my face in her stomach, held her by the hips like I could breathe healing into her body, into her soul, while Frankie Leigh just kept weeping.
Though I could feel it.
She was detached.
Hovering somewhere in the periphery.
Gone to the story she had just told.
Swept away in the grief.
“Oh, God. Frankie. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I tried to gather her closer, but her head shook, her knees week. Girl so distraught I could feel the pulses of misery shuddering through her shaking body. Or maybe it was only mine ricocheting back.
Pain searing through the atmosphere.
More than either of us could bear.
I’d been responsible for the one thing I’d sworn I would never be.
Reckless with Frankie.
Reckless with life.
It was an affliction that was supposed to have ended with me.
I never should have let it happen.
A child. Our child. Our little girl.
“Frankie,” I begged again, trying to get her to focus on my face. To look at me. To see me.
But she’d retreated.
Withdrawn into herself.
Everything going dim and dark.
“Frankie, please, look at me.”
Her head shook, her eyes distant as she tried to back away.
“I’m so sorry, Frankie. Fuck. I never meant to hurt you this way.”
I watched her mouth, her lips moving slow, like she was speaking from someplace faraway.
From three years ago when I’d betrayed her.
Left her when she needed me most.
“I was so mad at you for leavin’ me, Evan. So angry, and still, I totally understood why you did it. Accepted it. Forgave you a long time ago.”
Sorrow trembled on the edges of her gorgeous mouth that was soaked with her tears.
An apology written in this smile that ripped me in two. “But this mornin’? I think . . . I think I’d buried it, never really dealt with the grief of it. I just stuffed it down and let it fester and thought it would get better. And today it got loose. And right now, I don’t know how to handle it.”
Shame eclipsed her light, and she fumbled to step back.
Agony filled her movements, the closest she’d let her spirit come to me since she’d started confiding the truth I should have been man enough to hold then.
WHAT IF I’M TOO AFRAID TO LOVE HIM RIGHT? WHAT IF I’M NOT ENOUGH? I . . . I CAN’T BREATHE, EVAN . . . CAN’T BREATHE AT THE THOUGHT OF LOSING A CHILD ALL OVER AGAIN.
Pushing to standing, I tried to wrap my hands around hers. To stop this madness. To stop this girl from shouldering any more blame. “No, Frankie. You saved him. He needed you, and you did exactly what he needed you to do. That’s what parents do. They do the best that they can. This is my fault. The sorrow you’ve harbored. The child. The fact you were alone. My. Fault.”
Knew my voice was cracking. Begging this girl to see. To once and for all be the man she needed me to be.
“Please, let me hold the sorrow. It hurts so goddamn bad, Frankie, knowing what we created. That we lost it. That I wasn’t there to hold you through it. But I need you to know how badly we need you. Everett and I. Right now. Today. Forever. And I know you need us, too.”
Squeezing her eyes closed, she stepped back, rejecting what I said. “I . . . I think I need to go, Evan. I need . . .”
She blinked like she didn’t know what that was.
Lost in the wreckage of what I’d done.
“Frankie.”
She put up a hand. “Please, Evan . . . I just . . . please.”
She started for the door.
“Frankie.” My voice stopped her when she was halfway out, her broken gaze meeting mine from over her shoulder. “I ran, Frankie, because I was scared. Because my life and who I was and the hardship of it felt like it was too much. I was wrong. I belong here. Just like you belong with us.”
Tears kept falling down her face, and her teeth clamped down on her bottom lip. “It hurts, Evan, and I’m scared I might love him too much.”
Then she slipped out. Taking the storm of energy with her.
Staring at the closed door, I realized it only took one mistake to change the trajectory of our lives.
One mistake to cause a fallout that would rain forever.
One mistake and the consequences were more than we could afford.
But sometimes . . . sometimes we received mercy for our sins.