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"I do love you," Finn insisted. Beth had never heard him make such a proclamation in all of the time that she'd known him, and had no idea why he'd decided to say so now. "I know that loving you is wrong, that I shouldn't, and I've tried to stop–"
"Who told you that?"
"What?"
"Who told you that it was wrong of you to love me?" Beth demanded. "My mom? Quinn? My useless excuse of a biological father?"
"No, they didn't have to tell me that, because I already knew," he told her. "Do you know how many times I let myself get close to the guys that my mom dated? My dad was dead, you know, and they would let me get close to them, and then they would get bored with playing house and leave us. Leave me. It really hurt, cos I was stupid, you know, and I would fall for it all the time." He scrubbed his hand across his face. "Not that I would ever not want to be in your life," he added. "I just…I didn't want to throw the concept of love around and make you feel obligated to get to know me."
"I didn't know." Finn didn't talk much about his past, and certainly not to Beth. She knew that he had joined the Marines to get his father's dishonourable discharge reversed and that he had come into a settlement as a result. She knew that that money had been used without complaint to allow her biological mother, who Finn hadn't even been dating at the time, to move into the apartment they were currently standing in. It hadn't been a secret to Beth that Finn had done that for her benefit, even though she rarely saw Mama Quinn's then roommate. Even when he hadn't been deployed, he had kept to himself. "Why did those people hurt you?"
"I don't know."
"They sound mean. I would never hurt you like them," she settled on. "You've always been nice to me, even when I would make you cry and you would say that it was just allergies."
"They weren't mean. I deserved it." He shrugged. "I'm sorry, you know, for crying. I didn't mean to."
"It's okay," she told him. "Quinn says that you love me so much, that sometimes you don't know how to handle it," she added. "That's why I wanted you to tell me about the letters."
"I didn't know that you read them," he muttered. "I barely remember writing them. I've tried so hard to forget about sophomore year." He sighed. "If you wanted…you could bring them by some day, and we could look at them together."
"Do you really want to?"
"I would do anything for you, Beth. Even things that scare me." He sighed. "I thought that distancing myself was the right thing to do because Darren told me it was," he said after a moment. "He was one of my mom's boyfriends. He worked for Emerald Dreams," he added. "It's…a lawncare company. I thought he was the coolest guy ever, except my dad. I idolised my father."
"Quinn told me that," she admitted. "I asked. I didn't understand why you still played army man after you made his discharge all better."
"I don't have anything else that I could do," he told her. "I'm not smart, not like you, or Quinn. Not in a way that matters. I don't think that I could get the type of job that could keep us in New York City if I wasn't in the Marines, and I know that you want us here," he said. "I mean, you want your mom. I mean Quinn."
"I want you to be here, too," she insisted. Beth frowned. "What did Emerald Dumbass say to you that made you think that I'd hate you?" Beth didn't know who this Darren person was, but she knew that she thought he was mean, and stupid, and that he shouldn't have said what he'd said to Finn. "I don't hate you, so he was wrong."
"He told me that it would confuse you," he said. "That he'd felt obligated to stay with my mother past the 'natural expiration date' of their relationship because he had made the mistake of getting close to me and 'didn't want to hurt me'." He shook his head. "He left my mom for a girl at Pick n Save. Got married to her. They had a couple kids. He wouldn't let me meet them, said I wasn't good enough."
"He sounds like a dick." She pulled a face. "You know that I love you, right?"
"Yeah. I know. You tell me whenever you can."
"So, that's not going to go away because of your mom's jerk of an ex. And I don't think that you would just ditch me, even if you weren't dating Quinn."
"I would never ditch you. Why would I do that?"
"Puck did," she pointed out. "Not that it matters. He did bad things that Mom and Quinn don't think I know about."
"You don't need to worry about him. I'll protect you," he promised. "From Puck, from whatever." He sighed. "I'm sorry that I didn't tell you."
Beth wrapped her arms around his waist. "You don't have to apologise, Finn," she whispered. "It's okay. I know that you love me, even if saying it scares you because of stupid people."
"I love you, so much," he murmured. "If it really doesn't bother you to hear, I'll say it more."