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Franky held a hand out to stop me, his feet carrying him away until the coffee table and sofa separated us. He was running from me, and my heart couldn’t take it. My lungs were forgetting how to function without him already.
“What the fuck is happening here?” I asked, staring into his red-rimmed eyes. His hair looked as if it’d been run over, like he’d been cruelly tugging at it, and his scruff had sprouted into a small beard since I last saw him. The stress had aged him too. He seemed frail, and I didn’t miss the way he pressed his palms into the sofa back for support. Had he gotten a wink of sleep?
“I bet you’re thrilled about this, aren’t you?” he asked. “Things would be so much easier for you if she were gone.” He couldn’t have hurt me more if he’d punched me with a brass-knuckled fist.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know me enough to know I’d never wish for that.”
“But I don’t know you, Leland,” he said, his voice trembling as he retreated a step in response to my one step advancement.
He’s running from me.And then another realization infiltrated my mind.He’s pushing me away.
“Don’t do this.” A rogue tear dripped onto my cheek. Franky dropped his gaze to it, shuddering through an expelled breath, and backed into the hall until his spine met the wooden balusters. “You came here to hurt me. Why, Franky?”
The light from the upstairs hall trickled down the staircase, spotlighting his wet eyes, and whereas he’d been operating on pure rage and pain before, he now looked lost. “I need you to hate me,” he whispered.
“Don’t you know that I love you too much to ever hate you?” I’d never said the words out loud before. Maybe a part of me was always afraid I’d scare him off, like maybe our foundation wasn’t strong enough to handle a bombshell like love. But I’d said it with every look, every kiss, and every single touch. And it had been reciprocated. I’d felt it whenever I was beneath his capable hands, whenever pinned by his body and unforgiving cock. I felt it with every tortuous and possessive claim he’d made on me, and even through his most unpleasant moods. I couldn’t hate him if I tried.
I took advantage of the momentary distraction my admission bought me. I scaled the coffee table, leaped onto the sofa, then jumped off the back of it. I had his face in the palms of my hands before he could move a muscle in the opposite direction.
Franky sagged in on himself, like my hands on him were both the last thing he needed and the only thing that could save him. He couldn’t pretend anymore, not when we were like this. “You can’t love me,” he said.
“Why not?” I asked, kissing his tears away.
“Because… I can’t leave her now.” The words were ripped from deep inside him, and they cut open some place deep inside of me.
“You mean now, like right now, right? Because I wouldn’t expect you to. Fuck, she almostdied,Franky. I don’t expect you to storm her hospital room with divorce papers. Is that what this is about? We’ll make it work. You said there’s a treatment plan in place. We’ll wait until she’s stronger. Until she can handle the news. M-maybe w-we’ll tell the boys first?” I rambled on.
My panic rose at the look of guilt and pity in his eyes, and I used all my strength to keep his head still as he moved it slowly in the gesture of no in my hands. “Yes,” I breathed. “Yes. I can wait for you. We can even take care of her together.Please.”
He stood taller, holding my face in his hands in return, my naivety reflected in his sorrowful eyes.
“Don’t say it. If you aren’t going to say the right thing, then don’t say anything,” I ordered, yanking at the collar of his shirt. Franky didn’t say anything, which said it all. Two excruciating heartbeats turned into ten, and I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Say something!” I yelled, shaking him.
“What do you want me to say, Leland?” He brushed a thumb under my damp eyes.
“I want you to say we’ll find a way to make it work. I want you to say it’ll be hard, and it will take longer than we thought, but nothing will tear us apart. Because if you want me, Franky…” I stopped to swallow down a sob. “If you want me, you’ll find a way to choose me, no matter what.” I skimmed my fingers along his brows, his lips, and his chin. Wanting to kiss him, to remind him of how good we were together. Of how worth the fight we were. The upstairs light flickered as another round of furious thunder and lightning battled for dominance over the booming of our hearts, and volts of electricity sizzled across the points of our skin that touched. “We can be a secret. For however long it takes. Just…please, choose me.”
“Can’t you see how selfish of me that would be, Leland?”
“No,” I said determinedly. “Because all I can see is how terrified you are. Choosing me doesn’t mean you don’t love her, or that you can’t be there for her. It just means you love me enough to fight for me. No matter what it takes.”
“Noon was right. Everything he said to you on the patio that night was true. We were in way over our heads to begin with.” He’d heard our conversation that night, I realized, and he’d said nothing until now. “The odds weren’t in our favor from the start.”
“Fuck the odds,” I said, refusing to let him run through excuse after excuse as to why we couldn’t be. “I’d face down anything to be with you. Nowpleasedo the same for me.”
His fingers curled tightly in my hair, and I slapped my hands on top of his, as if I could siphon some of his pain into me, proving that I could carry some of the burden if he’d only let me.
“You could never be my priority. Your needs would come last to hers, if I could even tend to your needs at all. You would get the scraps of my time. I’ll make promises I won’t be able to keep. You’ll live in a constant state of waiting for me. She’sdying,” he said, agonized. “They won’t say it, but she is. And my heart is broken because of it. Every time I see you, I’ll be looking for something to ease the pain, something to dump my pain on, something I can rage against. You would be getting the worst parts of me every time, because I’ll need to give her my best. It will slowly eat away at you, and you’ll eventually hate me.”
“You don’t scare me. Your darkness doesn’t scare me, Franky. How many times do I have to prove that I can handle you?”
“You shouldn’t have to,” he said angrily, trying to shake some sense into me. “You shouldn’t have to handle me. You deserve better than that.”
“I don’t want better! I wantyou. I’ll take your fucking scraps without complaint if it means one day I get to have more. If it means that sometime in this lifetime I’ll get to have the good parts of you again.” I smashed my mouth against his. If he wouldn’t listen to my heartfelt words, I’d show him in the only other way I knew how—with my body.
“Stop it,” he snarled, wrestling me away from him. He turned for the side door, and I grabbed him by the back of his shirt.
“Fight!” I yelled. “Fight for us!”
