Chapter 24
Frances
Lucky’s asleep beside me, deep and peaceful, one arm thrown across the sheets as if still reaching for me even in his dreams. I stay still for a moment, listening to his breathing, letting the sound calm me. Then I roll just a smidge to the side and look around the room again, this ridiculous, beautiful hotel room.
When Lucky said he had booked a room for us, this was not what I expected to find. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect it to be in a five-star hotel right smack in the middle of the city, much less it being the honeymoon suite.
Lucky wouldn’t be Lucky if he didn’t do things big. That’s just how he lives his life—big and loud. Is it any wonder that he’d love like that too?
From the moment I walked into the hotel room and saw the rose petals and the flickering candlelight, I knew he had put a lot of thought into every small detail to make tonight perfect. Though he really didn’t have to try so hard.
I throw a glance at the half glass of champagne that sits on the nightstand, its bubbles long gone. Then to the chocolate-covered strawberries that we barely touched, one bite taken out of the first before we got distracted.
I smile to myself, brushing a curl out of his gorgeous face, thinking about how he went all out for our date. Not just to impress me, but to take care of me. To make tonight… matter.
I press the sheet closer to my chest as if trying to hold all my feelings in. Though I know he would have preferred my first time to have been in this sweet, romantic setting, I’m glad it happened exactly as it did. Because it was real.
Losing my virginity in the backseat of a car is as close to living a normal teenage experience as I’ve ever got. And that’s the part that scares me. Because my life is anything but normal. And Lucky’s? I don’t think his life is the epitome of normal either. I mean, what senior in high school could afford a hotel room like this? Only Luciano Romano, apparently.
Needing a minute to myself, I slip out of bed as quietly as possible and grab the robe hanging off the back of the chair. It smells like him, like hotel soap and aftershave and something a little bit wild underneath. I wrap it around me and walk over to the floor-to-ceiling windows. The city is still alive out there, neon and noise even at this late hour, but up here it’s quiet. Up here, I can breathe.
Until I can’t.
Until it all crashes in on me, hard and fast, like a tidal wave I didn’t see coming.
I told him I loved him.
God, how selfish is that?
To say something so dangerous to both our hearts when I know better.
When I know there’s no future here. No safe landing.
I can’t love Lucky. Not really. Not the way he deserves.
What world does a girl like me end up with a guy like him anyway? Fairy tales don’t belong to people like me. I know how stories like this end and it’s not with white puffy princess dresses and happily-ever-afters. It’s with bruised hearts and broken promises.
Maybe Lucky’s had fairy dust scattered across his life and still believes in such magic. But me? I’ve lived long enough to know the clock always strikes midnight. The spell always breaks. And when it does, one of us will be in a world of hurt. And I’m positive it’s going to be me.
Damn it.
How could I have been this stupid? To let my feelings cloud my judgment? I always knew he was trouble. Lucky was the kind of trouble you saw coming from a mile away but ran toward anyway. No matter how much I hated him initially, it was only a matter of time until that hate turned into something else. Something that would scar me much deeper. Something that would forever change the person that I am.
God, why did I have to tell him that I loved him back?
Why didn’t I just lie and save us the pain that is sure to follow?
“I can hear your thoughts from way over here,” his voice calls out to me, lazy and deep. “Come back to bed. It’s cold without you in it.”
I turn around and melt a little at the sight before me. Lucky is sprawled across the bed as if he owns it. Because let’s face it, he does, in the way only someone like him can. The sheet hangs low on his hips, barely clinging to modesty, and the candlelight throws golden shadows across his bare chest. Muscle and sinew, all hard lines and soft tanned skin, as if he were carved from something ancient and wild and… all man.
His eyes are half-lidded but locked on me with that look he gets when he sees more than I want to give away. That look that tells me he knows me, whether I want him to or not. The look that says he can read my every thought, expose every secret.
He shifts slightly, one arm tucked behind his head while the other reaches toward my side of the bed. “Seriously, Frankie,” he murmurs, voice like gravel and velvet, “stop looking at me like you’re already gone. You’re not. You’re here. With me. So be here… with me.”
And just like that, my heart does that stupid thing again—stumbles, catches, aches. Because I want to go to him. God, I want to. But I also want to run. Run as fast as I can away from the suffering I’m sure is close behind.
“Have it your way, then,” he says before throwing the covers aside and rising from the bed in one fluid, unbothered motion, completely unapologetic in his nakedness as if shame were a foreign language. “If you don’t come to me, then I’ll come to you.”
My breath stalls as he crosses the room like sin made of flesh. Once he’s too close for comfort, I take a step back until the cool glass of the window is at my spine, stealing the warmth from my skin. Still, Lucky doesn’t stop. He marches right at me, crowding me to the window. One of his hands finds my hip, his fingers curling around it as if my body has always belonged to him, while the other gently tilts my chin up until my gaze is forced to meet his.
“Hi,” he says, low and warm.
“Hi,” I echo, my voice barely above a whisper, hating how my body betrays me and melts into his touch, arms winding around his neck as if they’ve missed him.
“Let’s have it then,” he murmurs, thumb brushing along my jaw. “Whatever’s in that pretty head of yours, say it. Let’s talk it out.”
“I’m not sure you’ll like what I have to say.”
He lets out a smile—one that is slow and too damn sexy for his own good—before tugging at the belt of my robe. It falls open with ease, his smirk widening now that he has full access to me.
“Say it anyway,” he says, letting his palm drift down from the curve of my collarbone to the softness of my belly, lingering there. “I’m sure I can find a way for it not to sting so much.”
My heart pounds with the intent in his eyes. “Tonight was…. wonderful.” I swallow hard. “But we… us… can’t happen.”
“Is that so?” His hand glides up, warm and steady, his touch both soothing and maddening. “Tell me why not. I’m listening.”
“Because,” I begin, but the word disintegrates the second his fingers brush over my nipple, teasing it with just enough pressure to make my knees go weak.
“You were saying?” he asks, smug and infuriating, and beautiful in a way that makes me ache.
“How am I supposed to have a serious conversation with you when—”
“When what, Frankie?” he interrupts, voice darker now. “When I touch what’s mine?”
“I’m not—” but my protest dies on a moan as his mouth closes over my nipple, sucking, claiming, before pulling back with a loud, wet pop that echoes in the silence around us.
“You’re not what?” he murmurs in amusement. “Mine? Yeah, Frankie. You are. You’ve been mine since the second you walked into my world. Might as well wrap that pretty head around it now because, like I told you before, you can’t get rid of me now. I’m not going anywhere. Not now. Not ever.”
His conviction is what shatters me.
I shove at his chest with everything I have, pushing him back a step. “Don’t say that! You can’t say stuff like that to me.”
“Why not?” he shoots back, steady and unflinching, fingers firm beneath my chin as he holds my gaze. “This… us… it’s happening. So go ahead, lay it on me. Give me every excuse you’ve got. Tell me why you can’t be mine! Go ahead! Say it!”
“Because!” I shout back.
“Not good enough! Tell me!”
“Because… everybody leaves!”
When the words fall out of my mouth, Lucky isn’t the only one shocked by them.
Is that the real reason why I don’t think we have a future?
Because my baggage somehow has affected all my relationships, all my decision-making, all my hopes and dreams for something real?
Am I making excuses to not be happy for fear of actually being happy and having it ripped from under me?
Does my reluctance to let Lucky love me stem from my fear of abandonment?
I’m still trying to grasp what I’m feeling when Lucky leans in closer, his voice a hushed whisper against my lips, tender now but no less certain.
“I won’t leave you. I’ll never leave you.”
“You don’t know that,” I choke out, feeling tears start to burn my eyes.
“Yes, I do,” he vows. “Do you think this shit happens to a guy like me often? That falling in love was even in my plans? It wasn’t, Frankie. But none of it matters to me anymore. Not the fear. Not the mess. Not the past. Just you. You’re the only thing that matters to me. Only you. Always you.”
I press my forehead against his chest, shaking my head as unwanted tears start to run down my cheeks, and state, “How can you sound so certain? How many love stories do you know that have a happy ending that started in high school? It’s fantasy. It’s not real. I can’t base my life on a fantasy. I can’t. I won’t.”
“Look at me, Frankie,” he orders, his voice holding that same sweetness—one I don’t think I deserve right now. I crane my head back, his chestnut eyes so full of the love he claims to have for me that it physically hurts to look at them. “This is real. Yes, we’re young, so what? My parents were kids when they fell in love, and guess what? They’re still going strong. It only means we found each other sooner than most. That means we’re both lucky. Lucky to have found that missing piece of us we didn’t know was missing. Can’t you see, Frankie? Can’t you see that you’re the only one for me? The only girl who has me saying cheesy shit and actually meaning every word of it.”
“It’s not cheesy,” I hiccup on a sob. “It’s… romantic.”
“No, babe. It’s just the truth.” He shrugs with a timid grin, cupping my face in his hands. “It’s my truth. I love you. And I’ll fight for you. Even when you want to give up on us.”
“I don’t want to give up.” I sob. “I’m just…”
“Afraid,” he finishes for me. “You don’t think I am too? I’m fucking terrified over here,” he admits, his Adam’s apple bobbing a mile a minute. “But that’s okay. I’m okay with being scared as long as you’re by my side. Are you by my side?”
“I want to be,” I finally admit. “I really do.”
“Because you love me?” he asks, his brown eyes pleading with mine.
“Yes,” I mutter softly. “Because I love you.”
“Then don’t give up on us,” he orders, pressing a tender kiss on my lips. “Just let me love you, Frankie. Let me prove to you that this… is real. That it’s everything. ”
His mouth moves over mine, slow at first, reverent, as if memorizing the shape of my lips all over again. There’s no rush in him, no urgency, just a quiet kind of devotion that undoes me more than anything he could say. Any promise that he could make.
“God, I want you so bad,” he breathes against my skin, his forehead resting against mine. “Do you want me?”
I nod, unable to form words, too full of emotion to do anything but feel.
I’m already against the glass, my back flushed on it, the chill sinking into my skin through my robe, but I barely feel it. All I feel is him. The heat of his stare. The burn of his skin against mine. The warmth of his love.
The city sprawls out behind me, endless lights blinking like distant stars, but none of it matters. Not when he’s looking at me like this. Up here, above it all, we’re not just untouchable. We’re ourselves. Raw. Real. Unafraid.
“Let them see,” he whispers, his voice rough with need, as he pulls my robe off me ever so gently. “Let the whole damn world see how beautiful you are. How much I love you. How you belong to me… how I fucking belong to you.”
Once the robe falls to my feet, he lifts me with ease, my legs wrapping around his waist on instinct alone, as if we’ve done this a thousand times in every lifetime we found each other. His hands explore my body with surreal confidence as if charting a map he already knows by heart—slow, sure, patient.
“How sore are you, baby?” he asks before peppering my shoulder with kisses while needling my nipple to the point of exquisite pain.
“I’m good… I’m good,” I utter, breathless, my eyelids growing heavy with want.
“Liar,” he smirks, but his smug grin falls off his face when I start sucking on his earlobe and grind against him slowly, deliberately, so I can feel just how hard he is, how ready, how much restraint he’s barely holding onto.
“Just show me. Please,” I whisper, the last word torn from somewhere deep inside. “Just show me how much you love me.”
“Fuck. Like I’ll ever stop,” he grunts, positioning his crown to my already-soaked center.
When he thrusts inside me, it’s not frantic or hurried but deep and deliberate. It’s almost as if he’s making a promise with his body, as well as his heart. A promise that he intends to keep.
My heart splinters open with every slow thrust.
Lucky rocks into me with a rhythm that feels like music only we can hear, his mouth pressing soft, desperate kisses along my shoulder, my jaw, and the hollow of my throat. Every movement says that he’s not going anywhere. Every touch says that he’ll keep my heart safe.
He thrusts into me with a groan that sounds like surrender. My head falls back against the cold glass, a shocking contrast to the fire between us. He moves with purpose, each thrust deeper than the last, his hands gripping my hips, guiding me into the rhythm, drawing breathy moans from my lips with every stroke.
“You feel like heaven,” he rasps, kissing the hollow of my throat, his tongue flicking the pulse there. “So fucking sweet.”
His mouth trails lower, dragging fire along my skin, down my collarbone, across the swell of my breast, until he latches onto my nipple and sucks with the kind of hunger that leaves me trembling, gasping his name.
My fingers thread through his hair, tugging, anchoring me to this moment as his thrusts grow faster, deeper, more desperate. The glass behind me fogs with each breath, each cry, each whispered plea I didn’t know I was capable of making.
Every drag of him inside me feels like a promise written in fire. Every moan from his lips is a confession.
When his forehead drops against mine again, his eyes locked on mine, our bodies slick and trembling, he whispers, “Come for me, Frankie. Let go. Let me have you. Let me have all of you.”
And I do. I fall apart in his arms, body arching, legs tightening around him, mouth open in a silent cry that only he could pull from me. My release crashes over me like a wave, like a storm, shattering everything I thought I knew about pleasure, about love, about being seen.
Lucky follows with a curse and a groan, burying himself deep as he comes undone inside me, every muscle taut, every breath ragged. We shake together, our bodies locked, and our souls stripped bare.
Then, for a long, aching moment, there’s only silence. Only us.
I hold onto him, burying my face in his neck as the city lights blur behind us. And in that moment, against the glass and the night sky, I stop running and let myself fall—into him, into this, into us.
“I’m not going to become a nun, am I?”
“No, baby, you’re not. The only vow you’re making is to me one day.”