Chapter 5
She kept her head down as she jumped up into my truck, closing the door next to her with zero strength behind it. Which meant it didn’t latch.
My classic square-body pickup truck was a collector's item, but that didn’t mean it worked perfectly all the time.
“What’s the trick?” She asked, pulling on the useless handle that didn’t work right all the time either.
“Here.” I leaned across the bench seat and yanked it just right and then slammed it shut. “Like that.”
I could smell her shampoo when I leaned across her, and I hated that I liked it. I shouldn’t fucking like it.
Liking it felt wrong now. Since seeing her with Eli a few minutes ago.
Kissing him. Damn, she was really fucking kissing him.
When I first walked into the dark room, I thought maybe he had been pushing her into it, using her emotional distress to get her to finally fold to his charm.
But that had only lasted a moment, because in the next she moaned, and pulled him closer, gripping his shirt and leaning up on her toes to kiss him back.
Deeper.
Harder.
And it all became so painfully obvious to me in the darkness.
I couldn’t give her that.
Sure, the physical connection I could compete with, I knew without a doubt that if I somehow convinced Frankie to kiss me, there would be an explosion of chemistry. I wasn’t talking about that.
I was talking about what happened before and after their kiss.
The emotions.
Eli told her she was incredible. He validated her fears and struggles. He comforted her.
I couldn’t do that. I didn’t know how. There wasn’t a tender bone in my body, and she obviously wanted that—wanted him.
Which made the tension in my truck cab, built in the silence around the hum of the heater and the soft breaths from her in the passenger seat, even worse for me. That’s all it would ever be—tension.
On my part, not hers.
I was hanging on by a thread, every annoying tick of my turn signal threatened to push me over the edge as I drove her across town.
Part of me wished she’d yell at me for spying on them, or even give me some crass, snarky jab about making her ride home with me. Yet she just wouldn’t fucking budge, and with each second of silence, I cracked, getting dangerously closer to telling her the truth.
Eli’s hushed words echoed through my brain as I left the room, I knew I wasn’t supposed to hear them, but that didn’t change anything now.
“Think of me when you kiss him goodnight.”
What the hell was that? He handed her off to me to drive home like it was some—team effort. Like I was there to pick up where he left off and help out with the cause.
Fuck, that made me angry enough to clench the steering wheel so tight my knuckles ached, groaning in sync with the stitched leather.
I wasn’t angry at Frankie, not really. Even though I wanted to be after watching her kiss Eli so passionately. That part didn’t even really bother me, aside from making me green with envy. I wasn’t even angry with Eli for making a move on her.
I was angry at how badly I wanted to be that guy—the one who always knew the right thing to say. The one who made people feel safe and secure just by smiling. The one who made even Frankie Blake melt and soften for him.
Instead, I was the rough-edged man who sat there, feeling like a third wheel in my own goddamn truck.
When I pulled into her driveway, my headlights sliced across the front lawn as I parked by the small front porch. Still, she didn’t speak.
Still, I didn’t move.
Say something, Trav.
Do something!
Nothing would come to mind though, or better yet, millions of things came to mind, I just didn’t know how to do them. I was no good at that stuff.
“You’re mad.” She breathed, and my hands instinctively tightened around the wheel again as I stared off into the darkness.
“I’m not mad.”
“Bullshit.”
The quick snap of her strong voice was enough to draw my face around in her direction and make me look at her.
Really look at her.
Her cheeks were still pink, but not from the harsh cold air outside. Her eyes were glassy but sharp. She cried not long ago, and she looked like she might do it again.
Though she looked more like she might rip my head off instead.
Instead of fighting her on it, I shook my head, staring at her glowing green eyes, and asked “What do you want me to say, Frankie?”
“Whatever it is that’s making you act like you’re trying not to feel anything at all.” She demanded.
I let out a humorless laugh and shoved the gearshift into park.
“Fine. I saw you and Eli. I watched him kiss you and say all the right shit and make you feel seen. Good for him.” I turned on the bench seat and faced her, putting my arm against the back of the seat, “And I’m trying to sit here and act like it doesn’t gut me. ”
Her lips parted, “Travis,” her breath hitched.
“You don’t owe me anything,” I added quickly, tasting the bitterness of it. “He’s your type, right? Smooth, charming, outgoing. Everyone loves Eli.”
But even as I said the words, I knew there was more to it. I forced myself to trust my gut. And my gut told me that there was something in her eyes all those times she would look at me over the last few years. All those times her lips wouldn’t say all the things her mind wanted her to.
“Are you seriously jealous of your best friend right now?” she asked, stunned.
I scoffed, sitting back against the door. “Are you seriously trying to pretend that you aren’t torn between the two of us?”
That shut her up.
The words hung between us, thick and dangerous. Her chest heaved, and my blood roared as we stared through the darkness. Somehow, it felt like we were burning bridges we’d never be able to walk back over once the sun came up.
“I didn’t ask for any of this.” She whispered, “I’m not asking for it. I don’t even want it.”
“Sure.” I scoffed, angry with myself for admitting that I was hung up over her and jealous of Eli, now that she was admitting my biggest fear. She didn’t want me.
“Why the hell are you making me feel like the villain for being caught in the middle?” She snapped, shoving me with her fist against my chest.
I didn’t rise to the bait though, because she was right. Frankie was stuck in the middle between two guys who wanted her. Yet she wanted only one back. That wasn’t her fault.
“You kissed him back.” I said quietly, more for myself than for her.
I’d been biting my tongue for years. Watching her. Wanting her. Yet I never stood a chance.
“Yeah,” She whispered, and her shoulders fell as I finally looked back at her, “But I haven’t stopped thinking about what it would feel like to kiss you since.”
My blood ran cold and heated to lava in the same second as her white teeth bit into her bottom lip.
Her face didn’t show anger or frustration, from my outburst or pitting her as the bad guy.
No, that would have been easy to deal with. That would have been familiar to me.
When I stared at her in the dark, silent cab of my truck, I saw something new on her face.
Need.
It wasn’t casual. It wasn’t flirtatious.
It was raw.
Honest.
Wrecked.
And suddenly, I didn’t think. I moved. Before I even knew it, I was out of the truck and around to her side, yanking the door open and catching her as she jumped out. Her breath puffed into the air in quick pants; her eyes were wide.
Then her hands were grabbing the front of my shirt, and mine were on her face, pulling her into me as I kissed her.
Fuck.
I was kissing Frankie Blake.
Dammit if she didn’t kiss me back with the same enthusiasm I had envied seeing with Eli earlier. I could feel her desperation with every move she made.
Teeth. Tongue. Hands. Fingernails.
Frankie gasped into my mouth as her fists curled into my shirt, pinning herself between me and the seat of my truck. I growled when my hard-on pressed against her stomach, and she pushed back against it.
“Is this what you were wondering about, Frankie?” I said against her lips, baiting her and toying with the fire she always tried to burn everyone with.
“You kiss like you fight on the ice.” She whispered breathlessly. “I knew you would.”
“And you kiss like you need saving.” I murmured back. “But don’t make me your safe place unless you mean it.”
She scoffed, and I could see the moment she went to make a smart-ass comment back, but stopped herself. Instead, she paused and then replied, “What if I want both?” She asked gently. “What if you both make me feel safe in different ways?”
And then it was my turn to stay silent. I didn’t reply because I didn’t have an answer for her.
Instead, I kissed her again.
And she kissed me back.
Even though her kids were next door at her mom’s for the night, and I wanted nothing more than to take her inside and spend the night in her bed, I didn’t.
But only because as I walked her to her front door and waited for her to walk inside, and turn off her porch light, the same question ran through my head on repeat.
What scared me more?
The fact that I finally had something I wanted to win—or that I might be willing to share her just to keep from losing her?