Free Finally Finn (Los Rancheros #4) by Brandace Morrow Page A

back before getting out of the
bed. I whimper when he leaves my body and get a kiss on a shaking
knee. My legs are jelly, the muscles so overused they spasm over
and over.
    Batty grabs things around the room, putting
them in a bag, then picks me up.
    “What the hell?”
    “Shh. We have to be quiet.” Batty opens the
door and walks past the kids’ room and out the front door with me
in his arms. I watch him in the moonlight, his face highlighted and
shadowed as we walk through the trees.
    Batty walks right into the water. He lets my
legs drop and tosses the bag onto the floating dock before wading
in. When we’re up to his shoulders, he lets me go gently. I sink
into the water placidly, then push my hair back and rise up to
float.
    When Batty surfaces from his own dunk in the
cool water, he moves me with his hands so that I don’t float away
as I stare at the stars. I feel his fingers skim down one side of
my body, catching a nipple and back up to the other. It makes me
shiver and my nipples get tight enough to hurt.
    “You’re so beautiful, Sadie.” He moves my
body until my head drifts close to his chest and he leans forward
to touch his lips to mine in a whisper of a kiss. “Come with me,
baby.”
    I sink in the water to put my feet back into
the soil below. “Where?” I watch as he leaves the lake, his body so
beautiful I would follow him into a burning building, anywhere
really.
    We get to the bag on the dock and he pulls
out towels then takes it and my hand down to the water. With our
legs over the side, I silently wrap my hair into a wet bun on the
top of my head and use the band around my wrist to keep it
there.
    I don’t have anything to say. I’ve done
everything I know how to do. If it didn’t work, there’s nothing
else in me. It’s silent for a long time, every second, every minute
that passes my heart beats a little harder until I fear that it
will stop beating all together.
    “Her name was Annie and she was the prettiest
girl I had ever seen. She was a new transfer into my class, and I
fell in love with her instantly. We were seven, my brother was ten.
From the day she walked into my class, I was stuck to her. I played
on the playground with her, then invited her over after school.
Aiden didn’t like a girl playing with us. He didn’t want anything
to do with her until she was about thirteen. Annie and I were
always together, she loved to fish, and swim in the lakes. We did
that a lot, and one day Aiden realized what I had known the whole
time. Annie developed pretty early on, but when she did, Aiden
started to want to fish more, and swim. I didn’t even realize, not
really, until I saw them kiss for the first time that anything
changed. Annie was always mine, had been for years. But he came
along and took her away.
    “Aiden knew how I felt, my dad knew, everyone
knew except her until I blew up one night. She wanted me to cover
with her parents so that she could spend the night with him. It was
our senior prom and I couldn’t take it anymore.
    “She smiled, so pretty. And she said that I
was her best friend, her first friend, and nothing would change
that. Then she said that she had had a crush on Aiden forever.”
Batty swallows so loud I can hear the sound over the frogs and
crickets.
    “Broke my fucking heart. Aiden was so wrapped
up in her he couldn’t see straight. She wanted to be a singer, and
since we lived so close to Los Angeles, he would take her to
auditions when he wasn’t in school. Then when no one would sign
her, he started his own fucking record label. That’s just how he
is. All consuming. Always. So she finally had a record contract,
but no one was playing the song. So he signed more kids, up and
coming bands from all over. Kids no one else would listen to.
    “Annie had a great voice, but it was more old
school than anything on the radio. Now you have Lana Del Ray and
Meghan Trainor, but that wasn’t hot at the time.
    “When her parents wanted to move back to