Chapter 27 #2
Francesca sniffled. Lifting one trembling hand to touch his cheek, she admitted, “I’m just re-really happy.”
His dark brows drew together. “And that made you cry?”
“Yes.” She scrubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand, wishing more than anything that she could just let something good happen for once.
“I’m really, really happy when I’m with you.
And I’m so, so happy to be with you-with you.
But I can’t ever seem to turn off this part of my brain that feels guilty for being happy and like at any moment you’re gonna disappear because I don’t deserve it. ”
“Why wouldn’t you deserve it?” The question was soft but insistent, and when he gently pried her hand away from her eyes, the look on his face was firm. “What could possibly make you think you don’t deserve every bit of happiness the gods have to give you?”
She couldn’t answer. Her throat felt like it was lined with knives, making it impossible to speak.
But she didn’t need to.
Luis searched her face for a long moment before a slow look of realization dawned. “That’s why you work so hard, isn’t it? Why you don’t do anything for yourself. Why you joined the Games. You think you have to.”
Grasping her chin, he forced her to look in his eyes when he demanded, “What brought you back to United Washington, Frankie?”
It took an enormous amount of effort but she did somehow manage to get the words past her lips. “I’m looking for my sister.”
There was a beat of silence before he asked, “What happened to her?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered, tears slowing until they stopped entirely.
“We weren’t real sisters. We were born in the same ward and given up at the same time — or just a few days apart, anyway.
Then we were sent to the same children’s home.
We were inseparable until we turned five and… I was adopted. She wasn’t.”
Luis stroked her hair back from her face again, careful to get every strand out of the damp trails left behind by tears. “And you feel like it shouldn’t have happened that way. That you got the good deal and she didn’t.”
“I don’t know what she got,” Francesca answered, breath hitching painfully.
“That’s what kills me. For years I thought it wasn’t fair I got picked and she didn’t.
Then I comforted myself thinking that she probably got a wonderful family after me.
But… but then I got older, and I realized I had no evidence for that.
I looked. Tried to find her. Couldn’t. And then I thought…
what if she didn’t? What if I got the loving parents and she stayed there without me? ”
“I don’t understand. If you were so close why didn’t your parents take you both?”
Francesca touched his chest. She found his heart hammering there, a contradiction to the calm face he presented to her.
“Adoption is complicated and expensive and… there’s no perfect way to do it.
And I come from a normal family, Luis. With normal limitations.
Not like yours. Even if my parents could’ve afforded to adopt two kids, they might not have been able to get approval from the government for another for months, years, if not ever.
” She shook her head. “And the truth is that they didn’t even know how much she meant to me for a really long time.
I was a quiet kid and I was adjusting and I was scared they wouldn’t want me anymore if I complained. I just… didn’t tell them.”
Luis sat up. He’d gone tense, those powerful shoulders and torso tensing. “But they couldn’t have let you keep in touch at least?”
Francesca sat up, too. Wrapping her arms around her chest, she sighed, “At the time there was a strict no contact policy in place. The administrators believed a clean break helped with bonding parents and children.”
“Fuck.” He laid a hand on the side of her head. Thumb brushing her cheek, he surmised, “So you came here looking for her. But why did you need that much money?”
“My parents do need help,” she admitted.
“They had to sell their house a while back because they couldn’t afford it anymore.
At first I took Easton’s offer because he promised me a few thousand dollars.
That would’ve been huge for me. It could’ve paid for a private investigator at least. But then when we found out I was a golden anchor, I realized I could get their house back, too. I couldn’t say no.”
A look she could only describe as self-loathing came over him. “I’m sorry,” he grated. “I’m sorry I never asked. I’m sorry I— Fuck. I’m just fucking sorry, Frankie.”
Feeling lighter than she had in a very long time, she tipped forward until she could rest her forehead on his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her immediately, cocooning her in warmth.
“You’re forgiven for being a jerk.”
He breathed out a long, pained exhale. “Thank you.”
“I feel bad for all the people who died, but I don’t feel bad that it meant you won.” She peeked up at him through damp lashes. “Does that make me a bad person?”
Luis pressed a kiss to her temple. Rocking her gently, he answered, “Nah. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. We all know the score.”
She curled her fingers in the open sides of his shirt. “I’m sorry about all the crying and baggage. I really am happy. I swear. I really liked it when you bit me.”
“I’m not sorry about the crying,” he murmured. “It means you trust me. That’s better than blood.”
“How was it, by the way?”
“What?”
“My special blood,” she reminded him, a little miffed that it was required.
Luis let out a hoarse laugh. It shook the shoulder beneath her and that gorgeous, deep, hairy chest she loved. “Oh, you mean the greatest experience of my fucking life? It was pretty good. Might want to try again. Just to confirm.”
A sly smile tugged at her mouth. “Worth the hundred thousand dollar entry fee?”
“Your blood is the single most delicious thing I can possibly imagine. It’s… indescribable. I get why vampires fought wars for golden anchors now.” His voice trembled again, like the force with which he spoke struggled to come through the words.
Luis let out a hard exhale. “But if I never got to taste you, I’d still pay whatever it took to spend even a moment with you, Frankie. Your blood is a gift, but you… You’re my everything.”
Whispering into her hair, he promised her, “Someday when I die, that’s the last thing I’m going to think about.
Right before the lights go out. I’m gonna remember the taste of you on my tongue.
” He guided her head up from his shoulder for a slow, deep kiss that tasted sugar-sweet and a little bloody.