Send a Prayer Up Above

Chapter 9

Lunch with Finn after the whole thing at Mustafar was like a breath of fresh air. Except that getting ready for it was painstakingly slow. I wore a shirt with long sleeves so I could tug them over my knuckles, and a scarf to hide my neck (but I still needed to do some covering up with makeup, as the hickey was too high. Bastard.) And Kylo reminded me again why I shouldn't try to flee.

"I will find you," Kylo had said while glowering at me behind his Ray-Ban's, "there is no place where you can hide from me."

I made snarky comments and told him that the bartender (FBI agent) at the restaurant had thought I was his hooker. Kylo laughed, which was weird to hear frankly, and said I'd make the worst prostitute. I huffed and made more snarky comments, until finally, he dropped me off in Midtown in front of Sarge's Deli, with stern warnings and threats again. And how I had exactly one hour, to the second, and how he would be right here, waiting.

When I was about to open the car door he asked, "you never liked Finn like that, right? You were just trying to get me mad."

I thought he seemed rather young at that moment, asking a sincere question about a girl liking another boy, eyes wide and expecting. He looked like Ben. So I decided to give him the truth he deserved at that moment.

"No. I was just teasing."

A baby of a smile played on his lips, and he tried hard to hide it. "Good. Only ever me then."

Then Finn had appeared around the corner and I hastily shut the door, Kylo driving behind a corner. I lied that it was Thor and that he had an important meeting from which he was running late. Finn accepted the lie, and I felt increasingly terrible about the increasing amount of lies I had forced down his throat. We talked about everything, he tried to ask me questions I couldn't give answers to, so I deflected and turned the questions on him. After all, everyone loves talking about themselves. I explained to Finn that Thor had a realtor brother and he got me an amazing deal on an apartment and I had moved in there, and I promised him that he could come to see it as soon as it was tidier and I wanted to vomit on my fries at that point.

"So, do you miss Ben at all?" Finn asked out of the blue. Right then, I almost really did vomit. Finn pushed his fries around his plate, deep in thought.

"What prompted that question?" I asked, genuinely flabbergasted. I shoved the turkey dinner in my mouth, it was excellent here and since Kylo had also stolen my wallet, he had given me thirty dollars in the car. I fully intended to use every cent of it.

"Oh, nothing. I just figured that if you had, then Thor for sure would've helped. S'all."

"Right. Um," I didn't have to lie about this part at least. I swallowed turkey down and continued, "it did feel almost suffocating to be back here at first, to be honest. It was like . . . his presence was everywhere and it was daunting. But yeah, it's better now, definitely." It's not like I had been sleeping in his bed for a week now.

"I thought that must've been hard for you. I heard some rumors he's in some mafia nowadays."

I stopped chewing for a moment. "Oh, really? That doesn't sound like K—Ben."

"Well, I always thought he had a bit of a dark vibe."

I blinked. "You did?"

He waved his fork and said, "nothing major, just a little bit. But you guys were so in love I thought maybe your light and his darkness complemented each other."

And now all there was left was the dark.

"That's a beautiful way to put it, Finn."

A minute left until an hour was up and I made sure I was ready to leave by then. I did not need Kylo barging into the deli, Finn would probably die of a heart attack and all my carefully constructed lies would come apart in a second. We exchanged goodbyes and I had to make promises about a housewarming party that would never come.