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“But what will people say?”
Annoyed, I puff my cheeks and pop my lips. “Stop reading my mind.”
Julian laughs, poking my cheek. “Rocky, what are they going to say? They already think we’re together. Didn’t you say that Lauren and Sophie were teasing you last weekend?”
I nod and he shrugs. “What difference does it make if we’re not faking it anymore?”
The connotation of what Julian is saying hits me in a flash. On reflex, I scrunch into a ball, pulling the blankets over my face, with only my eyes out. “Wait, you want to—?” I swallow, trying to gather my orgasm-scattered thoughts, my toes scrunching and curling in the sheets. “Like, a friends with benefits kind of thing?”
Julian reaches out, curling an arm over my hips, pulling and rolling me until my back is tucked against his chest. My head is pillowed on his arm, his other wrapped securely around me. I’m not going anywhere, but neither is he, his body curled protectively around me. “I think it’s pretty clear that I want you, Frankie—as more than a friend. If being friends is all you want, then I’ll learn to live with it. But right now it’s almost five in the morning. Let’s just sleep, okay?”
Eighteen
Julian
The click of the front door unlocking jolts me awake. The gloomy light coming through my curtains doesn’t give me any clue what time it is.
“Dad?” Liam’s voice echoing from the living room has me wide awake instantly, pushing aside my half-formed dreams of Frankie beneath me last night. I slide my arm out from beneath her head, replacing it with a pillow. She doesn’t move, sleeping peacefully as I roll off the bed. I’m half impressed, half jealous. She doesn’t even stir when I bang my knee on the mattress while pulling on a pair of sweats. I’m all off-kilter since she’s sleeping on my side of the bed.
I’m out the door, scrubbing my hands through my hair to see why Liam is home, when a high-pitched giggle and a feminine “shhh” put me on high alert. My morning wood, courtesy of the gorgeous woman asleep in my bed, dies instantly.
“Liam?” I step into the living room to find not only my son, who wasn’t supposed to be home until Monday, but Emma Miller and Sophie. Fuck.
Liam moves past me toward his bedroom. “Hey, Dad. I just need to grab my binder for bio. We’re not staying.” I don’t have a chance to formulate a response before he’s past me. I shift my focus to the two women standing in my entry.
Sophie’s mouth drops open in silence before she clears her throat. “Hi, Julian. I’m so sorry to barge in on you like this. I didn’t think… never mind. Um, I was just taking the kids to work on their biology project at Teddy’s and Liam needed a book he left here, so we swung by to grab it.”
Emma is gazing at the clothes hanging over the kitchen chairs, her face thoughtful.
“Hey, Soph.” I can’t remember if I closed my bedroom door. Would Frankie care if they knew she was here? Probably. “No problem. I wasn’t, uh, expecting company.” I move to get past them and at least throw the forgotten shawarma out before Sophie thinks I’m a disgusting bachelor. I’d hate for her to think that’s how Liam lives with me.
“No, no. I’m sorry for barging in. Liam assumed you would be up already.”
Emma speaks up. “Actually, he said you’d be at the gym.”
I glance around, but I don’t have any clocks on my walls. Spotting a phone face up on my couch, I grab it to check the time.
It lights up as I pick it up, telling me it’s just after eleven thirty. But it’s not the time that has me cringing, Emma gasping, and Sophie asking what’s going on all at once.
The screen in front of me has an unfamiliar wallpaper—a pair of anime characters that I don’t recognize. Fuuuuuuuuuuck.
“Isn’t that Frankie’s phone?” Emma points to the back. I flip it over to reveal familiar red, blue, green, and yellow stickers decorating the backside. Frankie says it’s from Avatar, the last Airbender, but I admit I wasn’t paying close attention when she explained it to me. “Is she here? Frankie?”
“Yo, Dad. Who’s asleep in your room?” Liam chooses that exact moment to come out of his room, arms laden with a binder and a textbook.
“Shhh, she’s asleep.” I wave at Emma to keep it down while Sophie smirks at me. “She—never mind. It’s not important.” I cross my arms and puff out my chest. Maybe I can intimidate them into not asking questions that I don’t have answers to. “What were you saying, Sophie?”
Sophie stops trying to peer around me, her cheeks going a little pink. “The kids have a project together for their biology class. I have some errands to run, so I was going to drop them off at Teddy’s house to work on it, but we needed to come grab Liam’s stuff.”
I have a flash of annoyance that I didn’t know about the project and Liam must see it on my face because he pipes up. “Mr. Richards only assigned it yesterday. Emma and I wanted to get a head start. Okay, but seriously, who is in your—?”
I cut him off with a look, but before I can say anything else, Emma grabs him by the elbow and starts whispering in his ear. Shit on a stick, this is a disaster.
Sophie steps closer. “We’ll get out of your hair. Huh.” She looks up at me. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen it down. It’s longer than I thought.”
Caught off guard—I was expecting a comment about my tattoos, not my hair—I laugh under my breath. “I grew it out after I got out of the Guard. I always hated it that short.”
“I always thought you were in the Army.” Sophie looks around the apartment, probably for pictures or something.
