Infinity + One

“Bonnie. You aren’t fooling anybody crying in the shower, baby. The water hides your tears, but it doesn’t hide the sound, and I don’t want you to cry anymore.” He kissed her as the water soaked through his shirt, plastering the white cotton to his skin, seeping into the black suit pants, and soaking the shoes that had cost way more than Bonnie’s ring. She still wore it, and he kissed that too, frantically. And she cried harder.

“I didn’t think you were coming back.” She sobbed into his chest, and Finn held her tightly, letting the cascading water wash away the words. He almost hadn’t come back, and the thought made his legs weak and his heart quake. He held Bonnie closer, burying his face in her neck and letting his hands stroke the naked length of her body, needing to reassure himself that she was still his. Bonnie was suddenly as frantic as he was, pulling at the buttons of his shirt, trying to peel it off his chest, as if she needed to feel his skin the way he could feel hers. His shirt fell to the shower floor with a heavy, wet slap.

“Your grandmother told me you didn’t want to see me again, Bonnie.”

Bonnie closed her eyes and her hands stilled, her face crumpling with his words. She shook her head emphatically. “No. That’s not true. That’s never been true! Not for one second since I met you. I knew exactly what I was doing when I married you. I was just hoping, just praying, that you knew what you were doing.”

Bonnie reached for him, laying her palms against his face, tipping her chin up so she could hold his gaze, even as water streamed through her hair down her cheeks. Finn kissed her mouth again, not able to help himself. Her lips trembled beneath his, and he tasted her slick heat and the salty, sweet mix of tears and tender words.

“She told me none of it was real,” he whispered against her lips.

“But . . . didn’t we decide that we don’t want real?” she replied, her mouth never leaving his.

“Yeah. We did,” Finn breathed, “but I’ll take real too. And I’ll take imaginary, and I’ll take it all, Bonnie.” And he wanted to take it all, he wanted to sink into her and let the endless supply of hot water beat down on their bodies, and for a moment he was sidetracked by her lips and her skin and the swell of her br**sts and the way she felt beneath his hands. He wanted it all, but Bonnie—though her hands and mouth were as busy as his—had not stopped crying. It was if she couldn’t believe he was there. As if she still couldn’t believe he’d come back.

“I wanted to come find you,” Bonnie said, her mouth against his skin, her voice as urgent as her hands. “But I had to let you choose. I thought you might have decided this was all too much. My family, my brother, my life. I hurt you, Finn. So much. It’s all my fault. All of it. Bear getting hurt, you getting thrown in jail and accused of things you didn’t do. Even the things Hank did. The things Gran did. I put it into motion.”

“Shh. No, Bonnie. You can’t take responsibility for their greed. Greed put this whole thing in motion, and you have your faults, but greed isn’t one of them,” Finn soothed. “But none of that would have kept me away.”

He captured her hands in his, bracing them against the shower wall so he wouldn’t be distracted by her touch, and he laid his forehead against hers, trying to find the right words—the words he needed to say, and the words she needed to hear, so she wouldn’t spend her whole life wondering about the way he felt and why he’d come back.

“I love you, Bonnie. So much that I hurt with it. And I hate it, and I love it, and I want it to go away, and I want it to stay forever. And I am terrible at this!” He laughed in frustration. “I feel like I’m asking Bear to have sex with me. Damn, that must have been awful.”

“It was,” she choked out, half-laughing, half-crying. He stole a kiss then, but didn’t release her hands though her body swayed into his, and she protested sweetly.

“This thing we have, it hurts,” he continued. “But the pain is almost sweet because it means you happened. We happened. And I can’t regret that, no matter how little or how long I get to tag along with you and pretend that I don’t hate having people recognize me or take my picture or having people whisper about my record—”

“Your record?”

“My criminal record, Bonnie. Nothing platinum there. I’m an ex-con, and instead of starting over and building a new life where I can put it behind me, I’m building a new life where it will never be behind me, and for you, it’s worth it. It’s easy math.”

“You’d do that for me?”

“No. I’m doing it for me,” he confessed.

“I like a selfish man,” she said, her face splitting into the smile he loved so much, and Finn felt a tidal wave coming, growing in his chest, and he released her wrists so that he could cradle her face in his hands.

“What’s Infinity plus one?” she whispered and kissed his unsmiling mouth, and he answered her from his heart and not his head.

“It’s not infinity after all. It’s not even two. It’s one, Bonnie Rae. Didn’t you tell me? You and me? We’re two halves of a whole. We’re one,” and he pulled her up and into him, the steam making a thick fog around their bodies, reminiscent of the night they met on the bridge. The night Bonnie met Clyde. And Finn realized something then. That was the night they both jumped. The night they both let go. The night they both fell.