The uncomfortable burn behind her eyes threatened, so Frankie scoffed and stiffened her spine. “Of course I deserve the light. Which, in case you’ve forgotten, was stolen from me by a certain uptight asshole who hijacked my life.”
He flinched. “Exactly,” he said tightly. “Which makes me wonder. Were you drunk or what when you invited me back into your life via a billboard?”
“More like temporarily delusional,” she snapped. “In my defense, I didn’t even discover your little clipping until I was already back in Manhattan. And when a man gifts a woman that kind of dangerous secret, she’s going to melt…at least a little. I thought maybe I owed you a grand gesture. Something to match your whole gift-of-a-deadly-secret thing. And then you ghosted me. So don’t expect me to be rolling out the red carpet tonight.”
His jaw tightened, but he nodded once. “I deserved that.”
“And so much more.”
“I’m here now,” Marcus said softly.
“But why?” she pressed. “What’s left to say? You’re dark. I’m light. You’re an asshole. I’m a delight.”
His lips twitched. “The idea of living without you broke me.”
The words smashed open the box she’d locked her heart in and wrapped it in an infuriating hug. She tried to deflect, but the truth clung, messy and maddening.
“I couldn’t function,” he admitted. “I went full hermit mode.”
“That doesn’t sound healthy,” she muttered. “Haven’t you ever been to therapy? You can’t just bottle this crap up. That’s how people end up yelling at interns.”
“After I ignored their calls for a week, my brothers tracked me down. Showed up with booze and some pithy bullshit about getting on with life.”
“You were moping?”
“Of course not. I was drinking. And hitting things.”
“So…moping.”
He scowled. “After I told them to fuck off, they pivoted to Game Plan Z.”
“Z?” She leaned in. “As in you already burned through twenty-five other options?”
“Something like that.”
“And that is?” she asked, arching a brow. Ziggy hadn’t even had a Game Plan B. His advice had beenI never liked him much anyway.
“They decided the status quo we’ve been living under since moving to the States was no longer viable.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You’re going to have to use smaller words.”
He exhaled. “I told you the woman who adopted me and my brothers was behind Nippleton becoming Gi Gi’s Crossing. She left us each honey-do lists. Mine was the manor.”
He paused, meeting her gaze.
Frankie gave a slow blink, feigning nonchalance while her chest squeezed tight. Of course she remembered. That was the night they’d swapped secrets. The night he’d changed her mind about foreplay. The night she’d started to fall.
“In her will, Gi Gi also left a letter to be opened once we’d completed our lists,” he said, his voice dropping low. “We rebelled and read it early. In it, she explained she bought the town hoping we’d bond with the locals. Build a life. A family.”
“And?” Frankie asked when he stopped talking, as if he’d gotten lost in a memory.
He ran a hand through his hair. “Long story short, for years, we all lived in the shadows. Always hiding. Always looking over our shoulders, waiting for someone from my father’s past to find us and finish the job.” He paused, hisjaw flexing.
She couldn’t imagine how hard it must have been to live a life in constant fear of letting something slip that lead to the bad guy tracking you down. “And now?” she asked.
He hesitated before meeting her gaze. “According to Gi Gi, my father’s last remaining enemy, the one you read about in the paper, the one who threatened to finish the job if he ever discovered we survived the fire, died in prison. There’s no one left to care if we exist.”
A tear slipped down her cheek. “Not even your father?”
