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When the door closed, I glanced up to find her watching me. The flush to her cheeks, brighter eyes, and wet lips began to chip away at all my good intentions. There wasn’t anything wrong with dessert before dinner, right?
“Archie, am I hypocrite?”
“No, we covered this already.”
“But…I didn’t want Sharon touching Ian. I mean, it physically repulsed me that she’d put her hands on him, and I’m with you and Coop and Jake, and I just asked Coop to leave so we could be alone. That’s hypocritical.”
“No,” I told her slowly. “It’s not. One, we all know about each other and we’re all in agreement that we’re sharing.” Granted, the implieduntil Frankie chosehad been there. But I didn’t mind the guys. Not even Bubba, granted he’d been an idiot, but he was still one of us. Just without all the benefits.
For the moment.
Frankie settled back on the sofa next to me, and I snaked an arm around her to pull her close. “Listen, you were mad at Sharon touching him because you care about him. That hasn’t gone away. Caring is a good thing. It means there’s still hope for you two, and I for one will be glad as fuck when it gets sorted outifit makes you both happy. You also didn’t like her touching him because you knew he didn’t want it.”
The light bulb clicked in me.
Fuck. I was an idiot. She’djustbeen assaulted. Of course she’d react to someone forcing their touch on someone else. No matter the circumstance.
“Frankie, I’m sorry, babe. I wasn’t even thinking.”
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “I wasn’t either, not until toward the end when I got a good look at his eyes. He hated every moment of it, and he did that for me.”
“Yeah, he did. The difference between what happened to you and what Bubba did? Bubba chose to do that because it was important to him to take care of this for you.” Respect, man. I needed to tell him that. “It wouldn’t have been my first choice to do, but if I’d had to endure it so we could get what we needed to slap her down? Yeah, I’d probably have done it, too. I get it.”
“But I hate that he had to do that.”
“I know you do, because you care.” I pressed my lips to her forehead. “Tell him.”
She looked up at me, and my heart squeezed. “You make it sound easy.”
“Nope, it’s not.” I rubbed my cheek against her hair. “None of this has been easy. But it’s okay to care about him. It’s more than okay. If you’re not ready to tell him, then you wait. Remember what I said to you a few weeks ago when I wanted to take you up to my room and kiss every inch of you?”
One of the best nights of my life, hands down. The only thing I wanted to change was the shit that went down the next day. For a few hours, we’d had damn near perfect. Then I almost screwed it all up.
We came back from that, though.
She forgave us. Forgave me.
“Tell you no, and you’d stop?”
“Hmm. That’s part of it.”
“And nothing would happen that I didn’t want to happen.” Trust glimmered in her eyes, chasing the shadows away. “Nothing did happen that I didn’t want.”
“Exactly. Same principle applies here. You want Bubba? Go for it. If you’re not ready for that, then nothing happens until you’re ready for it to happen.”
“I want to trust him, Archie.”
“I know you do, babe.” I trusted him,now. But my point of view and Frankie’s were different. He’d screwed up, and he’d been paying for that. So had she. “No pressure.”
She tucked her head against my shoulder. “Do you mind if I watch you work rather than do my homework?”
“Nope,” I said. “Long as you don’t beat yourself up for not doing it.”
Her groan made me smile. I knew my Frankie. “Fine.” But rather than move away, she tilted her head up, and I took the invitation and kissed her.
I loved kissing her. What little hesitation she might possess would slip away, and she’d kiss me back with equal fervor. Sometimes our teeth clacked, sometimes we warred over whose tongue was in whose mouth, and sometimes I forgot that we both needed to breathe.
Frankie was the drug whose addiction I never wanted to recover from. When she shifted, I put a foot against the coffee table and shoved it farther away, then helped her straddle my lap. The cast bumped against my arm, and I braced her biceps and leaned back to lift her arm to rest on my shoulder better. At her grimace, I smiled.
