“Morning, Caleb. Thanks for the food, Caleb,” I mumble sarcastically. He grunts his reply doing a good impression of Sam, who is just walking in, tugging Frankie behind him.
Sam grunts at me, making me roll my eyes in amusement. I don’t know why I bother.
“Frankie.” I nod to her.
“Morning, Caleb,” she says quietly, studiously avoiding my gaze.
Looking up, I see both Ryan and Sam watching her with a soft look on their faces. Ah, I see how it is. I stand from the barstool I’ve been perched on and pick Frankie up before sitting back down with her on my lap. Sliding her food in front of her, I put my hands on her hips to stop her slipping and take a deep breath, inhaling Frankie’s fruity essence. She groans around a mouthful of food, making me readjust her on my lap slightly, knowing there is no way that I can hide my budding erection, especially if she is going to keep making those kinds of noises.
“Somebody has worked up an appetite, I see.”
She freezes on my lap before slowly turning to look at me with a look of apprehension on her face, and I silently curse myself for making her weary.
“Stop worrying, Frankie. I’m just sorry I missed it.” I give her a quick kiss on her lips, knowing that if I linger too long I will drag her upstairs. I restrain myself, knowing she needs some food inside her. “Eat, beautiful. Everything is fine. I’ve been to see Steve and Jacob, who both seem good this morning. Jacob is expecting us to pick him up in a little while, so you'd better get this down you before it goes cold.”
Instead of turning back round to eat, she raises her hand to my cheek before leaning forward and stealing a kiss of her own.
“Thank you, Caleb.”
“Anytime, beautiful. Anytime.”
After breakfast Frankie heads upstairs to get ready, so I fill the guys in on Frankie’s mother's arrest.
“The question is, do we tell her now or give her a chance to recover a bit? I don’t like the thought of keeping anything from her, but I can’t help but worry when the hits just keep on coming. How much can she take?”
Sam’s quiet, as usual, thinking things through before he answers. Ryan doesn’t hesitate, though.
“I think we should just tell her. We don’t do her any favours by keeping it from her, and let’s be honest, is there ever really a right time to tell someone that their mother tried to kill one of her best friends?”
“My mother did what?” Frankie’s voice shouts from behind us.
All three of us spin round. I don’t know about the others, but I’m pissed at myself for not hearing her approach. Clearing my throat, I take Ryan’s advice and decide it’s now or never.
“It was your mother driving the car that hit Steve. I’m sorry, Frankie.”
I don’t know why I was expecting tears. One of these days I’m going to stop underestimating this beautiful enigma in front of me. Tears, no. Apparently not. But if the clenched fists and red face are anything to go by, then our girl looks like she is about to explode.
“That fucking bitch!”
* * *
It’s safe to say that after hearing what her mother did she had a mini meltdown. She apologised profusely to Steve, who told her to shut the fuck up.
Seeing an opportunity, and yeah, maybe it was a little underhanded, we used this time to tell her that Steve would be going to the soldier centre for the rest of his recovery. Feeling guilty, she didn’t push the issue, but that didn’t stop her from mothering Jacob since she brought him home.
As I need to make a phone call to verify Conner’s transfer, Frankie shuffles me into her office before disappearing to settle Jacob. I can’t help but laugh as I walk around the large walnut desk. There is a very real possibility that he may end up hiding from her.
I sit in the large black office chair and make the call, verifying that everything is okay before hanging up, relieved. Conner was a part of my team, but when Sam, Ryan and I left, Conner remained and ended up being sent on that fateful tour that irrevocably changed his life.
Shaking off my melancholy, I glance around the room and take in the masculinity, the bookcase littered with model cars and planes, and the mounted picture frames in the same walnut as the desk.
This room holds none of Frankie’s light and airiness. This room is all my father.
On the edge of the desk I spot two more frames. One is a photo of a younger version of my father holding me swaddled in a blue monogramed blanket on what must have been the day I was born. A small hospital bracelet is wrapped around my tiny wrist, and my face is screwed up ready to scream, but it’s the look on my father’s face that gives me pause. Pure, unadulterated love shines in his eyes, eyes that are wet with tears as he is looking down on me with a look of such wonder.
I look away, ignoring the tightness in my chest, and focus on the other photo. This one shows a tired-looking Frankie sitting next to an armchair, holding the hand of an old, frail-looking man. It takes me a minute to realise that the old frail man with no hair and a tube in his nose to aid his breathing is my father. The cancer stripped the once proud, take-no-bullshit man of everything that made him who he was. Yet sitting next to Frankie, with her tiny hand engulfed in his, he looked at peace.
It’s easy to see the love they have for each other. A part of me is grateful that he had that; nobody should die alone. After all, I would have felt like a hypocrite sitting with him, pretending everything was okay. The other part of me feels bitter that he had Frankie first, raising questions like, if he lived, would she still be with him now? I hate that I’m jealous, because the truth is if she hadn’t married my father, I would never have met her, and as much as the three of us have been trying to hold ourselves back, I can feel the attachments forming like tangible strings woven between us. It pisses me off that he only wanted to make amends with me because he was sick—everything on his terms, like always—and now he is gone, his last fuck-you, and I don’t know if I’m disappointed or relieved. A tap at the door has me lifting my head to see Frankie entering.
“Everything okay with Conner?”
“What? Oh yeah, everything is fine. He will be arriving in a couple of days.”
My gaze drifts back down to the two photos, the two book marks of life, to be born and to die, and yet it’s the bit in between that can make or break you.
“He loved you, you know?”
I look back at her to see her staring at the photo, the sorrow in her eyes clear for all to see.
“He had a funny way of showing it,” I bite out, angry that in the end she knew him better than me, angry that he had her to begin with, and angry that I wished him dead and now he is.
“Caleb,” she sighs. “He tried to reach out to you many times. You were not ready. He understood, but he didn’t have an infinite amount of time. What would you have had him do?”
“Try harder, or how about not destroying everything in the first place? He was good to you, Frankie. I’m glad you had that, but I knew a very different version of the man.”
“Caleb…”
“No,” I cut her off. “He should have tried fucking harder. Maybe then he would have left me with something more than anger and regret,” I tell her before storming out.
Needing air, I make my way outside and head down towards the lake. When I get to the edge, I drop to my knees and let the soft breeze clear my head. Hearing footsteps, I turn to find Frankie walking towards me with a box in her hands. I open my mouth to ask her to give me some space but snap it shut when I see the look on her face. Why the hell does she look like she is marching into battle?
Chapter Twenty-Three
FRANKIE
“Twenty-five,” I tell him, but he cuts me off before I can continue.
“Look, Frankie, I don’t want to fight with you. Can we just agree to disagree about this? You may have gotten this new and improved version of my father, but I never met him. All I have are memories of a man who let me down time and time again and who constantly broke his promises to me. It’s a lot to
let go of. How do you just forget someone who wrecked your childhood?”
“Twenty-five letters, Caleb.”
“What the hell are you going on about, Frankie? What has twenty-five letters?”
“You do, dumb ass, or you would if you would just listen to me. Nobody is expecting you to forget but it is time for you to forgive him and move on. He wrote you letters, twenty-five in total. He understood when you wouldn’t answer his calls or emails. Was he disappointed? Sure, but he understood that he had made his bed, so he had to lie in it. The letters are not about your dad begging for forgiveness. That was never what it was about for him. He didn’t think he deserved it. What he wanted was for you to understand a little more about why he made the decisions he made, and that at no point did you do anything wrong. He wanted to tell you that he was sorry, that he loved you and that he was so incredibly proud of you. He wrote them until he was too weak to continue, and then I wrote them for him as he spoke about you with such pride that I often felt jealous of you. You were his dark-haired little troublemaker that made him want more for you than what you ever had.
"I don’t know how much you know about your father’s past, but he came from nothing. Raised by a single-parent mother after his deadbeat dad took off, before ending up on the streets as a fifteen-year-old when she died. His biggest fear was that you would have to experience the hardships that he had faced. This is the thing that haunted him the most throughout your mother's pregnancy. When you were born he threw himself into his work and took the business that he had already made a success of and turned it into a multimillion-pound empire. In his drive to do better, to be better, he lost sight of who he was and what was important to him along the way.”
He looks up sharply, my words affecting him—but to what extent, I don’t know. He looks at the box of letters in my hand and recoils slightly, like I’m carrying a venomous snake.
“I get what you are trying to say, Frankie, but sometimes things should just be left alone, water under the damn bridge and all that. You should know that better than anyone after what we did to you.”
“Damn it, Caleb, stop being such a fucking martyr. I forgave you all for that so let it go already. I’m not trying to be a bitch or take anything away from the kid version of you, who got hurt by parents that were not there for you one minute and who fought over you like a stupid trophy the next. At some point, you have got to get over it. It happened, it was shitty, but it could have been a lot worse. You made it, you are successful, gorgeous and smart. You have already stuck your fingers up and given them the ultimate fuck-you when you decided to pave your own way and make a name for yourself away from them. What more do you want?”
“I wanted my FUCKING PARENTS TO BE FUCKING PARENTS!” he screams at me.
Before I can reply I find myself behind Sam’s bulky frame. I never even noticed he had come outside. The man is a freaking ninja.
“Speak to her like that again and I will knock you on your fucking ass.”
Caleb rubs his hands down his face before running them through his hair, a sure sign of his frustration.
“Sorry, Frankie, I’m a dick. Talking about him—or either of my parents for that matter—is always a touchy subject for me.”
I step around Sam, trying to hold my temper back, knowing that letting it fly won’t help, but this man is just so stubborn.
“Yeah, and it always will be until you deal with it.”
I tip the box up over his head and the letters scatter. So much for holding my temper in check.
“Read the damn letters. Forgive him, or don’t. Do whatever you want, but just remember this. Without him I wouldn’t be standing here in front of you now. Whether it was intentional or not, that man picked me up, helped to glue all the broken pieces back together again before wrapping me up and handing me over to you.
"Joe was one of the smartest people I know, so I’m sure he was aware of how you would react to the reading of the will and being left effectively nothing. Well, I guess the joke's on you, because he gave you his most prized possession, me. Maybe you should think about that the next time you want to condemn the man for the mistakes that he spent the last five years of his life trying to atone for. It must be nice up there on your high horse, looking down on us small people, knowing you’ve never made any mistakes. Oh, wait, that’s a lie. Luckily for you, I’m more forgiving then you seem to be.”
I storm off back to the house, leaving Sam to deal with Caleb’s cranky ass. I’m frustrated that I lost my cool. That was not what I was aiming for, but nothing I said was untrue. Oh well, I guess I will have to wait and see how it all plays out later. Walking into the sitting room, I find Jacob and Ryan playing Call of Duty on the Xbox. I fling myself down rather ungracefully onto the sofa next to Ryan and close my eyes. I hear the clunk of the remote hitting the coffee table before soft warm lips kiss my brow. Opening my eyes, I see Ryan hovering above me.
“Was that about Joe?”
“Yep. That man is so stubborn. The irony is not lost on me that it’s a trait he gets from his father.”
“Calm down, beautiful, or you are going to give yourself a headache. Yes, he is as stubborn as a mule, but he will come around. You just have to give him time to pull his head out of his ass.”
“I know.” I sigh because it’s true, and I regret losing my patience with him. “I lost my cool with him and now I feel like a bitch.”
“He will get over it. Now me, I like that my woman has a feisty side.” This time when he bends down he takes my lips. The angle that he is at puts us with our heads facing opposite directions, reminding me of that kissing scene from one of the original Spiderman movies. I feel myself getting lost in the moment, until a loud series of coughs has us breaking apart.
“Still in the room, guys,” Jacob grumbles, making Ryan laugh out loud while I bury my head under one of the throw cushions to hide my embarrassment. I really forget myself when these boys are near me.
“Sorry, Jacob,” I tell him when I finally pull the cushion off my face.
“Don’t worry about it. I like seeing you this happy, Frankie. I just don’t want to see his tongue in your mouth. Gross.”
“Jacob!” I screech, shoving a hysterically laughing Ryan onto the floor whilst flinging the cushion at Jacob's head. Naturally, I miss by a mile, but his smile is contagious, and before I know it all three of us are rolling around laughing.
I calm quickly when I hear my name called from behind me. Tilting my head back and up from my spot on the sofa, I catch Caleb watching with a small smile of his own on his face. When he steps over to me and bends down and picks me up, I wrap my legs around his waist without a second thought. I hear Sam telling Jacob that it’s his turn to try and kick his butt on Call of Duty, but Caleb is walking us up the stairs before I can hear Jacob's response. I bounce slightly when Caleb tips us onto the bed, but I don’t go far, as his body presses me back down into the mattress. He moves over me, bracing his weight on his forearms so that each of his hands can bracket my face.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I had no right whatsoever to speak to you that way. Forgive me?”
I give him my best ‘are you serious look,’ which draws out a chuckle.
“Yes, I know. I’m always asking for forgiveness, yet too readily withhold it from others. I’m an ass.” He takes a deep breath before continuing. “I’m going to read the letters, Frankie, every last one, and then I’m going to move on. You are right, it's time.”
“I’m always right. It’s because I have boobies.”
That makes him laugh before his eyes darken.
“Yes, I did notice that.” He slides one of his hands down to cup my uninjured breast before tracing over my nipple with his thumb.
I gulp as my nipple pebbles, letting him know how much I like his touch.
“So, what did you, Sam and Ryan get up to this morning?”
I chew on my lip, worried about how he will react. I know they all want me—they have made that clear—but I’m
not sure how it all works, or if jealousy will play a part. I have no experience with regular relationships, let alone trying to navigate a four-people one. As if sensing my thoughts, he stops playing with my breast and waits until I’m looking directly into his eyes.
“Nothing you tell me, Frankie, is going to make me jealous or mad. Horny, definitely, but never angry, okay?”
Taking a deep breath, I decide to take him at his word. “They kissed me.”
“Mmm…” he whispers, trailing scorching hot kisses down my neck. “Here?”
“Yes,” I answer breathlessly.
He continues down to the swell of my breast before using one of his hands to slip the first button of my shirt through its hole. Placing a soft kiss to the area he exposed, he whispers again. “Here?”
“Yes,” I answer as three more buttons are undone, opening the shirt completely.
“Here?” he asks before sucking the lace-covered nipple that he had been fondling before into his mouth.
His hot breath and talented tongue dampen the material of my bra, which rubs against me in a tantalising way. I make an involuntary noise of disappointment when he removes his lips from my breast, making him chuckle. I’m about to complain until I feel his hot breath skate down my stomach before he's tracing a path with the tip of his tongue, then dips into my navel, making me squirm.
He pops the button of my jeans and lowers the zip, his mouth placing soft kisses, following the path of his fingers.
“Here?”
“No but… umm… Ryan used his fingers.” I’m sure I’m the colour of a tomato about now.
“No need to be embarrassed, sweetheart. That is hot as fuck, but now I’m feeling a little competitive.” Sitting up, he grabs the waistband of my jeans, pausing just long enough to gain my assurance that I’m okay.
“Trust me?”
I don’t even need to think about it. I meant what I said when I told him I had forgiven him. I’m not the kind of girl to play games.
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