Page 118 of Gravity of Love
Liam gave a small shrug, deflecting and minimizing the praise. “I didn’t do anything. I didn’t operate on him. I just waited, like you.”
“It does matter. You stayed.” Tristan shook his head, at a loss for words. “After all the shit I gave you…”
“Stop, don’t.” Liam cut him off.
For a second, everything went still—no one spoke, no one even breathed. You could literally hear a pin drop, and one did. The nurse at the station dropped her pen and picked it up, cursing beneath her breath, then mouthed, “Sorry.”
“I just want you to know, what’s about to happen doesn’t have anything to do with you,” Liam stated so calmly both his tone and words drew everyone’s attention even closer. “I know we’ve never been close, but you are my brother, always, and I do love you.”
A dozen subtexts collided in the air at once. Frankie felt it, and so did everyone else, the way her family held their collective breath, waiting for Tristan to either demand Liam tell him what he was talking about or storm out. Even Emmanuelle, who was still clutching Tristan, looked up as if she’d just realized she was in the blast radius of an emotional splash zone.
Tristan stared at Liam, the emotions on his face impossible to separate. Frankie saw confusion, fear, anger, pride, sadness, and maybe even regret in and out like lights short-circuiting during a storm. When she saw her ex’s fingers curl in a fist, she thought Tristan might hit him.
She lunged forward, instincts screaming, telling her she needed to intervene and diffuse the situation before it escalated into full-blown family World War III.
Zee’s hand shot out, catching her by the elbow. “Leave it,” he whispered, voice so low it was almost a growl.
Frankie hesitated, but she trusted Zee’s judgment, even as the tension in the room ratcheted up another twenty notches.
After a long, silent standoff, Tristan finally blinked. “I love you, too,” he said, hesitant at first, then a little clearer as the words found their footing. “You’re my brother. Always.”
Then, astonishingly, Liam reached out and enveloped Tristan in a hug that was rough and awkward but undeniably real. Tristan stood there for a heartbeat, arms dangling, before he slowly returned the embrace.
Nobody said a word. Yaya’s knitting needles stilled, and even AJ glanced up from his phone with genuine shock. The hug lasted three seconds, maybe four. But when they broke apart, something in the air felt different. Lighter, somehow.
Then Liam turned to face Frankie and Zee, and that’s when all the oxygen seemed to get sucked out of the room, at least for her. She didn’t know what to expect. Liam was always so careful about boundaries, so private. But now, every molecule of his intent and energy was aimed directly at her. He stalked toward her, holding her captive with his stare, and for a second, she thought her heart was going to burst out of her chest and spatter onto the floor, that’s how hard it was pounding.
The look in his eye was…feral. Not the calculating, measured intensity she’d grown used to, but a kind of reckless, all-or-nothing desperation that scared the hell out of her.
She heard Zee mutter, “Oh, shit,” under his breath as he took an instinctive step to the side, putting a literal arm’s length between himself and the emotional cluster bomb that was about to detonate.
Liam came to a stop about a foot in front of her, close enough that she could see the flecks of green and gold in his irises andthe barely perceptible tremor in his jaw. He opened his mouth, then closed it, like he was struggling to find the words.
“Are you—” Frankie started, voice so soft it was practically a whisper.
Liam didn’t let her finish. “Frankie, I love you,” he said, and his voice was gritty and unfiltered, like he’d ripped the words from his vocal cords to make sure she heard it.
Frankie had never been more bewildered in her life. She stood frozen, heart flapping against her ribcage like a caged animal. He’d just said he loved her, on the heels of one of the most emotional days of their lives, and he’d done it with a kind of stark, primitive honesty that made her want to both swoon and throw up in equal measure. Her mind was still grappling with the reality of that when Liam pressed on, as if he was determined to wring every secret from his soul before anyone—maybe even himself—could stop him.
“I’ve loved you forever,” he said, voice steady despite the storm in his eyes. His statement cut through the air like a bell tolling at midnight, impossible to miss, impossible to ignore.
She took in a shaky breath, barely able to stand on her noodle legs.
“That love changed,” Liam continued, a faint tremor lacing his words.
Oh, wow. He wasn’t done. Of course he wasn’t. Frankie tried not to look around at the audience they'd amassed, but she could feel every pair of eyes in the room glued to them, Tristan, Emmanuelle, her mother, her brothers, Yaya, Zee, Poppy had shown up at some point and it looked like some other hospital personnel had paused at the periphery to watch the drama unfold. Frankie didn’t mind attention, but not like this. Not with her internal organs melting into a puddle and her soul on display for everyone to see.
“That love evolved, basically overnight.”
She felt her cheeks flush at the memory of the night it changed.
“I didn’t know how to handle that, so I didn’t handle it. I ran away, and I’m sorry. You deserved better than that.”
“It’s fine,” she managed, the words coming out thin and papery. “It’s okay.”
This seemed like a private conversation, so she didn’t have a clue why Liam, who had built his entire personality on privacy and self-restraint, was going full-throttle public with this. Frankie felt like she was on the Truman Show, and her own internal monologue was a nervous laugh track on repeat.
She glanced at Zee, hoping for a lifeline. He was filming.
