Chapter 29 #2
"Oh, come on," she spat, voice raw at the edges. "Like you haven’t been dying to say ‘fuck off’ to all this drama and just do whatever you want? I mean, that’s basically what you’ve done.
You haven’t spoken to me. You ignored all my texts and calls.
And now this. I’m not judging, okay?” She lifted her hands, palms facing him.
“But at least be honest about it. I just—" Her voice cracked as she brushed a damp stray clump of hair stuck to her cheek. “I mean, do you think I don’t remember how many girls used to climb in and out of your window?”
Liam watched the water pool at Frankie’s feet, the soaked fabric clinging to her curves like a second skin as she glared up at him with all the righteous indignation of a Greek goddess who’d just been scorned by the mortal she herself created—the fury at war with the vulnerability she always tried to hide.
Her fists clenched, chest heaving as her breaths came in short pants, and her body trembled.
The door was still wide open, letting in a blast of cold and the earthy perfume of rain on pine needles.
He turned and shut the door, giving the battered wood a little extra push to make sure it caught on the warped latch, then crossed to the bathroom in two long strides, grabbed sweats out of his duffle, pulled them on, and then got his faded gray sweatshirt with his old med school crest on it.
When he came back into the room, he tried to hand it to her, but she crossed her arms defiantly.
He didn’t retreat. His arm remained outstretched.
His expression made it clear the sweatshirt wasn’t a peace offering, it was non-negotiable, and they would not be speaking until she was in dry clothes.
She stared up at him, most likely gauging whether or not it was worth it to call his bluff. He held her challenging gaze.
Then, without warning, she sighed and began to strip.
Frankie wasn’t shy—she’d never been shy—but for some reason her boldness combined with anger felt like a dangerous level of intimacy.
Liam’s heart hammered against his ribs as he stood two feet away from her and watched as she slipped off her heels, unzipped the side of her dress, shimmied out of it, and draped the heavy, sopping fabric over a wooden chair.
When she turned to face him, she was left standing in a nude strapless bra and matching underwear.
His entire body tensed at the sight, every cell screaming for him to wrap her in his arms, but thankfully, she snatched his sweatshirt from his hand and pulled it over her head, the sleeves flopping past her wrists, the hem hitting her just above her knees.
Once the sweatshirt was on, she reached beneath it and pulled down her wet underwear and stepped out of them, then quickly, magically, removed her bra, pulling it through one of his sleeves then draping both items over the chair beside her dress.
Fuck. It was going to be so hard, literally, knowing she was naked beneath that sweatshirt.
He wasn’t exactly sure how he was supposed to have any thoughts in his head when all the blood in his body was rushing to his cock.
He wanted so badly to pick her up, throw her on the bed, claim her, fuck her, make her feel that she was his, then wrap her into his arms, and tell her he loved her, he’d always loved her, and never let her go… but he resisted.
Instead, he moved to the fireplace and crouched in front of it. He could feel her gaze boring into his back, but he kept his focus on the simple task of stacking kindling so he could coax a flame to life.
A moment later, she padded over and stood beside him, arms crossed once again beneath her breasts, toes curling into the rough pine of the cabin floor.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, her voice tense with impatience.
“Making sure you don’t get pneumonia.” Liam struck a match and held it to the edge of a crumpled newspaper.
“You don’t get pneumonia from being wet and cold,” she shot back with a tone implying he was an idiot.
He glanced over his shoulder and stared up at her, silently asking how many years of medical school she had under her belt.
Then, without asking permission from his brain, his gaze drifted from her face to the bare skin of her thighs, which was visible since the hem of his sweatshirt had risen several inches due to her arms being lifted above her head as she twisted her hair up into a bun on top of her head.
He forced his eyes to travel back up to her storm-cloud eyes.
Frankie lowered her arms and rolled her shoulders in response, muttering something that sounded a lot like, “Whatever, Dr. House,” before walking the short distance to the couch and flopping onto the corner.
He assumed she meant that as an insult, but he liked that show, and comparing him to Dr. Gregory House was a compliment in his book.
Liam finished lighting the fire, poked at it with the iron rod, and closed the screen.
The warmth hadn’t reached the rest of the living room yet, so he opened the cedar chest at the end of the bed, retrieved the spare blanket, and tossed it toward her.
She ignored it at first, but after a brief, silent standoff, she yanked it across her lap, cocooning herself and tucking her damp legs up under her body.
For a second, she looked so much like the girl he used to know, the one who’d show up at his window in the middle of the night.
If he was awake, he’d immediately move to the floor, sometimes he woke up and she was in bed beside him, and he had no idea how long she’d been there before he’d move down to the floor, giving her his bed.
Their history tugged his heartstrings, but he ignored that feeling. He took a breath and focused on the other emotion that was vying for top spot. A familiar frustration knotted up in his chest. One rule for him, another rule for everyone else.
Liam lowered down into the armchair across from the couch and rested his forearms on his thighs.
"So, let me get this straight," he said, voice low and deliberate. "I have to go along with pretending you’re still engaged to my asshole of a brother and then stand by while you’re… whatever you are with Zion, but if I’m with someone else, you show up at my cabin kicking down the door demanding to know who it is? "
Frankie blinked, eyes wide. Her mouth opened for a half-second before it shut, and her chin jutted out in defiance.
“That is not—” She shook her head and took a deep breath. “There is no ‘thing’ with… There was never a ‘thing’ with…That’s not even—” She threw her hands up, exasperated. “—which you would know if you hadn’t been avoiding me like the plague the past two days, acting like a child!”
Liam knew that she was really mad, because whenever she was really mad, she didn’t finish sentences. “Okay, just calm down.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, he knew he’d made a catastrophic mistake. Talk about a rookie fucking move. The worst thing anyone could possibly say to someone when they were upset was calm down. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
His apology was cutoff, and rightly so. He could practically see steam coming out of her ears, yet her voice was oddly calm, almost clinical.
“No, I am talking now, and you will listen.” She stood, the blanket sliding off of her as she pointed down at him.
He knew it wasn’t the right time to say so, but she looked fucking adorable standing in front of him in his oversized sweatshirt, her hair wound up in a messy bun on top of her head, her makeup smudged, with the glow from the fire dancing across the freckles sprinkled on her upturned nose and in golden flecks floating in her amber eyes.
“The night after the dinner at the Castaway, my mom went downstairs for some water and heard Tristan talking in the basement, and she thought he sounded upset, so she went down to make sure he was okay. Like an idiot, he left the door open, and she overheard him talking, on FaceTime, of course, to Emmanuelle. She heard him say that we were broken up, that we’d been broken up for six months—”
“Six months?” Liam repeated.
“Yeah, I know it’s so crazy that Tristan would lie, right?
Anyway, she was going to confront him and ask what was going on—” With each word she spoke, she picked up speed, like a snowball in an avalanche.
“—but she thought she should talk to me first. Her daughter. So she went upstairs, and guess what she heard? She heard us. Me and you. She heard everything.”
“Shit.” Liam’s stomach dropped.
That was not how he wanted Cora to find out about them.
“Yes. Shit. That is the correct response. The next day, she cornered me at brunch. She asked if I had anything to tell her. She was looking at me like I’d turned into a criminal overnight.
” Frankie took a deep breath. “She then proceeded to tell me about Tristan and what she’d heard when she’d gone to my door.
Before I could say anything, Zion, who had just shown up at your house and surprised me because he knew Tristan was being an ass and he didn’t want me to have to deal with him alone, walked up, and my mom just assumed it was him I was sleeping with.
Not you. When I didn’t correct her, she relaxed.
She was so relieved that it wasn’t you, she said she hadn’t slept the entire night thinking it was you, and then asked If I could imagine the damage and irreparable pain that would cause.
I just…” Frankie shrugged, but Liam could see her trembling, every muscle in her arms and neck flexed as if she were holding herself together by force.
He stared at her, the knot of tension in his chest slowly unwinding, only to be replaced by a different ache, something raw and sad and a little bit hopeful.
“You let her believe it,” he said, not quite a question.