Page 106 of Gravity of Love
As soon as the words left his mouth, he knew he’d made a catastrophic mistake. Talk about a rookie fucking move. The worst thing anyone could possibly say to someone when they were upset was calm down. “I’m sorry, I didn’t?—”
His apology was cutoff, and rightly so. He could practically see steam coming out of her ears, yet her voice was oddly calm, almost clinical.
“No,Iam talking now, and you will listen.” She stood, the blanket sliding off of her as she pointed down at him. He knew itwasn’t the right time to say so, but she looked fucking adorable standing in front of him in his oversized sweatshirt, her hair wound up in a messy bun on top of her head, her makeup smudged, with the glow from the fire dancing across the freckles sprinkled on her upturned nose and in golden flecks floating in her amber eyes. “The night after the dinner at the Castaway, my mom went downstairs for some water and heard Tristan talking in the basement, and she thought he sounded upset, so she went down to make sure he was okay. Like anidiot, he left the door open, and she overheard him talking, on FaceTime, of course, to Emmanuelle. She heard him say that we were broken up, that we’dbeenbroken up for six months?—”
“Six months?” Liam repeated.
“Yeah, I know it’sso crazythat Tristan would lie, right? Anyway, she was going to confront him and ask what was going on—” With each word she spoke, she picked up speed, like a snowball in an avalanche. “—but she thought she should talk tomefirst. Her daughter. So she went upstairs, and guess what she heard? She heardus. Me and you. She heardeverything.”
“Shit.” Liam’s stomach dropped.
That was not how he wanted Cora to find out about them.
“Yes.Shit. That is the correct response. The next day, she cornered me at brunch. She asked if I had anything to tell her. She was looking at me like I’d turned into a criminal overnight.” Frankie took a deep breath. “She then proceeded to tell me about Tristan and what she’d heard when she’d gone to my door. Before I could say anything, Zion, who had just shown up at your house and surprised me because he knew Tristan was being an ass and he didn’t want me to have to deal with him alone, walked up, and my mom justassumedit was him I was sleeping with. Notyou. When I didn’t correct her, she relaxed. She wassorelieved that it wasn’t you, she said she hadn’t slept the entire night thinking it was you, and then asked If I could imagine thedamage and irreparable pain that would cause. I just…” Frankie shrugged, but Liam could see her trembling, every muscle in her arms and neck flexed as if she were holding herself together by force.
He stared at her, the knot of tension in his chest slowly unwinding, only to be replaced by a different ache, something raw and sad and a little bit hopeful.
“You let her believe it,” he said, not quite a question.
Frankie squared her shoulders defiantly. “Yes. I did. It was easier. She acted as if the world would implode if it had been you, and you don’t know what it was like when her world implodes. What it was like with her after my dad died.” Tears started filling Frankie’s eyes and sliding down her face, but she wiped them away as fast as they appeared. “You didn’t live in that cottage. For years…she was… I know she’s better now, but I just wanted to make sure this weekend, herweddingweekend, didn’t trigger her. That’s it. Sofuckingsue me.”
Liam stood up, feeling the familiar pulse of frustration and longing tangle together in his chest. He could see the confusion and pain written so plainly across Frankie’s face, her mouth set in a stubborn line, her jaw trembling even as her eyes tried to hurl daggers his way. But he didn’t want to fight. Not anymore, not with her. He just wanted to lay the truth out in the open, strip it bare, the way she always demanded, no matter who it hurt.
“Oh, that’s not all.” She took a step back. “This morning my mom was looking for towels and asked if I knew where any were. I said no, because I didn’t. So she goes looking and calls my name. I go down this hall past the kitchen to a secret?—"
“Frankie, I was—” Liam knew what she was going to say, and he wanted to tell her, but when? He wasn’t going to show her the room the first night she came to his house, the same night shetold him she broke up with his brother and they slept together. The next day his dad, her mom, and Tristan showed up.
“No, I’m not finished.” She held up her hand and took a step back putting distance between them. “I walk in and see my dream art room. It has everything I talked about, the wall of windows, the brick wall, the cement floors, it even has a rolling library ladder. I even forgot I wanted that.” Tears began slipping down her cheeks.
“Don’t cry.” He hated seeing the pain she was in and knowing he was the one who had made her feel it.
She wiped her cheeks roughly as she sniffed. “Not only is it my perfect dream fantasy art studio, which would have been crazy enough, but you have all my art. Everything. Every drawing, every project, every card, every everything. Even the cigar box I used to doodle on. Why? How? I sold those pieces to other people. Were they fake people?”
“No. They weren’t fake people.”
“So how did you get them?”
He looked down at the floor.
“How!?” she yelled.
He lifted his head and hoped he wasn’t throwing her brother under the bus by being honest, but he couldn’t risk lying to her. “I asked AJ to find out who bought them.”
“AJ?” She shook her head. “What? Why?”
“I asked him to figure out who they were. You know, to do his cyber stuff. And then when I had their information, I emailed them and asked if they would consider selling and, if so, to name their price. It was all legal. I mean, I guess except for the AJ part.”
“Why?” Her eyes were searching his. Searching for answers he wasn’t sure he could give her.
He sighed as he scrubbed his hands over his face. “I just…I don’t know. It started when I found that rainbow picture in thetrash, I took it out because I liked it. Then I found the coffee picture on the lawn. I kept them because they were good, and they were…you. Then I noticed a pattern, you would finish a piece and trash it impulsively and regret it later, so my plan was to collect them, keep them, and then give them to you when you graduated college. But then…” He took a deep breath. “Then, you know, we weren’t talking, so I couldn’t. And when you started selling things, it just felt wrong to have your work out there, in the world. I felt empty without them. It was like they weren’t …home.”
He reached out for her hand, but she jerked her arm away.
“You can’t do that.” She pushed her hands against his chest, but he didn’t move.
“Do what?”
“Say things like that. Do things likethatand then stop speaking to me because you get bored or butt hurt or abducted by aliens or develop amnesia.”
