Private Scandals

killed anyone.”
    He broke off abruptly, and the impatient amusement drained out of his face. “Oh Jesus.” He brought both hands to his face, pressing the heels to his eyes. “Jesus Christ.”
    “I’m sorry.” Competition forgotten, she sprang up to go to him. “Finn, I’m sorry, I should never have brought it up.”
    “Could she have done that?” he said to himself. “Could even she have done that? And for what?” He let his hands drop, and his eyes were haunted. “For what?”
    “Done what?” Deanna asked quietly, her arms still around him.
    Finn drew back, just a little, as if what was working inside him might damage her. “My best friend in college. Pete Whitney. We got hooked on the same girl. We got drunk one night, really plowed, and tried to beat the crapout of each other. Did a pretty good job. Made sure it was off campus. Then we decided, hell, she wasn’t worth it, and we drank some more.”
    His voice was cool, detached. His newscaster’s voice. “That’s the last time I’ve been drunk. Pete used to joke that it was the Irish in me. That I could drink or fight or talk my way out of anything.” He remembered the way he’d been then—angry, rebellious, belligerent. Determined to be absolutely nothing like his chilly and civilized parents. “I’m not much of a drinker anymore, and I’ve figured out that words are generally a better weapon than fists. He gave me this.” Finn tugged the Celtic cross out from under his shirt, closed his hand around it. “He was my closest friend, the closest thing to family I ever had.”
    Was, Deanna thought, and ached for him.
    “We forgot about the girl. She wasn’t as important to either of us as we were to each other. We killed off another bottle. My eye was swollen up like a rotten tomato, so I tossed him the keys, climbed into the passenger seat, passed out. We were twenty, and we were stupid. The idea of getting into a car filthy drunk didn’t mean anything to us. When you’re twenty, you’re going to live forever. But Pete didn’t.
    “I woke up when I heard him scream. That’s it. I heard him scream and the next thing I remember is waking up with all these lights and all these people and feeling as if I’d been run over by a truck. He’d taken a turn too fast, hit a utility pole. We’d both been thrown from the car. I had a concussion, a broken collarbone, broken arm, lots of cuts and bruises. Pete was dead.”
    “Oh, Finn.” She wrapped her arms around him again, held on.
    “It was my car, so they figured I’d been driving. They were going to charge me with vehicular manslaughter. My father came down, but by the time he got there they’d already found several witnesses who had seen Pete take the wheel. He wasn’t any more or any less dead, of course. It didn’t change that, or the fact that I’d been drunk and stupid, criminally careless.”
    He tightened his fingers around the silver cross. “I wasn’t hiding it, Deanna. It’s just not something I like to remember. Funny, I thought about Pete tonight, when we walked into Angela’s funeral. I haven’t been to one since Pete’s. His mother always blamed me. I could see her point.”
    “You weren’t driving, Finn.”
    “Does it really matter?” He looked at her then, though he already knew the answer. “I could have been. My father gave the Whitneys a settlement, and that was pretty much the end of it. I wasn’t charged with anything. I wasn’t held responsible.”
    He turned his face into Deanna’s hair. “But I was. I was just as responsible as Pete. The only difference is I’m alive and he’s not.”
    “The difference is, you were given a second chance and he wasn’t.” She closed her hand over his, so that they both held the cross. “I’m so sorry, Finn.”
    So was he. He’d spent his adult life making himself into the man he was, as much for Pete as for himself. He wore the cross every day as a talisman, yes, and as a reminder.
    “Angela could have dug up the facts easily enough,” Finn said. “She could even have made it appear that the Riley money and power influenced the outcome. But she would have blackmailed you, not me. She’d have known if she’d come to me, I’d have told her to take out an ad.”
    “I want to tell the police.”
    He eased her back on the bed so that they were curled together, wrapped close. “We’ll tell them a lot of things. Tomorrow.” Gently, he tipped her face toward his. “Would you have protected me,