Chapter 10 #2
“It was just a slap.” Frankie waved that off. The bitch slapped Frankie and Edward probably just stood there. She hurried on like it wasn’t important. “The point is, she said that your dad is mine too—that we’re—you and me—we’re siblings.”
“Bull. Shit.” I fired both words like bullets, and when she would have pulled away, I tightened my hand on hers. “No way in hell, Frankie. You are not my sister. I am not your brother. Just not possible.”
At her distressed look, I gave into the desire I’d had since I got in the car. I took her coffee and mine and set them in the cupholders, reached down and shoved her seat back before I unbuckled her and lifted right over into my lap.
She didn’t fight me, thank fuck, and when I had her in my arms I cupped her cheek.
“We’re not related,” I told her. “No way in hell. Babe, I know what my paternal side of the family looks like and you have green eyes. Really beautiful green eyes. Edward and I both have very brown eyes.”
“Mom has green eyes.”
“Don’t care,” I said. “No one in three generations on Edward’s side of the family has anything resembling blue or green. All brown. He doesn’t have a green or blue recessive to match with Maddy’s. You aren’t his.”
She blinked at me slowly.
“You remember studying Mendel’s genetics in biology, right?” It wasn’t her favorite subject, but she’d done well.
“Yes.” Her gaze cut to the side, a frown tightening her brow.
Sliding my hand from her cheek to her hair, I stroked my fingers through it. The violet was really lovely. A bit of a contrast to her green eyes, but it worked well with the blonde.
“Coding for eyes or skin, it’s mostly a fifty-fifty thing from the genes you get from each parent. So, in order to have green eyes, both parents need to have that recessive so that it can combine, even if one of them has brown eyes.”
“Because if there’s no recessive on one side…”
“Exactly. I can do some research, but Edward has brown eyes. My grandfather does and so did my nana. Pretty damn certain both of my great-grandparents on both sides also had dark eyes. The pigment comes from how much melanin you have. Brown eyes have a lot more melanin. It’s dominant to the gene that expresses as blue or green because you have a lot less melanin with that one. ”
Her teeth scraped over her lower lip.
“You are not my sister.” I had never meant something so fiercely in my life.
I would never accept the idea that she was.
“I don’t care if Edward banged every woman from here to Manhattan.
You look just like your mother, but that means whoever your father was, he had to have had that recessive gene. ”
“But what if it goes back even further…” The quiet desperation in her voice scraped me bloody. “You just said it was recessive. What if there was no chance to express it before he and my mom…”
Wetness stung her eyes and made my heart fist.
I was going to kill Edward for this.
“Babe…”
“You can’t say for sure though. Neither of us can.”
Seriously going to kill him and her mother.
“You’re not my sister, Frankie.”
“You don’t—”
“Yes, I do.” And that was it. The thread snapped.
I stopped thinking. Stopped trying to measure the right distance, the right timing, the right version of her that I was allowed to want. I just reached—because after four years of pretending not to, pretending control was the same as calm, I couldn’t anymore.
My lips were on hers before I even fully processed what I was going to do. It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t patient. It was a collision—four years of trying to be good exploding in one impossible heartbeat.
She reacted—sharp inhale, a sound that might’ve been my name. Then her hands were on my chest, not pushing exactly, just trembling like she was trying to catch her balance.
“Archie—”
“I know,” I said against her mouth, or maybe I didn’t say it at all; maybe I just breathed it.
She shook her head, pulling back an inch, lips parted, pupils blown wide. “We can’t.”
I was already ruined for logic. “You can’t say that like it means something.”
“It does,” she said, voice breaking on the word. “It has to.”
So, I kissed her again. Harder this time, like a dare, like maybe I could prove something by the way my hands trembled in her hair. She made a small, desperate sound—half protest, half surrender—and the next second her fingers were in my collar, tugging me closer.
My hand found the back of her neck, thumb brushing the soft skin there, and I deepened the kiss. Every thought I’d buried for four years came unspooled at once. The what-ifs, the timing, the stupid moral lines we’d drawn just to survive. I felt all of it burn away under her mouth.
She tried to speak again—“Archie, please, we shouldn’t—”
“Then stop me.”
She didn’t.
Instead, she sank into the kiss completely—like someone who’d been holding her breath for too long and finally remembered how to inhale.
The world went quiet around us. Just the sound of her pulse under my palm, the faint catch of her breath, the too-sweet taste of her mouth with its hints of coffee, chocolate, and Frankie.
I didn’t know if I was shaking from restraint or relief. Maybe both.
When she finally broke the kiss, she didn’t move far. Her forehead rested against mine, breath warm, uneven. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“I know.” My voice was raw, honest. “I’d do it again.”
Her laugh came out small and broken, but it was still a laugh. “You’re impossible.”
“I’ve been trying to be,” I said. “Because if I wasn’t—” I stopped, swallowing. “If I wasn’t, I’d have done that a long time ago.”
Her eyes found mine then, and for the first time, she didn’t look away. Not even when I whispered, “You can’t say for sure though. Neither of us can.”
She exhaled, the tiniest shake of her head, and then leaned forward until her lips brushed mine again—just once, soft and certain this time. Like a truce. Or maybe a promise neither of us knew how to keep yet.
And maybe that was enough for now.
Because even with all the chaos waiting for us outside the car, with everything that could fall apart, the only thing that felt real in that moment was her—warm, trembling, and absolutely, terrifyingly real in my arms.
Frankie rested her forehead against mine, eyes wide, teetering between panic and disbelief. “What… what do we do?” Her voice was small, almost lost beneath the racing of both our hearts.
I stroked my thumb along her pulse point, wanting to savor holding her. Having her right here with me. Being able to kiss her. At the same time, I was so fucking angry. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got this.”
Her hands gripped my shirt like she was trying to hold on, but the tremor in her fingers betrayed the storm inside her. “Your dad… he seemed—happy about it.” Her voice cracked, soft and haunted. “And… Archie, there’s so much regret. So much hurt for him… for me, for all of it…”
I leaned back slightly, letting her see my face.
I tried to keep the corners of my mouth light, almost teasing, but there was steel beneath it, a slow burn that had nothing to do with the kiss.
“I’d be happy to call you mine too,” I said, shrugging as if it were nothing, even though every inch of me wanted to grab the world and shake it.
Her lips parted, as if she wanted to argue, but then she just swallowed and let the words hang unsaid.
I let my hand cup her jaw, thumb brushing her lower lip. “We’ll figure this out, babe. I promise.”
She blinked at me, fragile and overwhelmed, but something in her shifted—a spark of relief, maybe, or the tiniest bit of trust. I held her there, in the car, letting her lean on me while the world outside waited.
Because I didn’t care about the world right now.
Not when she was here. Not when she was mine.
I didn’t give a damn what I had to do, she was mine and she was going to stay that way.