11. Chapter 11
Frankie
It was too quiet in her apartment. Too still.
She’d have thought inviting someone into her home would disrupt her usual tranquil atmosphere, but Evan barely made a sound.
Frankie slipped out of bed and yawned. The night had been rough.
For as many horrors as she’d been through over the years, actual nightmares rarely plagued her.
She’d been lucky that way, faring better than Emily ever had with hers.
She often had night terrors, but at least she couldn’t remember them upon waking.
Except last night, Frankie had dreamt of Emily.
It wasn’t a nightmare exactly, but when Frankie had woken calling out her name, she was too shaken to fall back to sleep.
“What did it mean ?” she whispered, rubbing her hand over her face.
She shook her arms loose, waking them up, and then stretched the kinks out of her neck.
Reaching for a hair tie on her nightstand, she fastened the unruly locks into a messy ponytail and immediately dropped down into a pushup.
Frankie preferred to get her workout over with as soon as she woke up in the morning, unless of course, other, more horizontal, methods of self-care took precedence.
Emily’s youthful, freckled face and the dream she’d had came to mind as she counted out her pushups.
It was so odd that Frankie had woken in a sweat.
She remembered the elation she’d felt, followed by confusion, when Emily cupped her face and whispered, “Be careful. They aren’t what they seem.
” And then she kissed Frankie and disappeared.
That’s what woke Frankie. Even now, she wasn’t sure what she was more shaken up about—the warning or the fact that Emily had kissed her.
When she was alive, Emily only ever hinted there was something between them once.
Even then, she’d been quick to shove the idea away as quickly as it surfaced.
Perhaps it was because they’d been such close friends, or that Emily was her foster sister, but back then a kiss would have been just more wishful thinking in Frankie’s juvenile mind.
Unrequited love was often like that.
Frankie’s pulse thrummed in her throat as she moved into her morning bicycles. She liked to do thirty or forty of each exercise. It helped keep her fit for her classes and did wonders waking her up. By the time she was done, her muscles burned, and she’d begun to sweat.
After a quick shower, Frankie pulled on a pair of slacks and a camisole and made her bed before heading into the kitchen.
It was still early, earlier than she usually woke, but she wanted to cook something for Evan to have when they woke up.
The reason behind it nagged at her. Why did it matter that she cooked?
In all the time she’d known McCoy, she’d made breakfast maybe a handful of times, and it was well after they began sleeping together.
She hadn’t even kissed Evan yet, and she was doting on them.
Frankie’s lips twitched. She imagined how small they must look sleeping under the covers on her queen mattress, unaware that there were wrist and ankle restraints tucked into the bed rails. The thought made her chuckle.
Opening her fridge, Frankie went over the options before pulling out the heavy cream, butter, and eggs.
She set about making her favorite gluten-free, low-carb almond flour pancakes.
As they were cooking, she sliced fresh strawberries and bananas and then made coffee.
Frankie was setting the table when the sound of the bathroom fan came on down the hall.
The door clicked shut, and Frankie’s belly fluttered.
She couldn’t put her finger on the why or how, but there was something special about Evan.
It didn’t matter that they’d done time, or that they had a chip on their shoulder and liked to avoid eye contact.
She wanted to be around them, but she wasn’t the only one.
Sloane’s going to be a problem.
“Hey, what’s all this?”
Frankie glanced up from where she was placing cutlery on the table of the breakfast booth.
Evan was dressed in the same jeans as yesterday, but instead of the leather jacket they always wore, a black hoodie hung well past their waist. Their hands were clasped loosely together, but Frankie assumed it was an act since Evan was using the fingers of one hand to pick at the other.
They were nervous, but at least they didn’t have their shoes and jacket on yet.
“I made us breakfast,” Frankie said, her gaze roaming over Evan a second time. Wariness was evident in the way they scanned the table first, followed by the kitchen where Frankie had yet to pull the pancakes from the stovetop, and then back to her. “How did you sleep?”
Evan chewed their lip, seemingly at war with themself. “It was fine,” they replied after a moment. A sigh left them, and Frankie’s lips quirked up when they finally took a seat on one side of the booth.
“Great.” Heading back to the kitchen, she returned with the pancakes, placing the plate on the trivet already on the table. “I usually eat low carb when I can help it, so I hope you don’t mind trying pancakes made with almond flour.”
“Erm … sure. I’m not allergic as far as I know.” Evan frowned at their empty plate.
“What’s wrong?” Using her fork, Frankie dropped three pancakes onto Evan’s plate. Next, she slid the butter and syrup closer before peering at her houseguest again.
“You’re acting … not how I expected.”
“And how’s that?” Frankie dished up a serving for herself, but kept half her attention on Evan. “Go ahead, eat. Do you drink coffee or tea?”
“Ah … no, I don’t. Never liked the stuff,” Evan admitted, pushing up their glasses. As they spread butter over the pancakes, they continued, “You just seem … I dunno, nice, I guess.”
That made Frankie laugh. “Who is going around saying I’m a bitch? Sloane, right?”
Evan shrugged, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.
They piled fruit on the pancakes with syrup.
Frankie did the same but patiently waited for Evan to dig in first. She hadn’t been this captivated by anyone since McCoy had first come into her life.
It was such a strange, all-consuming feeling, and it wasn’t as if Evan and McCoy were even remotely similar.
Evan frowned as much as McCoy grinned, and it was clear to Frankie how different their childhoods must have been.
Evan had grown up hard, that much was clear in the way they moved and interacted with her staff, not to mention the little she knew about their time in prison.
“How is it?” Frankie watched intently as Evan chewed.
They ate almost … politely, if that was the right word, cutting their pancake into squares and placing one at a time on their fork.
A drop of syrup escaped down their chin.
Frankie gripped her utensils tighter so she didn’t do something too impulsive, like reach over and wipe the sticky sweetness off with her thumb.
They aren’t into you yet. Evan is not your sub so cool your jets.
It was incredibly difficult since every instinct Frankie had screamed at her to go full-on possessive mode with Evan.
“It’s good. You not eating?” Evan shot her a look rife with suspicion, then dropped their gaze to the pancakes again. “What’d you do to them?”
Frankie bit back a smile. “Nothing. I was waiting for you to start .” I like watching you eat the food I cooked for you , she almost added, but it was too soon for all that.
She didn’t want to scare them away. For the first time in a long time, there was a lightness in Frankie’s chest, a buzzing in each of her nerve endings as her brain flooded with possibilities for the future.
Why go looking for a sub when there was one right in front of her?
All Frankie had to do was make Evan crave her too.
Frankie was rushing through traffic that evening on the way to her class when a phone call came through on her Bluetooth.
Her cousin’s name was on the display, and for a moment, she debated answering it.
Besides the wonderful, albeit awkward breakfast that morning with Evan, the day had been one pile of shit after another.
The last thing she needed was more from her family.
Reaching forward to hit the decline button on the dashboard, she hesitated. It’d been weeks since she’d touched base with Danny. That was a long time for someone she considered like a brother. Frankie heaved a sigh, answering just before the call went to voicemail.
“Hey, Danny. Everything okay?”
“I could ask you the same thing, little cuz. I was beginning to think it’d take an SOS to reach you.”
Danny’s deep voice boomed through the car’s speakers, which was awkward as hell now that she was stuck at a red light. She glanced around her and turned the volume down. “Now that you have, what’s up? I can’t talk for long. I’m on my way to a meeting.”
“You never do, but I won’t keep you. Just wondering about the radio silence lately. You leave me on read more times than dudes who ghost their girl do. What’s it take to get some attention?”
Frankie shook her head and chuckled at her cousin’s dry humor. “One, that was a bit sexist, and two, what are you, twelve? You know how busy owning a business can be.”
Blaming her avoidance issue on work was a pathetic excuse, but thankfully Danny didn’t call her on it. Instead, his voice grew so soft that Frankie had to adjust the volume again. “Mom missed you over Christmas, Frankie. Two years in a row now. Quit pushing her away.”
Frankie clenched her teeth and glared at the dash display, wishing Danny could see how far past the line he’d crossed. “Now she’s getting you to speak for her? Auntie B pushed me away first, Danny.”
Danny’s long, drawn-out sigh had Frankie gripping the steering wheel harder. “You know she didn’t mean what she said. It was just …” He trailed off, sighed again, then added quietly, “So complicated, Frankie. She didn’t understand.”
“Bullshit.” Frankie’s chest tightened, and the argument she’d had with Auntie B two Christmases ago flooded her memories. Emotion swelled in her throat, and she forced out, “What’s so complicated about loving someone?”
“It’s who you loved, Frankie. The who is what made it complicated. Em was—”
“Not blood related, so Auntie B’s full of crap.” The light turned green, and Frankie pushed the Audi forward once more. She swallowed, ignoring the burn in her sinuses as tears threatened. “It doesn’t matter anymore, does it? I’ve gotta go now, Danny. Talk soon, okay?”
She ended the call with a jab of her thumb, hating how quickly her family could sour her mood. Was it so awful that she’d wanted to reminisce about Evan a little longer? They’d been in her apartment showering when she’d left.
“Fucking Danny,” she said, snatching her water bottle from the cup holder.
Out of all the things her aunt could be a judgmental ass over, it had to be that fact.
And then to have Danny ring her up only to jump to his mother’s defense yet again …
Hell, it was no wonder Frankie had avoided them all as much as possible.
She was ten minutes late by the time she reached the fitness center. She grabbed her duffel bag from the passenger seat and climbed from the Audi, locking the door on the way into the building.