Travis grunted, unimpressed. “You’re full of shit.”
“Maybe,” I said, grabbing Eli’s sweater and pulling him closer. “But I’m hot, tired, and standing between two men I can’t stop thinking about. So maybe we can deal with my hormonal emotions after one of you makes me forget my name for a while?”
They exchanged a look, one of those quiet ones.
And just like that, the air shifted again—back to that safe zone, filled with lust and lacking fear. But even as Travis bent to whisper dark promises in my ear and Eli kissed the smirk off my lips, I felt the lie sit in my chest like a stone.
And I knew I’d have to tell them, eventually. Just not today.
She lied.
Not outright, not with words. But I saw it in her eyes. The way she shifted, dodged, spun herself in circles trying to say everything except what she was actually feeling.
Something was wrong.
She was too quiet, too tense, and when Travis asked her straight up what happened, she gave him a tired smile and a half-assed excuse about work and kids.
“I just need a win today,” She sighed, grabbing me and pulling me closer.
Travis didn’t let up right away, but when she looked over her shoulder and kissed him, slow and deep, fingers tangling in his shirt, he caved. We both did.
Because we were starving for her.
Maybe it was easier to fuck through the questions than force answers out of her that she wasn’t ready to give us. Maybe we hadn’t earned them from her yet.
But later, as she drove away into the night toward her house and there was nothing but that quiet still darkness surrounding us, Travis turned to me and said exactly what I’d been thinking all night.
“She’s hiding something.”
I nodded, tossing my duffel into the back seat of my truck. “You felt it too.”
“Yeah, and it wasn’t just stress and kid chaos.”
“She was different tonight. Guarded.”
“Afraid.” He looked over at me, his expression sharp. “You think it has anything to do with why she left town back then?”
That hit me like a punch to the chest.
Because the truth was, none of us ever really knew why Frankie Blake left town in the first place. One day she was the fierce, sarcastic girl with wild eyes and more bite than bark. Then, she wasgone.
No goodbyes.
No explanations.
Just gone.
“I think it might have more to do with why she came back.” I said with a sigh, staring off where her taillights had disappeared.“She acts like she’s been surviving a war no one else can see. Like she’s been carrying shit alone for years, and now someone’s offering to carry it for her, and she doesn’t know how to let us.”
Travis exhaled hard. “You think someone hurt her?”
I didn’t answer right away.
Because, yeah, I did. I’d seen it in the way she flinched around loud noises when she thought no one was looking. In the way her eyes tracked every exit. In how she laughed only in tough situations, using it to change subjects too fast.
She was soft with us, but not safe.
“If someone did—” I said slowly, feeling something coil around my stomach, “then we find out who. And we make sure they don’t ever come close again.”
