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Franky wasn’t childish, so I knew he wasn’t outright ignoring me. He’d been in a funk for two days now, and when stuck inside his head, the outside world had no chance of getting in. He’d have to crawl out of his cave to meet me.
It took effort not to plummet into a black hole right along with him, because Franky was an all-consuming force. When he was happy, life couldn’t get any better than that moment for me, but when he was sullen, it felt like hanging on to the edge of something for dear life as a tornado ripped through. The highs and lows were equally dizzying and intoxicating.
I’d let him have his mood while I kept busy with the mural, but forty-eight hours was more than enough time to wallow in whatever had been bothering him, and I needed a second set of eyes.
I kicked my way through a small mountain of rubble and got between him and the sunlight he needed to see by. He jerked upward from where he knelt over what looked to be the beginnings of an end table, removing his protective goggles with splintered and calloused hands. Hands that had been soft and well-cared for when we’d first met.
“Hey,” he said out of breath, falling to his haunches as I hovered over him. Sweat glistened between the gray hairs at his temples, and also traveled down the pronounced veins along his chiseled forearms.
“Hey,” I parroted back, forgetting why I was standing there to begin with.
“Did you need something?” he prompted, expression fierce. And fuck the second pair of eyes I needed on the mural; it now became my mission to remove the stick lodged deep inside his ass.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’d like to paint you.”
“Okay,” he said confused. “Maybe later, after I’ve showered and changed—”
“No,” I said, interrupting him. “That’s not what I meant. Although, I would love to do that now that you mention it…”
“Leland, what are you rambling on about?” he asked, wiping the moisture from his forehead with the hem of his shirt. The move revealed his rock-hard abs and the salt and pepper hair trailing south below his navel.
Gripping my paintbrush like a pen or pencil, I made a squiggly motion inches from his face.
“Don’t,” he said gruffly, the word hitting hard like a mallet, which only further encouraged me.
“I’m sure that tone has gotten you far in business, but you don’t scare me, Franklin Kincaid. You barely even impress me.” I flourished a hand over the fourimpressivecounter stools lined up and ready to be carried into the kitchen. He stared blankly at me.
“Are youthatintent on being grouchy?” I asked, because if so, then maybe hewasa child after all.
Franky sized me up and then I was on my back, a stack of boards toppling over as Franky straddled me, fighting to get my paintbrush from me.
Our laughter weakened us, making it impossible for either of us to maintain control over the brush. I fought to keep it cradled to my chest, and green paint smeared over the front of us both now.
“Let it go,” I demanded between peals of laughter.
“Not a chance,” he said, his thighs tightening at my hips.
Franky had the advantage of size and brute strength, but I had a few dirty tricks up my sleeve. I sacrificed one of my hands holding the brush’s handle to palm his cock through his dusty jeans. He reared back in shock, falling off of me and onto his ass with a grunt.
I scrambled to get on top of him, quickly drawing a green stripe across his nose and proclaiming myself the winner. We laughed through our inability to breathe, our chests heaving under the sweltering heat of the sun.
Our laughter faded, and I waited above him, the shape and shade of his eyes telling me he had something to say. “Jasper and Cole would like you,” he said.
Now wasn’t the time to make fun of him for being insanely random, so I rolled with it. “Introducing me to the family now?”
“Maybe.” His heavy palms rested on my thighs. “Why not?”
“I mean, I guess. But wouldn’t you need to tell them how we met?Whywe met?” Jasper and Cole didn’t know their happy family wasn’t so happy after all. Franky turned away, teasing his bottom lip with his teeth.
“Is that what’s been bothering you? Are you thinking about telling them?”
“Jasper and Cole have been on my mind, but no, I’m not telling them anything. At least not now.”
“Have you been thinking about Selene too?” I wouldn’t blame him. I’d been thinking about her. I’d given in to my curiosity and searched images of her online. She was beautiful, and for some reason that had made my heart hurt. I wondered how she was using their time apart. Her actions, while wrong, had been partly a result of what he’d stopped giving her, and partly a result of her own personal crisis—I assumed. I wondered if the balance of pain was evenly scaled because of it, or if he carried most of the load.
“Yes and no,” he said. I badly wanted to follow it up with why and why not, so I didn’t. A want that strong couldn’t be good.
“She’s their patron saint,” he said, looking at me again.
