Page 108 of Clean Finish

“Oh yeah?” I managed a little chuckle. “Why’re you so sure?”

“Well, the Final Girl is usually a virgin, right? I mean, I guess I’m not a virgin anymore, and that whole thing is such bullshit anyway. Like, she gets to live because she’s “purer” than all the others? That’s problematic as shit.”

“Yeah.”

“But I just don’t think I’d let myself get caught. I’m too wily, bro.” He tilted his head up to grin at me.

I grinned back. “What about me?”

“You’d def be the jock, so you’d die saving some of the others. Sorry,” he teased.

I laughed and gave his chest a soothing rub. “I wouldn’t mind sacrificing myself for you, so that’s fine.”

Larkin went still, his expression hidden as he stared at the TV, before he suddenly lifted my hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it.

“If we were in a slasher, I’d find a way for the jock to be saved.” His voice was a little hoarse. He cleared his throat and added, “Taylor would be the geek who figures everything out but gets killed before he can tell the rest of us. Holt would be the overconfident d-bag who either doesn’t believe there’s really a killer, or he strolls right out to take them on. Either way, his death would be the most dramatic and gruesome.”

I chuckled. “That sounds about right.”

“And my buddy Hans would be the party boy who’s too wasted to even realise he’s being hunted down at first. Like, he’d think the killer was one of the others messing with him and not even try to escape. Don’t get me wrong, I love him and all, but he isn’t exactly a quick thinker.”

I pressed my lips to his hair, an affectionate smile tilting my mouth. “You can make him sound like a hero when you tell your story to the world,” I said solemnly. “As the Final Girl.”

“Yeah, but I already said I’d find a way to save the jock, so you’d be there too, and you wouldn’t lie. You’d just all calmly be like, ‘He was an idiot.’”

I grinned. This conversation was silly, but I loved it. “That’s probably true. Although I wouldn’t want to speak ill of the dead.”

Larkin waved a hand. “This is a unique situation. It’s our duty to share the truth and try to save the next group of unwitting youths who go and party in a remote cabin in the woods. And in the sequel, we’d be the couple who realise the killer is back but no one believes us.”

My chest pinched a little, but I managed a laugh. “So it’d be our job to take him out for good?”

He grinned up at me again. “Uh-huh. And we’d think we did it, but he wouldn’t actually be dead. So that there can be a third movie.”

“This is turning into quite a franchise,” I deadpanned. “I’m pretty sure Holt would demand to somehow rise from the dead so he could be in the sequels.”

Larkin gurgled with laughter. “For sure.”

The credits were rolling now, and I’d completely missed the end of the movie, but I didn’t care. Larkin yawned and stretched languidly against me, one of his arms flopping back behind my head. I tried not to groan when I felt his long fingers sifting through my hair.

“Did you like it?” he asked hopefully, shifting his head on my chest to peer up at me.

I nodded. Slasher movies would never be my first choice, but I’d enjoyed watching it with him. “Yeah.”

“You can pick next time.” He scrambled around to straddle my lap, draping his arms around my neck with a grin. “I bet you’ll pick some eighties action movie with a giant beefcake lead. Or several.”

“I can’t tell if that’s a jab at my age or my propensity for working out.” I slipped my fingers under his sweatshirt to feel his warm skin. “But no, I’d probably pick a sci-fi.”

“Sci-fi movies can still have beefcake leads,” he pointed out. “Sci-fi fans need eye candy like everyone else.”

“It sounds like you just want me to pick something with a beefcake as the lead,” I noted dryly.

“I don’t need to watch a beefcake on screen,” he told me innocently. “I have one right here. And you’re way hotter.”

I managed to suppress my smirk. “Am I?”

“Um, yes, dude. You’re, like, the hottest.” His cheeks flushed, and he ducked down to bury his face in my neck as if he was trying to hide it. I heard him mumble, “You’re, like… really, really handsome, Seb.”

I swallowed, staring up at the ceiling. I didn’t know what was happening anymore. It almost felt like I was on some fucked-up prank show where I was being given everything I desperately wanted, only for Larkin to one day laugh in my face and ask how the fuck I could’ve actually fallen for any of it.