Chapter 25 #3
He continued scanning the room until his gaze snagged on Frankie.
She stood on the edge of the dance floor in a figure-hugging, black cocktail dress.
Beside her was a man Liam had never seen, in person, before with dyed pink hair wearing a tailored suit who looked like he’d just walked off a runway of Paris Fashion Week.
His arm was snaked around her waist, his hand firmly gripping her hip in a very familiar, very intimate hold that normally would have made Liam’s fist curl and cause him to see red.
But he recognized this man as Zion, her best friend.
He still didn’t love the fact his arm was wrapped tightly around her and he could even see from his vantage point that his fingers were digging into her hip, but he knew their relationship was platonic.
As he made his way towards her, he was stopped every few feet by a new person who was approaching him, slapping him on the shoulder, calling him “Liam-my-boy” or “Doctor Liam” or “the smart one,” and telling him that “he looked so handsome” or “he filled out” or “he was a man now,” all of which made his skin feel too tight.
He gave the expected responses, smiled at the right jokes, and inched closer to Frankie.
He’d made it to within fifteen yards of Frankie when his brother stepped in front of him, blocking his path.
Tristan had the same eyes as Liam, but where Liam’s gaze tended toward icy, Tristan’s always had a spark of chaos, a glint of trouble.
Tonight, it was more like a wildfire. From his breath and demeanor, Liam would guess he was at least five whiskies deep, face flushed beneath a five o’clock shadow that made him look exhausted instead of his normal rakish.
He wore the kind of suit you only saw in GQ, the color somewhere between navy and midnight and perfectly tailored, though he’d already yanked the tie loose and left the shirt half-unbuttoned.
He looked like a man itching for a knife fight.
“Liam!” he hissed in a low voice, grabbing his shoulder and maneuvering him out of the flow of partygoers and into a hidden corner of the tent, causing him to be even further away from Frankie, and where the laughter, conversation, and thrum of music couldn’t muffle the thread of anger in his tone.
“Do you believe this shit?” He jerked his head toward the dance floor.
Tristan’s eyes locked onto the couple now in the center of the dancers.
Frankie and Zion were slow-dancing, close enough that a credit card would have had trouble sliding between their bodies.
Frankie’s arms were looped around Zion’s neck, she was gazing up at him like he was the sun.
Her lips were a soft, lacquered red, parted in a genuine, easy laugh—one that transformed her entire face and, by extension, the entire room.
Liam barely registered the squeeze in his chest, the way seeing her lit up like that—vivid, unguarded—made everything else look like it was in greyscale.
“That’s her friend,” Liam said, keeping his voice carefully neutral.
Tristan snorted, his jaw tightening as his nostrils flared like a bull ready to charge. “Yeah, well, apparently they’re fucking now.” He leaned in, dropping his voice so low it was seething and conspiratorial, and he continued speaking, but Liam didn’t hear a word of it.
Liam’s brain short-circuited after, “They’re fucking now.”
He risked another look at the dance floor.
Zion was holding Frankie as he dipped her and nuzzled his face into her neck.
She was laughing, her head thrown back. Even from here, Liam could see the flush on her cheeks.
After spending two nights with her in his bed, he now knew her cheeks didn’t just flush when she was embarrassed or mad, they also flushed when she was turned on.
He felt something in his stomach drop and catch, like a ride at the county fair.
“They’re fucking?” The words came out before he’d even realized he was saying them.
“Yeah.” Tristan’s hands curled into fists at his sides.
“I never trusted him. From the first time I met him, with the whole ‘bi’ thing, I always figured it was just a long con. Waiting it out, biding his time, sitting on the sidelines until she got bored or I slipped up. All the spa visits, Bravo watch parties, shopping trips, and wine tastings… all bullshit. And now he’s here, at my dad’s wedding, slow dancing with my ex like he’s the fucking hero in a fucking rom-com.
” He let out a hollow laugh, bitter as burnt coffee. “Fucking long game, man.”
That was three fuckings in two sentences, his brother was definitely wasted.
AJ and Niko had both mentioned Zion over the years—how Zion would miraculously show up whenever Frankie needed him, how he’d always been her shoulder to cry on, her ride home when she drank too much, and her security system, literally.
When their apartment was burglarized and Tristan was abroad on a six week guys trip, Zion slept on her couch for a month until he got back.
felt safe again. Liam had been grateful that she had him in her life when her brothers were either overseas or in other states, but now…
He watched Zion whisper something into Frankie’s ear. She giggled, swatted at his chest, then lifted up on her tiptoes to whisper back. It was the kind of chemistry that could pull the tides out of orbit.
Liam swallowed, feeling the edges of the moment splinter as a pulse raced in his chest. “She told you she’s fucking him?”
“Basically.” Tristan barked a laugh, raking a hand through his hair.
“Yeah, I heard it from dad, who heard it from Cora, and when I asked her about it she got this goofy, lovesick grin on her face and said, ‘I’m happy.’ She’s definitely fucking him.
” He pinched the bridge of his nose, the gesture familiar from a lifetime of debates and disappointments.
“She’s not even sorry, bro. Not one bit.
She is glowing. I’ve never seen her like this! ”
Liam didn’t know what to think, or what to say. He felt like he was watching this happening on a television show. This couldn’t be real. He glanced down at his feet, then back at the dance floor, where Frankie and Zion were now swaying in a kind of synchronized, slow-motion trance.
He wondered if this was what the text from Frankie had been about—if this was the thing she needed to talk to him about. The confession she’d been building up to all day. Was it possible she was seeing Zion now? Was it possible that the thing she’d done was Zion?
Liam wanted to believe he knew her better than that.
He wanted to believe that she was the same girl he’d known his entire life, whom he’d spent two nights in bed with, who he’d been inside of, and who he’d wrapped his arms around and held as she fell asleep and she whispered, “I love you, too. I always have.” But if there was one thing he understood better than most, it was that the people that you trusted the most and loved the most that could keep secrets, they could surprise you. He’d learned that lesson the hard way.
Frankie’s laughter cut through the music, bright and sharp, and he looked up just in time to see Zion spin her out, then reel her back in, like a magician with a silk scarf. The rest of the room blurred away. All Liam could see was her.
The music shifted to something even slower, something that had the kind of sentimental power you only heard at small-town weddings.
Zion drew Frankie even closer, rubbing his hands up and down her back.
Frankie sighed, content and peaceful, as Zion kissed her forehead.
The same forehead Liam had kissed before he left for work fifteen hours earlier.
Liam felt like someone simultaneously punched him in the gut and kneed him in the balls.
Every cell in his body felt hot, and then cold, and then nothing at all.
He forced himself to breathe, to unclench his jaw, and to stop his hands from shaking.
He told himself that none of it mattered, that he and Frankie weren’t anything to each other.
They’d shared two nights together and hadn’t made any promises.
But the words rang hollow, thin as tissue and just as useless, because all he could see when he closed his eyes was the way she smiled at Zion, the way she let herself fall into his arms. It was like watching a house burn down that you’d already lost the deed to.
Technically, the fire wasn’t taking anything from you, but you still couldn’t look away.
He took a moment to collect himself in the shadowy corner of the tent.
The coolness there was a small mercy, but it quickly curdled into a suffocating heat, a silence that pressed in around him.
He pushed his thumb against the bridge of his nose and tried to count backwards from ten in Spanish, then in English, then in French just for the hell of it.
It didn’t help. Frankie’s laughter was like a sonar ping, cutting through music and conversation, finding him wherever he tried to hide.
He needed to leave. He needed air. Most of all, he needed to not be there, not be a part of this slow-motion disaster where everyone seemed to know the ending except for him.
He slipped away from his brother, muttering something that was probably “bathroom,” and started weaving his way through the mass of partygoers.
There was a brief moment where he thought about finding Cora, he’d promised her that he’d attend tonight.
But he’d fulfilled that promise. He came.
He saw. He definitely had not conquered.
The tent was even more crowded than before, the dance floor packed with bodies, the air thick with perfume and cologne and the scent of something caramelized from the dessert table.
He moved through the space like a ghost, his height giving him an advantage, but not enough to stop people from reaching out to clasp his shoulder, shout his name, ask about the hospital or following his dad’s footsteps, or memories from when he was “ditching school and getting caught smoking.” He played the role—smile, nod, deflect with a joke—but it was pure muscle memory.
He was somewhere else entirely, numbed-out and unreachable, watching from a distance.
He drifted outside, past the tent flaps, into the sharp, pine-edged air of the night.
The cold hit him with a jolt, but it was better than the stasis inside.
He made his way back up the path of solar lanterns, hands in his pockets, head down.
Out there, the only sounds were the distant hum of laughter and the thudding bassline, barely audible.
He tried to focus on the dark, the stars, and the way the wind whipped down from the mountains and rattled the branches overhead.
When he arrived at his SUV, he looked up. The sky there was wider than in any city, black and infinite, dusted with stars so bright they didn’t look real. It should have been beautiful. It probably was. But tonight, it just made him feel smaller.
He dug his phone out of his pocket and stared at it, thumbing through his notifications. There was a text from Poppy, asking which dress he liked best. There was another from a nurse at the hospital who had been on maternity leave and hadn’t been able to say goodbye. And then there was Frankie’s.
Frankie: We need to talk. I did something, and I need to tell you. Call me.
He considered texting her back, asking what the fuck happened, and telling her he’d seen her dancing and talked to his brother, but he didn’t trust himself not to say something he’d regret, something that would make things even worse than they already were.
Instead, he just got in his SUV and drove home.
All he had to do was get through the wedding tomorrow.
One day. One day of pretending everything was okay.
It wasn’t even an entire day. It was a few hours.
A wedding and a reception. Three hours of keeping his mask in place, of making sure no one knew what was really going on inside of him.
He knew he could do it, he had thirty-three years of practice.