Rematch (The Reed Brothers Book 22)

1. Scotty

The pops and flashes of cameras are nearly blinding as our handler opens the door and ushers us toward the front of the room. I lift my hand to shield my eyes. Immediately, questions ring out, before we can even take our seats. Frankie gives me a look, and I give her what I hope is an almost imperceptible nod. Yes, I hate this as much as you do. Yes, I want to go home. No, I don’t want to do this.

We take our seats behind a formal table draped with cloths, with a pitcher of water and glasses in the middle, and I can’t help but think how much we needed that water when all this started. The pitcher sparkles, and a dewy drop of condensation slides down the side until it dampens the tablecloth, spreading through the fibers like vines. There was a time when I would have bent and licked the tablecloth, trying to get that precious little bit of moisture.

The attorneys that Frankie’s grandmother sent as well as the representatives from the charter company all stand to the left of the podium, out of the way but not out of sight. We know they are there, and we know—because we have already been warned—that they will stop the incoming questions if we don’t answer appropriately or if the reporters get too personal with their questions.

Ever since our ordeal became public, we are constantly bombarded by the media at home, on the street, everywhere—and even the kids aren’t safe from it. They told us that if we agreed to do this press conference, we could finally have some peace. These particular reporters have promised to tell our true story.

Our handler, who I’m sure was hired by someone with bigger interests than ours, steps up to the podium. “Liam and Frances will take questions now,” she says quietly.

It feels weird hearing my real name. I’ve been Scotty since we took off on that ill-fated flight. Frankie’s Scotty.

I reach beneath the table skirt for Frankie’s hand, but she brushes my questing fingers away, scolding me without even saying a word. I pull my hand back, and I run my hands up and down my new dress pants, wiping the sweat from my palms.

“Before this fateful experience, you guys already knew one another, correct?” one of the gathered reporters calls out. “You two weren’t strangers.”

Frankie looks at me and I see a small smile tilt her lips. “We have been best friends for a long time. A really long time. Since we were young.” Her brow wrinkles. “What were we, twelve?”

“You were twelve.”

Frankie grins at me and rolls her eyes.

“I was twelve and a half,” I remind her.

The first timeI ever saw Frances “Frankie” Thompson, she was sitting astride a metal propane gas tank pretending it was a horse. She was wearing a pink baseball cap with her ponytail pushed through the hole in the back closure. That poor little hat was threadbare, but Frankie loved it. It could barely contain the curls that Frankie sported. The rim of the hat was worn and frayed almost as badly as her shoes, but Frankie didn’t care. She was twelve and I was twelve and a half and I fell head over heels for her at first sight.

Frankie and I didn’t come from the same kind of background—her dad had money, and mine lived paycheck to paycheck—but we’d found a common ground quickly. She had been staying with her grandmother during summer break, and her grandmother lived next door to us.

“Get on out there and introduce yourself,” my mother had teased from her spot in front of the kitchen sink where she was washing dishes.

“I don’t want to,” I grumbled. But I didn’t step away from the window.

“You can’t just watch the world go by, Liam,” Mom warned. “Get on out there. You know everybody but Frankie.”

I frowned. “Frankie?”

“Her name is Frances, but everyone calls her Frankie, or so Mrs. Thompson said.”

“Frankie,” I whispered.

“She’s staying with her grandmother for a few weeks this summer. She won’t even be here long, so you had better enjoy it while you can.” Mom threw a dishtowel at me, hitting my shoulder. “Go!” she said. “Scram. I don’t want to see you until dinner. Bring Frankie back to eat dinner with us if she wants to come.”

I had opened the backdoor and walked out, feeling like I was going to my execution. But when I got to the edge of the yard, one of the neighborhood boys I knew well called me over, giving me an excuse to walk over there where she was. Then she turned and smiled at me, and I was a goner. She was missing a tooth right in front to the right of her two front teeth. She grinned around the gap. I’d stopped losing my teeth a year ago. Maybe she was a late bloomer or whatever my mom called it.

“You want a turn?” Frankie called out as I walked close to where the small group of kids was playing in her grandmother’s backyard. She dismounted from the gas tank with all the grace of a twelve-year-old tomboy, and she motioned for me to go ahead.

“I’m okay,” I said quietly.

I had been watching Frankie from out our back window all morning. She had an ease with people that made everyone an instant and trusted friend, and I became one too on that very day. If only I’d known how much trouble it would get me into, I’d have stayed far, far away from Frankie Thompson.

Or maybe I wouldn’t. Who knows? I can’t take back anything I’ve done. I can’t bite words back out of the air, nor can I rewind the tape that was our lives together. If I could, I might have done things a little differently.

Or who knows, maybe I wouldn’t have changed a thing. I’d fallen in love with Frankie when I was twelve and a half, and I’d never really fallen out of it. So, when she came knocking on my door on a Friday morning twenty-five years later, I smiled, because it was good to see her. It was really good to see her.

“Knock, knock,” a voice called out. I looked up to find Frankie Thompson standing in the open doorway. My breath stuck in my chest, and I sputtered as I choked on my own spit. Frankie always had been able to take my breath away.

“Frank?” I said quietly, sure my eyes were deceiving me. I hadn’t seen Frankie in many years, yet I’d know her anywhere, and there she was standing in the doorway of my office.

“Stand up and give me a hug, asshole,” she said as she walked in. She was wearing a pair of cut-off jeans, sneakers, a t-shirt with a faded concert logo on it, and a blue baseball cap. It wasn’t ragged like her old pink one, which she’d worn until her parents’ maid had thrown it out and replaced it with a new one she refused to wear. She’d told me about it in a letter she’d written to me the winter after our first summer together. She’d cried over that cap.

I stood up, my heart racing as she rounded the corner of my desk. Even as an adult, she was still the same precocious girl I’d known and loved.

She smelled like soap and sunshine. Frankie always did. I sucked in a breath of her as she wrapped her arms around me. Frankie hugged just like she did everything else—with gusto. I wrapped my arms around her as she hugged my waist, her face settling against my chest as she held on a few seconds longer. I palmed the back of her cap, and she tilted her face to look up at me, without releasing her hold.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked, somewhat out of breath.

She lifted her eyebrows at me. “Can’t I stop by and say hello to an old friend?”

“Any time!” I assured her and motioned for her to take the chair across from my desk as I sagged back into my seat. But, of course, Frankie didn’t do it. Instead, she walked around my office, taking in the pictures on the walls and shelves one by one.

“This is your place?” she asked as she looked around.

“Yep. All mine.” I’d just bought the little airstrip with a big metal building that housed my small planes.

“I knew you’d do it one day,” she said with such conviction that I felt my chest expand more than a bit with pride. I’d wanted to be a pilot since I was big enough to take my first flight with my dad. He was a pilot, too, and he dusted crops, did air surveillance, flew small charter flights, things like that. I wanted to be just like him. “You know, Scotty,” she said, narrowing one eye at me as she waited for a beat, “when you joined the military, I thought you’d turn that into a career.”

Frankie was the only one who’d ever gotten away with calling me “Scotty.” Other kids had tried to use it after hearing her say it, but it had never seemed right except with her. My name is Liam Scott. But I had become “Scotty” to her right off the bat.

She’d just casually used the name I hadn’t heard in so very long. “Scotty” took me back. Years. I shook my head. She’d asked about my flying. Right. Flying was what I’d always wanted to do. It was the only thing. “The military taught me how to fly,” I said with a shrug. “But I didn’t like being away from home even when I didn’t want to be. When the kids came along…” I shrugged again and let my sentence trail off.

She grinned. “How are the kids?”

Although we hadn’t seen each other in years, we’d kept in touch through sporadic phone calls and texts every now and then. I’d kept her up to date with photos and news. Because that’s what friends do. So, she knew about my children—and my failed marriage. “Tanner is fourteen now and he hates my guts on principle. And Livvie is eight. She’s still a delight, thank God.” I stared at her. “How are you?”

Her smile fell away. “Good,” she said quickly. A little too quickly.

“Frankie?”

She took her time staring at my photos one by one. “And how’s…oh, what’s her name…” She snapped her fingers and looked at me. “Gloria? Is that right? How’s Gloria?”

I grinned in spite of myself. “She’s fine.”

“She’s fine,” she mocked, deepening her voice.

“Be nice,” I warned. But secretly, I was pleased that Frankie had no love for Gloria, even though they’d only met once years ago. I suspected Frankie would take a dislike to any woman I was with, and that warmed my heart.

She picked up a paperweight from my desk and started tossing it from hand to hand as she finally sat down across from me. Even after twenty-five years, I still knew her well, and something was up. It was good to see her, of course, but she didn’t just happen to be in the neighborhood.

“Frank?” I said. She didn’t look at me. I let out a long sigh. “Frankie!” I said a little more loudly.

She set the paperweight back on my desk. “Yes?” she said, expelling a breath.

“Why are you here, Frankie?” I asked succinctly.

“I need a favor, Scotty,” she said, her voice tiny and high-pitched. Almost meek.

The Frankie I knew and loved was anything but meek. So, this immediately made me suspicious.

“So, you only show up when you need a favor?” I teased. I sat back and crossed my arms, staring at her, still in awe that she was even here. “Okay, I’ll bite. What do you need?”

“Well, it’s kind of a long story,” she said, wincing as she said it.