As she lays half asleep and spent on the couch, I walk into the bedroom, grab a blanket and come back in. I sit down beside her and cover her with it. She curls up next to me, and I reach for the sushi tray again. I pop one into her mouth after dipping it in soy.
“How do you know I don’t want wasabi or ginger?”
“Because it was one of the many things you mentioned that night while we talked until dawn,” I remind her and grab a piece of ginger and drop it on top of an avocado roll and pop that into my mouth. “You only ever put soy sauce on sushi.”
“You remember that little detail?” I nod and she smiles. “I’m touched. I wish I remembered more of that night but the whole weekend is foggy thanks to the drug thing.”
I reach down and grab the complimentary bottle of sparkling water the hotel must have put in a champagne bucket for her. I open it and drink straight from it, instead of bothering with glasses. She takes it from my hand when I’m done, and as she takes her own sip I ask, “I had no idea you had a drug problem when I met you. You hid it well.”
“I hid nothing. I didn’t have a drug problem,” she replies quietly and swiftly. “I know that sounds like denial, but it was a one-time incident.”
“But you went to rehab.”
“Because my dad needed me to,” Frankie replies and snuggles closer as she grabs another roll. She’s not bothered by discussing this, and I see it as a good sign but also a warning. She is vulnerable with me. This is new and a sign we’re getting closer, which we shouldn’t because, as she herself has pointed out, we can’t go anywhere with this. “He was terrified, and it brought up all this repressed guilt he had over my mom and how he parented without her. He blamed himself, and he needed me to go for his peace of mind more than my own. So I went.”
I absorb that information and wrap an arm around her as her cheek presses to my chest. “But you didn’t need to go?”
“No. I didn’t take… drugs before that night. I’d smoked weed once in boarding school at fourteen. That was literally it,” Frankie says, and the hesitation in her voice, the way her sentence stuttered for a second makes me think there’s something she’s not telling me. Why? “Anyway, it wasn’t a bad idea. Recovery centers are good for more than just addiction issues. I needed the calm, the solitude, and the therapists for other things.”
She falls silent and doesn’t elaborate on that. I want her to, but at the same time that little bit of emotional distance she is keeping between us is for the best. For both of us. So I change the subject. “Bash is a great dad.”
“He is.”
Which reminds me… “I think Adelaide is pregnant.”
The mood, the warmth of the bond we were beginning to form, is blown right out of the hotel room like someone just turned on an industrial fan. She stiffens under my arm and then sits bolt upright. “What?”
I explain what I saw but avoid telling her Adelaide confessed openly to Mum. I don’t want to start bad blood between Adelaide and Mum or anyone else. Judging by the look in Frankie’s eyes, she believes it without that information anyway. “Shit. Lucia and I joke about that all the time. It can’t be real. Holy shit, did she really go for the anchor baby?”
“I don’t know if it’s that so much as, you know, actual love and a ticking biological clock,” I reply cautiously.
Frankie frowns at me like I just said the stupidest thing ever and springs off the couch, in search of her phone. She grabs it from the chair by the windows, and I know she’s immediately texting Lucia. Which means our time is done because there is no way her sister isn’t going to beeline it right over here as soon as she gets the news. So I stand and try to take the phone out of her hand. There’s a small, silly little struggle which I win by distracting her with a searing kiss. But it’s too late. A text has been sent.
“No round three now,” I reply sadly.
She looks as sad as I feel but she says, “It’s probably for the best. One more time and this might become…”
“A habit.”
“An addiction,” she replies.
“I thought you didn’t have those.”
“I think you might be the exception,” Frankie whispers and walks right up to me and cups my package through my boxer briefs as she presses the full, perfect mouth to the space just above my collarbone. I push my dick into her hand and grab her hair and tug her head back so I can claim her mouth.
And then the expected fist is pounding on the hotel room door.
We break apart… our hands clinging together as long as possible until she’s one step too close to the door and I’m one step too close to the bedroom, and our fingers can no longer touch. I push the bedroom door closed and dress quickly. Lucia has burst into the suite, talking a mile a minute about Adelaide, using words like gold-digger and social climber and expressing concern her dad is possibly senile.
When I hear Lucia say, “Where did you get that shirt? It’s way too big to be yours,” I open the door and step out and all talk stops entirely. Lucia’s big brown eyes widen to the point where I worry they might fall out of her head.
“Lucia,” I say and smile. I hand Frankie her silky tank that matches her boxers. “I’m gonna need that shirt back, love.”
“Love?” Lucia repeats, eyes still the size of tires.
“Relax,” Frankie warns her sister as she turns her back to us, pulls off my shirt and tosses it in my general direction, and starts to put on her tank. Lucia turns her back to her sister and glares at me, which I ignore.
“The glass is acting like a mirror, love. Not that I mind,” I explain to Frankie as I take in the jiggle of her full, bare breasts as she changes.
She turns back to me as I pull on my own shirt. “Get some sleep. I need you to perform tomorrow.”
“More than he’s already performed tonight?” Lucia mutters, and I grin and lean toward the younger Castera.
“I’ve got enough in the tank,” I promise. Lucia wrinkles her nose and turns away from me with a gagging noise.
I walk over and kiss Frankie. I mean it to be chaste, but I’m suddenly filled with melancholy at the realization this is probably our last kiss, so I deepen it. And only pull away when Lucia bellows. “Enough!”
I break the kiss and smile at Frankie but it’s soft and probably a little sad, because that’s how I feel. “See you tomorrow, boss.”
“Tomorrow,” she murmurs, and I leave. Closing the door to her suite is way harder than I want it to be, and I barely sleep all night because of the dull ache in my chest at the idea that tonight will never happen again.
