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Frankie relaxes on her two-thirds of a seat for the entire movie. None of the jump scares faze her. I’m the one who gasps and clutches her hand in the dark. The first time, she flinches and peers up at me, her mouth open in a confused “O” before gently prying her hand free. The second time, she waits a few minutes before squeezing my hand and politely sliding her fingers free. The third time, I knock the box of candy she was offering to the floor, which sends me squeezing and straining to fit into the space between the seats to pick it up. I nearly put my face between her legging-clad thighs, at which point she slips off the seat and snatches it up before sitting back down beside me.
I’m resigned to the fact that Frankie will forever think of me as a giant idiot who got scared by a dumb movie. But the fourth time there’s another near-miss on the screen that has me clutching at her hand, she has the audacity to pat my shoulder with her free arm. With a sigh, she slips her arm through mine and winds her fingers around my forearm, her head resting against my biceps.
We stay like that until the lights come up at the end of the movie.
“You weren’t kidding when you said you might need to run away.” There’s a teasing note in her voice, but somehow I don’t mind. “Why did you even come to the movie?”
“It’s my week with Liam.” I shrug. Frankie doesn’t make any of the usual pitying noises that accompany that statement. I glance down and find her studying the group of teens below us. Liam and Emma are standing close but talking to other people. Emma sways on her feet, occasionally brushing against Liam’s arm. Every time she touches him, he stops talking for a second.
“So, it’s your week, and you didn’t want to miss seeing your son. Did you know he was angling for a date?”
I follow Frankie down the aisle and down the steps toward the group. I lower my voice so the kids can’t hear me. “Yes, and no. I knew there was a group of them coming, girls and boys, but I didn’t know he’d set his sights on one in particular.”
Our conversation is interrupted by Emma snagging Frankie’s arm. “Bathroom.” With no other explanation, she’s dragged down the hallway by a pack of teenage girls. I follow their example to take care of business, the soda I drank making its presence known.
I’m washing my hands when a few of Liam’s friends burst through the door, talking loudly like only self-assured teenage boys can.
“… so fucking hot. How old do you think she is?”
“I don’t know, man, she can’t be that much older, right?”
They haven’t seen me yet, unzipping and talking over the sound of their pissing contest. I wipe my hands slowly, curious which girl they’re talking about.
“Yeah, but did you see her ass? No boobs—but damn!”
I make a mental note to find out the name of that kid, noting his pale skin and backward Seahawks cap. A tendril of irritation creeps into my gut.
I’m about to say something when the scrawniest of the bunch, I’m pretty sure he goes by TJ, speaks up.
“Y’all are weird. She’s dating Liam’s dad.”
And that’s when a wave of murderous rage and guilt crashes over me. On the one hand, I want to knock their heads together and lay into these hormone-fueled idiots for speaking so disrespectfully. And as much as I want to punish these kids, I want to punish myself. Those wayward thoughts of how soft and small she is, the way I surreptitiously sniffed her hair when she leaned against me during the movie—I’m no better than them.
And they don’t even know about the way I’ve let my mind relive the moment I caught her changing. That I’ve imagined what her skin might feel like under my rough fingers. How I’ve been thinking about the way my giant hands fit all the way around her trim waist.
Also, they’re dead wrong, Frankie doesn’t have an ass. I’ve known that since her first week at Mailbox.
Since the day Sophie introduced us, there’s been nothing between Frankie and me but an easy friendship. Do I think she’s beautiful? Absolutely. But I think a lot of women are beautiful, that doesn’t mean I would pursue them. For starters, we work together. I value my job at Mailbox, not a lot of places pay security that well, and she very obviously needs friends and not another man who wants her as a trophy.
I don’t see Frankie as I walk down the hallway, Liam towering over the bunch like a beacon. Poor kid’s got my height but none of the bulk to fill it out yet. He isn’t standing next to Emma anymore. She’s in the center of a knot of girls, all of them admiring a half-dressed movie star on a stand-up display.
“There’s no way he really looks like that.” One of the girls is saying as I get closer. “No one’s abs look like that all the time. I hear the guys have to get super dehydrated before they shoot those shirtless scenes.”
“Yeah, he doesn’t look like that all the time. But pretty close, right, Frankie?” Emma giggles as she pokes Frankie’s side. “Garrett is really nice, actually. So is Casey. And their kids are so cute!”
I finally spot Frankie in the crowd as the girls giggle and break out in a cacophony of questions about Garrett Garland and Casey Sutton. Frankie joins in the chatter, agreeing with Emma that Mr. Sutton’s famous sister is as nice in real life as she appears. I choose to tune out when they discuss her husband and action movie star, Garrett Garland. The guys at the gym talk about him enough.
The boys who were in the bathroom come around the corner behind me, their conversation still on Frankie and the other girls. I’m on edge. The words, the noise, and the adrenaline from the movie pushing me into high alert. My gut is telling me something is about to happen, and I have to be the one to stop it.
The crowds of people streaming by in both directions catch my eye. A group of older women by the door, a couple holding hands, a harried-looking mom with two kids hanging off her, none of them trigger my alarm bells. So why can’t I shake the feeling that something bad is coming?
The large group of guys who just walked in the front doors? My gaze zeros in on the tallest of the group. His familiar douchebag dark hair and obnoxious voice register in my mind a split second before my body tenses. He spots me from twenty feet away, eyes narrowing and shoulders stiffening before he changes direction and approaches.
Fuck. I was hoping he would just ignore me. I risk a glance at the huddle of girls—Frankie hasn’t seen him and she’s still safely hidden in the center of the group behind Emma. I just have to keep him from spotting her and get rid of him.
“Lockwood, what are you doing here?”
“Seeing a movie. What does it look like?”
