Chapter 5 #2
I think they already have, but maybe she’s thinking about me kissing the tops of her thighs, too.
I brush my knuckles under her chin, keeping her gaze lifted as I hold her eye contact.
“I’m single. Completely single. And my family is all on the east coast tonight, so midnight is long gone for them. I’m all yours.”
She lets out a stuttering exhale that feels a lot like surprised relief. “Okay.”
“How about you?” I stroke my thumb along her jaw. “Do you have family you want to call at midnight?”
“No, I’m single, too.”
“And what about family?”
“Oh.” She looks vaguely surprised at the question. “I’m an only child, and my mom is on the east coast, too. Fast asleep. And my father…” She laughs and gestures at the busy city below us. “He’s here, but probably already asleep, too.”
“In Vegas?” I can’t keep the disbelief out of my voice.
“He’s not here for the party. I actually didn’t know he would be here this week. My mom was the one who pointed out that our paths would be crossing, and since this is neutral third space, she thought we might be able to defrost our relationship with dinner.”
“Wishful thinking?”
“She’s not… It’s not that idealistic. We’ve never been super close. My dad was absent for most of my childhood. My mom was too present.”
“Ah. Controlling?”
“Yeah. I, um, was quite the rebel as a teenager—”
“Dr. Francesca!”
She looks pleased at my reaction. “I know, right?”
“What did rebelling look like for you?”
She kicks her ankle up behind her. “I got my first tattoo when I was fifteen. Drank a lot of their booze.” She looks at me carefully for a moment, as if she’s weighing up if she wants to say whatever she’s going to share next, and then she gets a defiant little look in her eye, and suddenly I can clearly see the kind of bratty teenager she was.
“I discovered how much fun it was to fool around with boys, too.”
I fucking bet she did. “Yeah?”
“Mmm.”
“And that was fun?”
A wicked smile curves at her pretty mouth. “Very.”
I laugh out loud. “We all have a wild stage.”
“Tell that to my parents,” she mutters.
“But—and I know we’ve just met—aren’t you a different person now? That was what, a decade ago? You’re almost finished with medical school!”
“I wish that impressed them.” Her voice goes tight at the end.
“I can’t imagine how being a doctor is wrong to someone.”
“I’m going into emergency medicine.” She hunches her shoulders up to her ears.
I slide my jacket off and wrap it around her. “That’s really cool.”
“Not to my parents. They just see it as more of my rebellious streak. The worst part is that if I were a boy—he wanted a boy—my dad would probably love that I want to be an ER doc. That’s the right kind of reckless for a son. But I was supposed to…” She trails off.
“If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay. But I’m all ears if you do.” I say quietly.
She turns, leaning her hip against the railing.
The hotel lights make her eyes golden from this angle.
She studies me for a long moment, and I can see her deciding something.
Finally, she takes a sip of champagne and says, “My dad and I haven’t really spoken in almost ten years.
Not properly. Tonight was the first time I’ve seen him in maybe three years, and it was.
..” She shakes her head. “It was exactly what I expected and somehow still disappointing.”
“What happened? If you want to tell me.”
“Tonight?”
“Or in the past? Whatever you want to share.”
She waves her hand. “Tonight was nothing. Stilted conversation because he doesn’t understand my choices.
Me falling for the usual traps. Etcetera.
My father is very good at making you doubt yourself, at picking at normal fraying moments and turning them into potential disasters.
And if you don’t listen to him, he takes that personally.
It’s deeply narcissistic and exhausting.
We don’t see eye to eye on almost anything, and he’s so closed off.
I’ve never been able to get through to him about—”
She takes a deep breath.
“Sorry, I get worked up. It’s hard to maintain a relationship with someone who doesn’t have any curiosity about how and why I’m the person I am today.”
I brush a strand of hair back from her face. “I’m curious about you, Dr. Francesca. Very curious.”
That puts a challenging glint in her eye.
“I get really passionate about things like substance use and other things that we criminalize unnecessarily, like getting into financial trouble. My father can be a real jackass about stuff like that, and if I challenge him on it, trying to get him to be more understanding about how people get into trouble, he threatens to cut me off. So everything is an endless negotiation and I know I should just cut the strings and take out student loans instead, but those are fucking predatory, too, and it’s like—” She tosses her head back and lets out a very frustrated growl.
I shouldn’t find it sexy as fuck, but I do. “Yeah, those are all real issues. Including the student loans issue. I’m really lucky that wasn’t a factor for me, but I know how privileged that makes me.”
“Yeah?” She searches my face, then nods. “I mean, same. But I think we should use our privilege as much as we can to help people, you know?”
“I do, yeah.”
She exhales. “Good. Good.” She worries her lower lip.
“So in the past…” She sighs. “When I was sixteen, I fell madly in love with the wrong boy. Or what I thought was love. Really learned a lesson there. This guy was like…the son my dad always wanted. And I dunno, there was probably an element of me wanting to prove something there, that I was enough, that I was valued.”
The words come out in a rush, like she’s ripping off a bandage.
“He was twenty, so we kept it a secret. It wasn’t, like, this big scandalous thing—we genuinely liked each other, he wasn’t grooming me or anything, but it still felt taboo.”
I have my own thoughts about that age difference, but since it was a decade ago, I don’t react.
And I’m glad I don’t, because of what she confesses next.
“That was probably part of the appeal, in hindsight. But I thought— Well, anyway, my dad had no clue. Until he caught us one day, and suddenly I was the reason this guy’s career wasn’t clicking into place the way it should.
They got into it, we got into it. We broke up, because it definitely wasn’t love, actually.
I didn’t speak to my dad for months, and then I left for college, which he only agreed to pay for if I went to an all-girls school. ”
The anger in her voice makes my chest tight. “Francesca—”
“And the worst part?” She’s on a roll now, the words pouring out.
“The absolute worst part is that his relief when we broke up wasn’t about me.
It was never about me. It was about his chosen son’s focus.
Except the guy never got his shit together, and my dad still blamed me.
And when I told him I wanted to go to medical school, wanted to be an ER doctor, he said I was making another selfish choice.
That I’d never have a normal family life working those hours.
As if he has any room to talk about being present for family. ”
I haul her in close. “Your dad’s an idiot.”
That startles a laugh out of her. “Logan—”
“No, I’m serious. He’s an idiot and probably a terrible father, and I’m sorry you had to grow up with that.” I pull her closer. “But can I tell you what I see when I look at you?”
“What?” Her voice is barely a whisper.
“I see someone who’s about to become a doctor.
Who’s smart enough to match their top residency choice and confident enough to know it.
” I tangle my free hand in her hair and kiss her forehead.
“I see someone who is fearless enough to choose her own path in life.” I grip her hair gently and tip her head back so she can see my face when I say this part.
“You might be the most interesting person I’ve ever met in my entire life. ”
Francesca looks up at me, her face open and vulnerable in a way that makes my heart stutter. “You don’t even know me.”
“I know enough to know I need to know more.”
She rises on her toes, her hands sliding up my chest. I can feel the heat of her palms through my shirt. My heart is pounding so hard I’m sure she can feel it. “How many birthday kisses are we at now?”
“Seventeen.” The crowd around us is getting louder, the countdown imminent, but I don’t care. All I care about is this woman, this moment, this perfect night.
“Eighteen,” she whispers, and this time it’s a serious kiss.
I return it the way I’ve been wanting to since she first walked into that bar.
Slowly, deeply, savouring the kiss and trying to memorize every detail.
The way she tastes, like champagne and birthday cake.
The eager tightening of her fingers at the nape of my neck, the warmth of her body inside my jacket.
The almost feral sound she makes when I curl my tongue against hers.
How fucking good her curves feel through that satiny dress. The nip of her waist, the flare of her hips. Back up to her waist, and then higher, almost to her tits. I can’t get her close enough to me, and our mouths are fused now, both of us groaning.
It’s not until the countdown starts that I realize how close we’ve gotten to midnight.
“Ten! Nine! Eight!”
I rest my forehead against hers, not wanting to lose the contact as the whole city chants the final seconds of my birthday.
“Seven! Six! Five!”
“Happy birthday,” Francesca whispers.
“Four! Three! Two!”
“Marry me,” I hear myself saying, but then it’s midnight and the words are drowned out by the fireworks exploding over the Strip.
“Happy New Year!”
Sparkling colors paint the sky in dazzling, crackling wonder.
She laughs and pulls me back down for another kiss. Blindly, I reach for the champagne bottle and pull it in between us, tilting it over her open mouth, and she swallows the fizzy sweetness eagerly.
“Your turn,” she says breathlessly.
Holding on to the railing, I crouch so she’s above me and open my mouth obediently. She pours champagne into it, messy and excessive, and it’s so fucking fun.
She’s wiping her eyes by the time I stand up again, she’s laughing so hard.
“I can’t remember the last time I felt this good.” She takes a deep breath and beams at me. “This light and free.”
“Yeah,” I say hoarsely. “Me too.”