Chapter 13
The song on the radio, a soft ballad about longing and moonlight, played as the SUV hugged the darkened ribbon of forest road.
Frankie watched silently as the headlights bounced off the trunks of ponderosa pines on the thirty-minute drive back to Hope Falls.
The world outside was pure ink, a blanket of velvet blackness split only by the tunnel of yellow light.
Liam hadn’t said a word since they left the party, which was very on brand for him.
Frankie hadn’t either, which was very off-brand for her.
They were alone. Alone, alone. Finley asked if Lucy could stay for the sleepover, and since Lucy had followed their golden retriever Waffles around like a shadow, Liam agreed to let her stay the night.
Duane was dropping her off early the next morning, since Liam’s house was on his way to work.
So, there was no puppy buffer, it was just them.
Frankie stared at the stars on the black horizon, the sky looked impossibly big, like a planetarium had been flipped inside out.
She inhaled deeply, filling her sinuses with the faint scent of vanilla from the air freshener hanging off the rearview mirror.
Liam flicked his eyes sideways at her, as if trying to gauge whether she wanted him to speak, but she didn’t.
She wanted to bottle this exact moment—the hush, the stars, and the way his jaw flexed when he thought too hard about something—and save it for a night she knew would be less perfect than this one.
Her eyes kept drifting to his hands, one resting on the console between them the other at twelve o’clock on the steering wheel. They were so large, so capable. She’d always loved his hands. Her body hummed with the first memory she ever had of his hands.
It was a sun-blasted summer when everything in her world changed at once.
June in San Francisco could be weird, with the fog crawling over the hills until noon, then burning off to expose the bluest sky.
That day, the fog had fled, and sunlight hit her freckled arms so hard she thought she might burn right through.
She was six, a full foot shorter and half the weight of her twin brothers, who were eight.
Unlike other brothers, her brothers didn’t mind her tagging along as long as she kept up.
Which she always did even if it left her scrambling for footholds, too out of breath to speak, and covered head to toe in a layer of dirt and sweat.
After living at the Sterlings’ for a year, that particular summer brought two new variables in Frankie’s life.
Tristan, who was also eight by that time had become the third Musketeer to Niko and AJ.
He was funny, outgoing, loud, and adventurous.
Much more adventurous than the twins, even Niko, who was the outgoing twin.
And then there was Liam. He was ten, double digits, which seemed like an adult to her.
He was quiet, but not in the way AJ was.
Liam’s eyes were always observing. He rarely spoke, but when he did, everyone listened, even the older kids on the street.
As an adult, she realized he had alpha energy, even then, he was a leader.
Everyone on the block walked on eggshells around him, like they were scared of what he might do. She never was.
But back to his hands. The Sterling’s estate backed up to the woods.
On that particular day, AJ, Tristan, and Niko decided to conquer the biggest, gnarliest tree in the woods that they had named Frankenstein, because it was a monster to climb.
When Frankie didn’t follow, Tristan bet Niko three baseball cards that she couldn’t get past the lowest branch, and Niko took the bet.
Frankie knew it was an unspoken code that, if she didn’t at least try, her invitation to tag along would be rescinded.
Without any hesitation, she scrambled up after them, her palms rubbing raw against the bark.
Niko screamed encouragement, mainly because he didn’t want to lose three baseball cards.
Frankie gripped that tree like a spider monkey, doing everything she could to scale the trunk.
When she managed to reach the first branch, which was probably a good six feet from the ground, her fingers wrapped around it, and as she swung her leg to try and get it up, her grip slipped, and gravity yanked her down. Hard.
She landed on her hip, bounced, and scraped her knee against the trunk and root. The pain was sharp and electric, but what hurt worse was the sound of Tristan taunting Niko with a relentless chorus of, “Three baseball cards! You owe me three baseball cards!”
Frankie remembered looking up into the branches and seeing that Niko was mad about losing, while AJ looked worried but didn’t move. That was how it was with AJ, always watching, never interfering.
She tried to get up, but her knee buckled, and blood started to ooze in a slow, sticky line down her shin.
The world went wavy for a moment, like she was looking through a glass of water.
She could feel her throat tightening, the sob pressing up against her teeth.
If she cried, they’d never let her forget it, so she clamped her jaw, dug her nails into her palm, and stood.
That’s when Liam appeared on his bike like a dark BMX angel. He slid to a stop in front of her, got off, and crouched down until his face was level with hers and said, “Let me see.”
She didn’t want to, but she did—she pulled her knee forward and watched him inspect the scrape with the solemnity of a surgeon.
“It’s not bad,” he said calmly. “It looks worse than it is.”
She nodded, doing her best to be brave. She had no words.
He peered up at the others, Tristan was still taunting Niko, and Niko was still pouting. “I’m going to get Otter Pops,” he announced to no one in particular. “Frankie, do you want to come?”
She could barely breathe, much less answer, but he didn’t need her to.
He just stood, dusted off his shorts, and offered her his hand.
She took it. His hands were huge even then, the knuckles scabbed from fights he got in with older kids she heard about from Niko and Tristan, but his grip was gentle.
They hobbled back through the woods—well, she did, and he pushed his bike—their shadows melting into each other in the late afternoon sun.
Liam didn’t talk, and neither did she. He didn’t say anything when her limp got worse, then he knelt down and gestured for her to climb on his back.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on as he stood back up.
He carried her the rest of the way, piggyback, one hand holding her leg, the other pulling his bike. When they got to the house, he gently set her down on the back steps, picked up the garden hose, and washed off the blood. The water was freezing, and she hissed.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She nodded.
Once it was free of dirt, he helped her inside to the kitchen, found the first-aid kit, then sat her on the counter and went to work.
She remembered watching his hands as he poured the hydrogen peroxide over her cut and it fizzed and bubbled.
She couldn’t take her eyes off his fingers as he squeezed the Neosporin from the tube onto her knee.
She was transfixed as he dug through the kit until he found the exact bandage that he wanted, then removed the backing, and secured the Mighty Mouse Band-Aid on her knee, smoothing it down against her skin.
After tossing all the trash away, he opened the freezer, grabbed two Otter Pops, opened them both with his teeth, which made her six-year-old heart flutter, spit the tops into the garbage can, and then offered her the choice: Louie-Bloo Raspberry or Strawberry Short Kook. She chose blue.
“Don’t tell anyone I was nice, Mighty Mouse,” he said, voice low.
She promised she wouldn’t. She never did. From that day forward, she kept Liam’s secret.
That summer day was arguably the most pivotal in her life.
It imprinted on her. She fell in love, got her first and longest-running nickname, and acquired her greatest fear, heights in general, and tree climbing specifically.
She’d only had to face that specific fear once in her life, and Liam was there to rescue her again.
Their neighbor, Miss Gigi, was an Old Hollywood silver screen starlet.
Frankie thought she was the most glamorous woman in the world because she wore silk robes and fuzzy slippers with clear kitten heels during the day and always had a fancy glass of whatever she was drinking in her hand and called everyone, “Dahling.” Not darling, dahling with an h.
Looking back, Georgiana Mayflower was an alcoholic who never got dressed, but young Frankie idolized her. Miss Gigi’s cat Rascal was an ‘indoor’ cat with the heart of a hunter. He constantly escaped, and Gigi would stand on her porch, martini in hand, silk robe waving in the wind, calling his name.
Whenever Frankie heard Miss Gigi, she would pretend she was a private investigator hired on The Case of the Missing Cat.
Rascal would always turn up before dark with either a mouse, a bird, or other small prey he’d killed in his mouth, except for one day, when the sun set and there was no Rascal.
Miss Gigi was still on her porch screaming his name, and it was getting darker by the minute.
Frankie, who was eight, grabbed a flashlight and headed into the woods.
She discovered as she searched that tree shadows in dusk looked a lot like monsters.
Was she scared? Yes. But she loved Rascal, and her concern for him being alone and hurt overrode her fear.