Chapter 9 #3
He pulled the SUV over to the side of the road, causing her to stop talking as she grabbed onto the armrest.
When he came to a stop, he turned to her. She was staring out the windshield.
“Look at me,” he commanded.
She turned her head towards him, her amber eyes wide, her perfect cherry lips parted, her cleavage spilling over the hem of her white scoop-neck t-shirt as her chest rose and fell in short breaths.
The space between their bodies hummed with a magnetic pull that made his skin prickle and his breath catch in his throat.
He wanted so badly to reach across the console, thread his hand through her hair, pull her into him, and show her just how wanted her sexual advances were, but he couldn’t do that.
“It’s not,” he stated as firmly as he possibly could. “Drop it.”
She nodded slowly.
He turned back and pulled onto the road, trying to get the way her lips felt against his the night before, even for a split second, out of his head.
A few seconds of silence filled the space between them.
It felt heavy. He wanted so badly to know what she was thinking.
Normally, she just told him. At least, she had when she was younger, but that was the thing: she was a grown woman now.
She shifted in her seat and turned towards him. “Um, there’s something I need to tell—”
A text from Poppy appeared on the display of his dashboard in the middle of her sentence.
Poppy: Did u make sure Frankie got home safe? I’ve been texting her all morning, and no answer. U r my brother, and I love u, but I will turn you in if cops show up at my door looking for her.
Frankie laughed as she pulled out her phone from her backpack. “Ha ha, your sister likes me more than you.”
“I don’t think refusing to lie to police and cover up a murder is a reliable metric of her affection for me.”
“Well, I guess we’ll never know.” Frankie held up her phone to the side of his face. “I just texted her and told her that I did, in fact, get home safe and sound. I left out the part that I sexually harassed—”
“Frankie,” her name came out as a warning.
He looked over and saw the smile she had on her face, indicating she wasn’t serious.
“Too soon?” she asked, eyes twinkling with mischief. Her expression changed when she put her phone away. “Wait! Was I looking at photos on your phone last night?”
Shit. He wanted to lie, but he knew he couldn’t. Frankie would never let it go.
“Yes.”
“Of us growing up, right?”
He nodded.
“Can I see them? I don’t remember.”
That was why he’d shown her last night. He didn’t think she’d remember. Against his better judgement, and with a sinking sick feeling in his stomach, he took his phone out and opened up the photos app before handing her the device.
“Oh my gosh! These are…I didn’t know you had…I haven’t even seen half of these.” After she’d gone through them all, probably a few times, she asked. “So, what is the deal with Poppy being your sister? And why don’t you talk to your dad and Tristan?”
He wondered when that was going to come up.
He was actually surprised it wasn’t sooner.
He knew he was going to have to talk about this, but he’d never actually told anyone the whole story, never said it out loud.
Not to Poppy, Niko, or AJ. No one. His pulse was racing as he turned onto the road that would take them to the base of the trail.
He had about five minutes until they were there.
“There are a lot of reasons. At this point, I don’t even know how to be a part of that family.
You know that my dad and I never got along.
He always treated me differently than Tristan, whether or not he’d ever admit he did, that’s just a fact.
Tristan got away with everything. It didn’t matter what he did, the expectations on me were always higher.
Then the fact that Mom had a brain tumor that her own husband, an expert in that field, knew nothing about, and she died when he saved how many other people’s lives?
” Liam tried to take a breath, but he couldn’t.
Both his chest and his throat were tight.
He knew, academically, nothing was wrong with him, that what he was experiencing was all in his head, but he’d never actually said these next words out loud before.
Frankie reached over and put her hand on his forearm. As soon as he felt her touch, his anxiety didn’t disappear, but it went from blaring loud to a manageable level. “It’s okay, if you don’t want to—”
“The night before Mom died, I went up to her room to see her, and I heard them arguing. I stood outside the door, and I couldn’t hear everything they were saying, but I heard my dad clearly say, ‘I want to tell him he’s not my son’, and my mom sobbed and said, ‘You promised you’d love him like your own.
’” As soon as the words left his mouth, Liam felt like a weight had been lifted from his chest.
He glanced over at Frankie to see if she already knew. From her mouth hanging open so wide it looked like her jaw was unhinged and her expression being one of complete and total shock, it appeared she did not.
“Holy shit,” she breathed.
“Yeah. I went to bed. I was going to talk to her about it when she woke up the next day, but she never did. After three days we had the funeral, and then I went back to school. Six months later, I graduated. After that I was so fucked in the head I went into the Navy. When I got out, I put my DNA in a genealogy site, and I found out who my dad was. Michael Davies. He and his wife, Teresa, have three daughters, who are amazing. They’re all married and have incredible husbands and kids.
I think he and my mom weren’t serious. He also had an affair with Poppy’s mom, but it lasted years, so she knew him growing up,” Liam explained as they arrived at the parking lot to hike up to the waterfall. “I’ve never said that to anyone.”
They both sat in silence after he cut the engine. “So, Michael, you’re named after him. Liam Michael.”
“Yeah, I think so. But I don’t think Mom ever told him about me.”
“You haven’t asked him? Is he not nice?”
“I don’t know. I think he was nice. He died two years before I found him. When I was serving overseas.”
Liam heard the click of the buckle, and next thing he knew, Frankie had flung herself across the console, and her arms were wrapped around his neck. For a moment he just sat, frozen. He wanted to move, but he couldn’t.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered over and over. “I’m so sorry.”
After a minute or two, his temporary paralysis dissolved, and he wrapped his arms around her like his life depended on it, because it felt like it did.
He held her and allowed himself to feel the warmth that only comes from being in an embrace with someone who cares deeply for you and who you care about on a cellular level.
They held one another with a fierceness, a ferocity, a ferociousness that burned in him.
They may have stayed like that all day, but within a few minutes there was a high-pitched whining, and then the sides of their faces were covered in tiny puppy kisses as Lucy joined their embrace.
She managed to wriggle out of her harness and was standing on her hind legs with her front paws on the back of his headrest.
“Okay, okay, okay. We’re good. I’m good.” Liam laughed.
He got out and went to the back to grab his gear before opening the back passenger seat, getting Lucy harnessed in her leash, and setting her down. He came around the car, and he saw that Frankie was wiping tears from her cheeks and trying to put on a brave face.
“Hey, I’m okay,” he assured her. “This was all a long time ago.”
“I know, but…” She tried to smile as she took a shaky breath. “I hate that you went through all that alone. I mean, I just wish I could have, or someone could have been there for you. It’s just, meeting a whole new family and…that’s…a lot.”
He’d wanted to talk to her about it. After he got the results from the genealogy, he called Niko to take the temperature on where she was at. That’s the call he found out she was engaged.
“It was the May after you graduated from NYU. You were busy.”
Her eyes dropped to the ground, and she nodded.
“What did you need to tell me?” he asked.
She lifted her head, and her eyes met his, her brow knitted. “What?”
“Before Poppy texted, there was something you needed to tell me.”
“Um…” She looked up, pretending to forget what she had planned to say, then shook her head. “I don’t remember. I’m sure it’ll come back to me. Anyway, let’s go. This waterfall isn’t going to hike to it itself!” She clapped, and Lucy jumped in the air.
As they headed up the trail, he had a very real feeling that whatever she’d planned on telling him was, in fact, very important, and not for one second had she forgotten what it was. Thankfully, he had all day to get it out of her.