Free Daring the Wild Sparks by Ren Alexander

super dark in here. I don’t want you to trip over anything. This is the one bedroom that doesn’t have a cathedral ceiling, so it’s not as hard to keep dark since the windows are smaller.”
    “Okay. Thanks for the heads up because you know I’d sue.”
    She laughs and smacks my arm. “Slut!” She giggles some more before resuming. “Well, maybe Finn was just tired and didn’t want to talk about having a baby.”
    I emphatically shake my head. “No. Definitely not tired at the time.”
    Her eyebrows shoot up. “Oh?”
    I grimace. “I asked him right before we were going to…”
    Her mouth drops open to accompany her suddenly wide, hazel eyes. “Wow, Hadley.” Bethany sits down on the brown-and-beige-striped comforter covering the bed, and I sit down next to her, crossing my legs.
    “I know, Beth. Bad timing.”
    “A little, but I guess it’s as good of a time as any, really. He probably would’ve given you the same answer sitting in the car.”
    “Probably.”
    “You said on the phone that Finn took off? Does he even know you’re here?”
I look down at my lap. “No, he doesn’t, but I left your number with his mom in case something happens and I don’t have my phone with me.”
    “Why did he leave? Was it because you asked him to have a baby with you? That seems a little extreme. If he truly loves you, he wouldn’t just leave.”
    I twist my ponytail and inhale as I look up at her. “His mom also announced that she and Finn’s stepdad are divorcing after 19 years of marriage.”
    “No way.”
    “I know. He actually was close to Jack. He’s close to his dad, Henry, too. So, this is a blow to him. He loves his mom, but I think because Finn was surrounded by so many women in his house, he stuck close to his dad. When his mom and Jack were married, Finn was in high school. Jack went to all of Finn’s baseball games and cheered him on. Finn played first base and Jack would tell everyone that was his stepson and how proud of him he was. Henry tried to make it out to some of his games, too, but mostly it was Jack. Jack would also practice with him out in the backyard to work on his throwing arm.”
    “I thought you said before that Finn played soccer in high school?”
    “He did, but he played in a summer league with a lot of his classmates. His school didn’t have a soccer team.”
    “Oh.”
    “I feel so bad for him. I know this is a blow to us not getting married, but for the moment, I’m so worried about how this is going to affect him overall. He’s an adult, so it shouldn’t be that damaging, I guess, yet he thinks of this as a betrayal.” I sigh and clasp my hands over my thigh. “I know he’ll most likely not ever ask me to marry him now. He was yelling at his mom. Then he told me their divorce was another example of why marriage doesn’t work and that marriage is ‘a love killer.’”
    “Maybe he still might change…” Bethany stops and bites her lip and I sigh. Even she knows he won’t.
    I cringe at her. “I bought him a ring.”
    Her eyes tentatively widen with a slow smile. “What kind of ring?”
    “A black band. An engagement band. I wanted to ask him to marry me.”
    Her entire face fully lights up. “Hadley! When?”
    “The ring is being engraved. I don’t know when I’m going to do it, especially now after everything that happened. I figured I was going to give him a few weeks, but now, I just don’t know.”
    “Give him some time. Maybe this divorce won’t be so bad for him. He’ll still see Jack, won’t he?”
    “Yes, but not that much because he barely sees him now. Jack even had to go out of town this weekend for work. Both Julie and Jack want them still to have a relationship. And before all of that, Julie informed us that she and Simone became ordained ministers online. They wanted to marry Finn and me this weekend.”
    She gasps, “Say what?”
    “Long story short, they wanted to perform a ceremony. It wouldn’t have been legal because we