Page 43 of Gravity of Love
Liam nodded. He wasn’t going to deny it. At this point, he wasn’t even sure his body would allow him to.
“So do something about it!” Duane encouraged him, grabbing his shoulder excitedly.
“I can’t.” Liam shook his head.
Roger turned towards him. “Why not?”
“She’s engaged to my brother,” Liam flatly stated the fact.
“Oh shit.” Duane instantly deflated, his arm dropping down to his side.
Roger stood staring at him, stunned and speechless. There weren’t many times he’d seen Roger speechless. The man always had something to say.
Ramesh had little to no reaction. He quietly, gently put his hand on Liam’s shoulder and squeezed. “Well, they’re not married yet.”
Damn. He was right. They weren’t. But did that mean he could fuck up his little brother’s life? Fuck upherlife by telling her how he felt? A week ago, hell, two days ago, he would have said definitely no. Now…now, he wasn’t so sure.
13
The song on the radio,a soft ballad about longing and moonlight, played as the SUV hugged the darkened ribbon of forest road. Frankie watched silently as the headlights bounced off the trunks of ponderosa pines on the thirty-minute drive back to Hope Falls. The world outside was pure ink, a blanket of velvet blackness split only by the tunnel of yellow light.
Liam hadn’t said a word since they left the party, which was very on brand for him. Frankie hadn’t either, which was very off-brand for her. They were alone. Alone, alone. Finley asked if Lucy could stay for the sleepover, and since Lucy had followed their golden retriever Waffles around like a shadow, Liam agreed to let her stay the night. Duane was dropping her off early the next morning, since Liam’s house was on his way to work. So, there was no puppy buffer, it was just them.
Frankie stared at the stars on the black horizon, the sky looked impossibly big, like a planetarium had been flipped inside out. She inhaled deeply, filling her sinuses with the faint scent of vanilla from the air freshener hanging off the rearview mirror. Liam flicked his eyes sideways at her, as if trying to gauge whether she wanted him to speak, but she didn’t. Shewanted to bottle this exact moment—the hush, the stars, and the way his jaw flexed when he thought too hard about something—and save it for a night she knew would be less perfect than this one.
Her eyes kept drifting to his hands, one resting on the console between them the other at twelve o’clock on the steering wheel. They were so large, so capable. She’d always loved his hands. Her body hummed with the first memory she ever had of his hands.
It was a sun-blasted summer when everything in her world changed at once. June in San Francisco could be weird, with the fog crawling over the hills until noon, then burning off to expose the bluest sky. That day, the fog had fled, and sunlight hit her freckled arms so hard she thought she might burn right through.
She was six, a full foot shorter and half the weight of her twin brothers, who were eight. Unlike other brothers, her brothers didn’t mind her tagging along as long as she kept up. Which she always did even if it left her scrambling for footholds, too out of breath to speak, and covered head to toe in a layer of dirt and sweat.
After living at the Sterlings’ for a year, that particular summer brought two new variables in Frankie’s life. Tristan, who was also eight by that time had become the third Musketeer to Niko and AJ. He was funny, outgoing, loud, and adventurous. Much more adventurous than the twins, even Niko, who was the outgoing twin.
And then there was Liam. He was ten, double digits, which seemed like an adult to her. He was quiet, but not in the way AJ was. Liam’s eyes were always observing. He rarely spoke, but when he did, everyone listened, even the older kids on the street. As an adult, she realized he had alpha energy, even then, he was a leader. Everyone on the block walked on eggshells around him, like they were scared of what he might do. She never was.
But back to his hands. The Sterling’s estate backed up to the woods. On that particular day, AJ, Tristan, and Niko decided to conquer the biggest, gnarliest tree in the woods that they had named Frankenstein, because it was a monster to climb. When Frankie didn’t follow, Tristan bet Niko three baseball cards that she couldn’t get past the lowest branch, and Niko took the bet.
Frankie knew it was an unspoken code that, if she didn’t at least try, her invitation to tag along would be rescinded. Without any hesitation, she scrambled up after them, her palms rubbing raw against the bark. Niko screamed encouragement, mainly because he didn’t want to lose three baseball cards. Frankie gripped that tree like a spider monkey, doing everything she could to scale the trunk. When she managed to reach the first branch, which was probably a good six feet from the ground, her fingers wrapped around it, and as she swung her leg to try and get it up, her grip slipped, and gravity yanked her down. Hard.
She landed on her hip, bounced, and scraped her knee against the trunk and root. The pain was sharp and electric, but what hurt worse was the sound of Tristan taunting Niko with a relentless chorus of, “Three baseball cards! You owe me three baseball cards!”
Frankie remembered looking up into the branches and seeing that Niko was mad about losing, while AJ looked worried but didn’t move. That was how it was with AJ, always watching, never interfering.
She tried to get up, but her knee buckled, and blood started to ooze in a slow, sticky line down her shin. The world went wavy for a moment, like she was looking through a glass of water. She could feel her throat tightening, the sob pressing up against her teeth. If she cried, they’d never let her forget it, so she clamped her jaw, dug her nails into her palm, and stood.
That’s when Liam appeared on his bike like a dark BMX angel. He slid to a stop in front of her, got off, and crouched down until his face was level with hers and said, “Let me see.”
She didn’t want to, but she did—she pulled her knee forward and watched him inspect the scrape with the solemnity of a surgeon.
“It’s not bad,” he said calmly. “It looks worse than it is.”
She nodded, doing her best to be brave. She had no words.
He peered up at the others, Tristan was still taunting Niko, and Niko was still pouting. “I’m going to get Otter Pops,” he announced to no one in particular. “Frankie, do you want to come?”
She could barely breathe, much less answer, but he didn’t need her to. He just stood, dusted off his shorts, and offered her his hand. She took it. His hands were huge even then, the knuckles scabbed from fights he got in with older kids she heard about from Niko and Tristan, but his grip was gentle.
They hobbled back through the woods—well, she did, and he pushed his bike—their shadows melting into each other in the late afternoon sun. Liam didn’t talk, and neither did she. He didn’t say anything when her limp got worse, then he knelt down and gestured for her to climb on his back. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on as he stood back up.
