  “I hope so,” I mutter quietly.

  “I’ll leave you to it,” Mum says as she gets up and goes to the door. “Oh, shall I tell your dad, or do you want to?”

  “Go ahead. I think I’m just going to get into bed once I get out of here. I don’t want anyone else knowing, though. Not until I’ve told Fin and had a scan.”

  “Of course, it goes without saying. I’ll bring you up a hot chocolate when I hear you get out. Try to relax,” she says, before disappearing and closing the door behind her.

  Mum does as promised, and seconds after I slide my weary body inside my childhood bed, she appears with a giant mug of steaming chocolate. My belly growls at the sight, reminding me I haven’t eaten for hours. Luckily, in her other hand is a packet of my favourite chocolate and caramel biscuits. Probably not the healthiest thing for a pregnant woman to have, but it’s only one night and I need it.

  I grab my handbag that mum brought up with her and check my phone. Predictably, I’ve got a couple of messages from Emma, telling me that she’s there for me, and that Ruben is at her place so I can go home if I want to. I’ve got multiple messages from Ruben apologising for his stupidity. I’d bet my life on the fact he hasn’t sent the same kind of messages to Fin.

  I just flick my light off after finishing my picnic when my phone lights up on the bedside table. I grab it, thinking nothing of it, but the name on the screen stops me in my tracks. I swipe it unlocked and open my messages to see what he has to say.

  Fin: I’m sorry, baby. Please don’t hate me.

  A single tear drops down on to the duvet cover and I once again rub my belly. How did it come to this?

  Fin

  I feel like the biggest arsehole in the world. Connie’s right - I do love her. I always have, but I don’t think even that is going to be enough to make Ruben accept us. I understand his concerns, I really do. If I had a little sister, I’d hate for her to be seeing a guy like me as well.

  A nurse comes in not long later to check on me and to tell me that they are going to keep me in overnight because of my concussion. Fuck that, there is no way I’m staying here overnight. I have very few memories of my mum, but one I do have haunted my entire childhood. It was one of her the day before she died, lying in a hospital bed with tubes and pipes coming out of her. I remember thinking that all the nurses and doctors were lying to me because that couldn’t possibly be my mummy; she looked too thin and pale. Even her hair looked different after all the treatment she’d had over the past few months. None of it worked, though, and the next day she passed away, leaving me and my heartbroken dad to fend for ourselves. I was only four years old, and I had lost the most important person in my life. Little did I know that was only the beginning, and that I was soon basically going to lose the second most important as well. It wasn’t going to be in the same way, but I was going to lose him all the same.

  I’ve refused to go into a hospital ever since. That memory, even twenty-four years later, still haunts me. I wouldn’t be here right now if I wasn’t brought without my knowledge. Having Connie here helped, but since she walked out, all I can think about is getting out of this hell hole. People only ever die in these places. It is nowhere for me to be.

  I pull the tube out of the back of my hand, much to the nurse’s shock, and state, “I’m discharging myself.”

  “I don’t think that’s the best idea, Mr. Willis. Your concussion-”

  “I don’t give a fuck,” I snap, “I’m not staying here.” I get up and start looking for my shirt. I find it screwed up and covered in blood in the little unit next to my bed. “Get me whatever paperwork I need to sign, please.” I try to be slightly politer to the shocked looking nurse. She looks too sweet and young to have to deal with my arsehole self.

  “Uh…yeah, okay. Hold on,” she stutters as she all but runs out of the room.

  It’s well over an hour before I’m actually allowed to leave, and I’m holding on to my sanity by a thin thread by that time.

  The cantankerous old woman on reception calls me a taxi, and I’m at last on my way home. Fucking great, just where I want to be. I do everything I can these days to spend as little time there as possible. Moving out would make my life easier, but every time I think about it, guilt eats me alive. I can’t leave him alone. Me being there occasionally is better than not being there at all. I dread to think what might happen to him if I were to leave him alone all day and night now. It cost me every penny I had in savings to make sure he was okay while I was in Australia with Ruben. I can’t afford to keep that up full time.

  “Has Uncle Mike been at it again?” Dad asks me when I stick my head into the living room to check on him. I ignore his question and go to pick up some of the rubbish he’s dropped on the floor. I only get halfway down before the searing pain in my chest stops me and I stand back up, clutching my side.

  “I’ll go sort him out for you, Stevie. I won’t have him using you as his punching bag,” he adds, before turning his focus back to the TV and forgetting that I’m even in the room. My heart bleeds, but I’m at least grateful the house is still standing and he’s in one piece.

  I head up to my room and attempt to get some rest, but my entire body is buzzing with pent up energy. I start pacing the length of the room, but it does nothing to sort me out. There are two things that I normally do to relieve this kind of energy: hit the gym or go and find Connie. But unfortunately for me, both of those are out of the question. So, I do the only other thing I can think of. I pull open the bottom draw of my bedside cabinet and roll myself a joint. I don’t do it very often, but when things get really bad, it helps me through. I’m not sure how smoking weed will react with whatever the hospital pumped me full of, but at this point, I really don’t care. I’ve already fucked everything up and hurt everyone I care about, so what’s the harm?

  I open my window and perch my arse on the windowsill as I light up. I look out over our jungle of a garden and think back to better times.

  * * *

  Five years ago�
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  I’ve done everything I can to stay well clear of Connie. It took so long for Ruben to forgive me and for us to get some kind of friendship back after what happened with Connie that I don’t want to even risk looking at her. That doesn’t mean I want her any less, though. If I thought one taste of her would cure me of my addiction, then I was wrong. If anything, I only want her more. And unfortunately, she has only got hotter as the years have gone on. Her curves have got…well, curvier, and she is even more beautiful than ever.

  Things got easier when she left for university and Ruben moved into the barn his dad converted next to his parents’ house. It means that, even when she is home, I don’t have to see her, really. I also don’t have to walk past her room every time I go over to see Ruben. Every time I see that room, the memories of that day come flooding back to me, haunting me, taunting me. Giving me just a little reminder of what I had and what I still desperately want.

  Today is Connie’s twenty-first birthday. It starts with a family meal, which I’m unfortunately invited to, seeing as I’m practically family, and then a night out in Cheltenham. All I can hope is that I can find a willing chick to distract me and spend the night with. If I have to spend the night watching Connie look all hot and sexy, which she undoubtedly will, I’ll want to blow my brains out. And if I have to watch her pull, because I know she’s single, I’ll kill the fucker with my bare hands. I don’t even want to think about someone else having their hands on her, let alone watch it.

  We’re all hovering in the Fosters’ kitchen, waiting for the birthday girl to appear, as we’re now over ten minutes late.

  “Hurry up, Connie,” Nigel shouts up the stairs. He’s getting more and more frustrated by the second. Something tells me he’s hungry - just a hunch!

  “Alright, alright, calm your tits, old man,” Connie says as she heads towards us, much to Nigel’s delight. His grimace turns to a look of pure horror when he looks up in the direction of the doorway where the sounds of her voice and clicking heels just came from.