by Heather Long
Her sigh tugged at me.
“You want to go somewhere and eat? We don’t have to go back to the apartment.” Maybe she was just sick of being inside?
“Could we? Archie drove me around the lake, but maybe we could go find a picnic table or something?” She glanced down at herself. She didn’t have on real pants, but the old boxers covered everything.
“I’ll find us somewhere. Pick what you wanna eat.”
The surge of excitement in her expression gave me wings. She was sick of being trapped inside. Frankie was an active person. Okay. We could fix this. It took me fifteen minutes to get the last order delivered, and she’d picked Korean barbecue—not a shock considering by the time I got to that place I was ready to eat their food. I logged off and then turned us back around.
She looked a little pale by the time we had the food in the car, and I flipped open one of the boxes and offered her the edamame. “Munch while I find us a place to eat.”
The lake would be the obvious choice, but I had a better idea. Somewhere that also wouldn’t be heavily populated this time of day. She didn’t want to see people, she just wanted to be outside. So I cut across town and past flag pole hill toward the Pennywhistle Park. It had been a little amusement place for kids back in the day, but since it closed, they’d cleared a lot of the area and tried to fix up the outdoor park. Still, no one hung out there—at least, not that I’d ever seen.
But there were picnic tables and trees and quiet and sunshine. So I navigated around the old dilapidated building and parked under an oak tree. In the spring, that thing shed pollen like mad, but the leaves hadn’t even begun to turn colors yet. Our autumn wouldn’t really hit until sometime in November. While they counted snowflakes up north, we might get some rain and eventually colorful trees.
I could count on the fingers of one hand how often we got snow here. Anyway, Frankie let out a little laugh as she glanced around. “Okay, this place is creepy when deserted.”
“Yeah, but it’s daytime, so not scary creepy, right?” ’Cause if it was scary, fuck that, we’d go somewhere else.
“No, not scary. Kind of weird though.” She opened her door after I shut off the car, and slid her feet into her shoes before climbing out. I snagged my drink and the bag of food while she grabbed hers. It wasn’t hot, if anything, it was actually a nice day. Warm, breezy, and sunny. The humidity didn’t suck.
Mouth widened into a yawn, she broke off with a laugh, then cast me an apologetic look. “Sorry.”
“Nope, you can be sleepy. We just drove around for hours. Mom used to do that with Sis when she was little, remember?”
“Vaguely,” Frankie said. “I remember you complaining mostly that you had to ride around in the car and be quiet, and you’d get bored.”
Yeah. That sounded like me.
I shrugged and nodded toward the picnic table. There was playground equipment not that far away. It had been there since we were kids. Though they’d definitely upgraded some of it. “It was boring, but it made her go to sleep, which was the point.”
Spreading out our feast, I let her pick where she wanted to sit and then nodded to the spot next to her.
She grinned and patted the bench. Good, better to be invited than to hover more. We’d gotten a little bit of everything, but Frankie’s favorite was the beef bulgogi, so I got that out for her first and passed her a plastic fork before I dug into my barbecue chicken. When she offered me a bite of hers, I traded with a bite of mine.
“You remember when we used to come here?” She motioned toward the old building with its mini-amusement park inside, or what had been a mini-amusement park. At five and six, that place had been awesome. We had to be good to come, too. My mom brought us a lot.
“Yeah, I remember,” I told her. “I was kind of sad when they closed it.”
“We were twelve,” she reminded me. “We’d already outgrown it.”
“Sure, but you don’t miss it? It was fun.”
“A little, but I kind of like going to the bigger amusement parks with you now.”
I grinned. “Well, lucky for you, we still have that option.”
“I’m glad your birthday was before,” she admitted, and I paused mid-bite.
“Selfishly, me too. But I’d have been okay if this was how I spent my birthday with you.” I’d had a damn good time on my birthday, before, during, and after the trip to Six Flags.
She nudged her sunglasses up and then pushed them higher so they rested on her hair and she could meet my gaze. I loved her eyes. They were the perfect shade of green. I’d never found anything that matched them, not a shirt, not a blade of grass, nothing. They were her eyes. Hell, I’d even looked at emeralds in a catalog once.
Nope. Not her shade at all.
“I somehow think truth or dare wouldn’t have been on the table.”
My cock swelled at the reminder. Fuck. “Then we would have played it later,” I told her. “You forget, I’m really patient.”
“You’ve also not given me a real good morning kiss since before.”
Frowning, I said, “Your lip was split, and you’re hurting. I’m not going to grind into you like I can’t control myself until you’re feeling better.”
“That’s fair,” she admitted, then grimaced. When she turned her attention to her food, I bumped her knee with mine.
“Talk to me.”
“I talked to Jake a little about it yesterday.”
He’d mentioned it. No details, just that she’d worried she’d done something wrong. “Okay, is there something you want to talk to me about?”
“No, I think my pity party is firmly full with the table for one I have set.”
“Pfft, you won’t be at a table for one if I can ever help it. At least two, better if it’s three, and to be on the safe side, we should always get one for five.”
Sooner or later, Bubba would fix this thing with him and Frankie. The flowers were a great start. So was being there for her every damn day. I’d told him not being a boyfriend might actually be a blessing right now. It was hard to walk that line between what I’d do as her best friend and what I wanted to do because she was Frankie.
I wanted to protect her.
She needed me to kick her in the ass.
These things weren’t mutually exclusive, but I’d much rather do the former than the latter. At least until I was sure she was okay.
So, maybe it was time for Bubba to be pushy.
The corner of her mouth kicked up. “I don’t know if I want to talk about it or not. But Denitra gave me numbers for some counselors.”
“Okay.” I offered her another bite of chicken and kept it low-key while she chewed the bite. Denitra had given her quite a bit of literature. And had called to talk to her a couple of times.
The nurse was awesome.
“And I know Ian’s dad does counseling, but I don’t…”
“Yeah, no.” I jumped right in there at her hesitation. “Whatever counselor or psychologist you end up seeing, they have to be someone you don’t have a personal connection with. It’s important that they are as unbiased and apart from the rest of your life as you can make them.”
She studied me for a moment. “I figured. The idea of talking to Ian’s dad would just be weird.”
“Agreed.”
“So is the idea of talking to Diane at school.”
“Fair.” The guys were talking to her for their anger management, not that either of them had filled in me or Archie. I didn’t think they’d talked to Frankie about it either.
“Besides, she’s also working with Ian and Jake, so that would just add to the weird factor.”
“Yeah, I can see that, too.”
She stared at her food. “I looked up some of the names on my laptop last night.” She’d been working on ‘homework’ after we’d had dinner. And apparently doing research.
“Most of the counselors require you to get a parent’s permission to talk to them.”
Fuck.
&nb
sp; “Do you think your mom would sign a permission slip for me? She’s on the list of people authorized for me at school.”
“Frankie, she’d sign it in a heartbeat.” I didn’t even have to ask. “For that matter, I could sign it.”
At her raised eyebrows, I shrugged.
“Unless they physically need to see your mom, how do they know who signs it?”
She blinked slowly. “That’s…dishonest.”
So was her mother.
“Not if it gets you the help you want.” If she was bringing this up, then she wanted it. So dammit, we were going to make it happen. “I can call my mom right now and ask her if you want me to.”
“No,” she said, stopping me with a hand on mine. “I just—I haven’t figured it out totally. I’ve never seen a psychologist before. Curtises don’t do counseling.”
“That sounds like a terrible catchphrase.”
It was Frankie’s turn to shrug. “I don’t know how to do it. How do you trust someone you don’t know with stuff that’s really personal?”
“You build trust. You start slow, you take your time. You talked to Denitra, right?” This bordered dangerously close to pushing. We’d let Frankie bring up that night. Archie wanted to erase it all and try and make it go away. Jake still seethed, a simmering volcano of pissed off. Shockingly, Bubba seemed to teeter between furious and depressed about it. The former was not him. He wasn’t usually an angry guy.
But I got why this made him angry.
Me?
It pissed me off, too. But I was more worried about her and whether she’d bury it like she had everything else shitty that happened. You could only pretend everything was all right for so long before you popped.
“Well, it was kind of hard to not talk to her.” Frankie stabbed at some of the meat still in her container. “But she seemed to know everything before I said it. Nothing surprised her.”
“That’s the job,” I told her. “That’s what psychologists and other specialists train for. You’re not their entertainment or there to shock them. They’re there to help you.”
“Feels weird to think I need help.”
Oh sweetheart. There was so much I wanted to say, and I bit my tongue. Instead, I focused on what she might need to hear. “Maybe. Then again, look at Jake and Bubba. Jake’s always had an issue with his temper.”
“Yeah, but he’s only going because he has no other choice.”
“True. Same can be said for Bubba, but they’re still going, and I haven’t heard either one complain about it, have you?”
She shook her head slowly. “No, now that you mention it. They haven’t brought it up at all.”
“Exactly, they aren’t complaining or fighting for that matter. Again, this isn’t about what other people do, but it’s something to think about. If you have questions, ask them. I doubt they’d mind talking to you about it.”
They might, but I knew Jake. He’d put himself out there. He’d open a vein if she needed it. Bubba wanted to rebuild that bridge, so it might be a good place to start.
“Have you ever thought about therapy?” She pinned me with a look, and I shrugged.
“Only every single day for the last few years.”
Surprise flickered in her eyes.
“Mom and Dad tried the marriage counseling thing, remember?”
She nodded.
“Well, during all that, Sis was also acting out.” I had her full attention. “One of the fights Mom and Dad had was over Sis’s behavior, and they wanted to put her in therapy. I volunteered ’cause why not, I figured it’d be fun. An hour every week to just talk about me? The best subject on the planet next to the subject of you? What could be better?”
Frankie laughed. Genuinely laughed, even her eyes lit up. “An hour a week to talk about you, huh?”
“Hey, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. I’m a fantastic subject.”
I meant it on some levels. Mostly it was playing, and yeah, I had thought about therapy. For my parents. For Sis. For Frankie.
For the most part, I did okay. But everything I’d read and learned taught me that we needed more opportunities to open up, not less.
“I wish I could just talk to you about it.”
There it was. I wished she could just talk to me about it, too. “I’d love to be your sounding board, and you can talk to me about anything,” I promised her. “I mean it. You can talk to me about everything from hair and nails to Rachel’s choice in chicks to how much better in bed I am than the other guys…”
Her cheeks flushed pink, but her smile was so wide, my grin stretched to meet it.
“You can Frankie. I’ll listen to everything. But I am horribly biased where you are concerned. I’d do my damnedest to give you advice and to just listen, but there’s a big part of me that just wants to fix it, and as sad as I am to admit it, I’m not an expert.”
Stretching out her left hand, she cupped my face, and I covered her hand with mine before turning to press a kiss to her palm.
“I adore you,” I reminded her. “I’ve known you forever, and I plan to know you forever. So what you need and when you need it, I’m here. And if you want to make appointments or consultations with those different psychologists, do it. Most offer a free consultation, and you can meet them and see if you click or not.”
Her expression softened. “You know I adore you, too, right?”
My heart might have done a backflip at that admission. Scooting forward, I rested my forehead against hers while still holding her hand. The breeze stirred around us, and her bare leg was soft against mine.
“It’s because I’m perfect, I know,” I teased, and her laughter was a heady thing.
“Sometimes,” she admitted, and I raised my brows. “Sometimes you’re a little shit.”
“Okay, I can live with that assessment.” What else could I say? She wasn’t wrong.
“Coop?”
“Hmm?”
“Can I ask you a hard question?”
“You can ask me any question you want.” I pressed a kiss to the tip of her nose before threading my fingers with hers.
“Do you guys talk about me?”
That wasn’t a tough question. The easiest answer was yes, we did. Except… “We do,” I said. “We talk about how you’re doing. They text me when they’re home with you so I know you’re doing okay or if you need something.” Catching a tendril of her hair that had pulled from her braid with my free hand, I tucked it behind her ear. “If you’re having bad dreams, we talk about that. We try to coordinate so we know our schedules and what you need. But what we do or talk about when it’s just us?” I shook my head.
“At all?”
“Nope.” The surprise on her face we all deserved. “Frankie, what you do with Archie or Jake—that’s your business and theirs. What you and I share? That’s ours. No, I’m not telling them how it feels to kiss you or feel you wrap around me. When you talk just to me? Then that’s between us, too. Unless…” I held up a finger, and she tracked it with her gaze for a moment before focusing on me. “Unless you’re really hurting. Then we talk because we all want to take care of you, and as far as I’m concerned, we’re all boyfriends, even Bubba—okay, maybe not Bubba, but he’s kind of boyfriend level.”
Her nose wrinkled.
“Fine, he’s a good friend. I’m not making his case for him.”
That pulled a smile from her.
“That said, if you’re worried I’m going to tell them about this conversation? Then rest easy because the answer is no, I’m not. I’ll only bring it up if I think you’re really hurting and need all of us to talk to about it. Otherwise, what you tell me stays with me. I’m a vault.”
And had been for all of them. Frankie did that for us, too. It was how we’d always balanced this friendship.
When she leaned in and pressed her lips to mine, I held still. Just the barest of brushes, and I wanted to deepen it. But I cupped her face and forced myself to take it easy. Then she teased her ton
gue against my lips, and I groaned.
Okay. Good intentions crumbled as I opened up and met her tongue with mine. It was just a long, slow kiss. I held her hand and cupped her face as we tested and tasted each other. The hints of Korean barbecue just added to the spice of the kiss. She pressed her bandaged wrist against my other leg, and the raspiness of it kept me grounded.
When she finally pulled back, I wasn’t the only one breathing hard. Fuck, that had been nice. I studied her expression and smiled. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” she whispered. “I wanted to know if that was still okay?”
Was kissing me still okay?
“Hell yes, it’s still okay.” I closed the distance and kissed her this time, a little more forcefully, but she gave a little moan and scooted forward. Then I wrapped my arms around her and buried my face against her throat. She gave a little shudder, and I sighed. “It’s always okay. We go as fast or slow as you need.”
Relief swam off her, and I pulled back a little.
“Frankie, did you think we wouldn’t want you?”
“You’re all being so careful, and… I know I’ve been confused.”
I pressed a finger to her lips. “We’re all respecting your space, but don’t for a second think I don’t want you. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve jacked off in the shower just to make sure I wasn’t pressuring you in anyway.”
“Well, the next time you do that, do you mind if I watch?”
Heat flushed right through me, and my erection told me my dick was one hundred and ten percent on board with this idea.
“Whatever you want,” I told her. “But don’t push anything you don’t want to. Trust me. You are worth waiting for.”
The press of her lips against mine threatened my sanity. I didn’t want to hurt anything on her, but I could definitely go for making out.
“Maybe we go slow,” she whispered against my lips. “But I would love to see you get yourself off. I bet it’s pretty.”
I groaned. “You’re killing me.”
She chuckled, then pulled her hand from mine and slid it down my front. I caught it before she reached her destination.
“And that would kill me,” I chastised her. “If you really want to play, we go home and we play. But I don’t want to hurt you.”