Indie is sitting in my usual spot next to Frankie's bed when I come back from grabbing a quick shower over at the hotel that we are all still staying at. None of us wants to be that far from her for any real amount of time.
“Any change?” I ask, even though I already know the answer.
It's been a week, and while the swelling on her brain has gone down almost completely and she’s breathing on her own, she still hasn't woken up.
“No, still nothing. I just brushed her hair and braided it for her, painted her finger and toenails. She'll want to look pretty when she wakes up,” she says with as much enthusiasm as she can manage, which isn’t much at all.
“She'll appreciate how well you've taken care of her, Indie. You're right, she wouldn't want to look like shit, and she’d be pissed at us if we allowed that.”
Not that she could ever look like shit, but I was trying to lighten the mood a bit for Indie—hell, for myself too.
“Why don't you go and grab some food? They just ordered Chinese in the room; Sonny said to tell you it’s from that place you love so much. Go, go eat while it's still hot. I've got her.” I smile encouragingly at her.
I know she’s feeling as helpless and off kilter as I am with our girl still out, but I need her to hold it together a little longer. I have to focus all of my energy on Frankie right now, and I don’t need Indie breaking down. Truth be told, I think we are drawing strength off of each other and I'm a little afraid of what might happen to my resolve if she shatters. She looks over at the bed and nods.
“You'll call me if she wakes up, right?”
“You know I will, Jones.”
“Okay, I'll go eat and maybe lay down for a bit. I can be here in two minutes if you need me though.”
I jerk my head toward the door. “I know it. Now get out of here; you’re in my chair.”
“Prick,” she mumbles good-naturedly as she walks by me and out the door.
I sink into the seat she’s vacated and take Frankie's hand in mine, careful of her wet nails. I place a kiss on the inside of her wrist and reach into my pocket with my other hand for my phone, plugging it into the dock that I keep next to her bed. “Hey, Princess. I just talked to Jack. Him and Cara were calling to check on you. I told him that I've been playing music while we hang out. He said he's going to put a playlist together for us, but that I had to play you this new song that he heard. Jack says he has no fucking clue what they're talking about, but he digs it and if I blow him any shit for it, he's gonna junk punch me the next time he sees me, so I'm guessing it's a giant vagina song,” I tell her chuckling.
I tend to ramble when I’m here with her, but the doctors all think it’s good that I talk to her, so I just go with it. Even if they didn't, I'd still do it.
“Let's see what this pussy has us listening to.”
I click on the link he sent me and lean forward, placing my arms on the bed beside her and listen to the song with her. I will never admit it to him or anyone else, but I kinda dig it too.
“You loved the shit out of that, didn't you?” I ask once the song ends, shaking my head.
I’m scrolling through the playlists when Mav walks in.
“Hey, brother, how's the Princess today?” he greets.
“Same. How'd it go down at the station?” I ask since he had a meeting with the detectives on her case earlier today.
They still haven't found Andrew, not a hit on his phone or credit cards; it’s like he vanished. If he’s smart, he'll stay that way, but he proved how stupid he is the day he fucking laid hands on Frankie.
“They've still got nothing. Where the hell could he be? How does a person just disappear like that? It’s like he's a fucking ghost,” Mav says, exasperated.
He doesn’t expect an answer which is good, because I don’t have one for him, so we just sit in comfortable silence with our girl, listening to some of the Italian music that she loves so much. It makes me feel closer to her; I can almost hear her singing the words. I have no clue what the fuck they are singing about. I’m about to turn it up when Mav says, “Oh fuck! Who called him?”
My head shoots up and I whip it around to see who he’s talking about.
“You know who that is, don't you, Deac?”
I narrow my eyes trying to place the guy leaning against the glass door staring at Frankie with a look of total devastation on his face. I recognize it because it's the same look I see when I look at myself in the mirror. I can’t place him right away though and then it hits me.
“Who the fuck told Flashdance? Isn't he supposed to be competing on another fucking continent?”
Maverick just nods. Flashdance, or Cristiano Palomo, as he prefers to be called, had been Frankie's dance partner while I was in the service. He had also been her first serious boyfriend and her “first” everything else. To say I hate him with every fiber of my being would be putting it mildly. My brothers had dubbed him “Flashdance” when they first met him while I was in boot camp. He hated it, so naturally it stuck. This is obviously our thing. He and Frankie were together for two years when he asked her to leave with him to go live in Spain and compete there and in Europe. Clearly he didn't know her if he thought that she'd ever agree to leave her dad. She said no and he left, leaving our girl brokenhearted and without a dance partner. That's when she switched gears and started teaching more than competing and really started focusing on her contemporary dancing.
I see him reaching for the handle when the nurse stops him. He hasn't taken his eyes off of Frankie, so he still hasn't entirely registered Mav and me sitting there until the nurse points us out, most likely explaining to him that only two people can be in here at a time. Cristiano doesn’t look happy and I can honestly say I couldn't give a fuck less. In fact, I'm willing to bet that zero fucks are given by my brother and me.
“Can I trust you alone with him, dude? You know he's not going to leave without seeing her.”
I glare at my dumbass brother.
“I'm not going to start laying people out in her hospital room, Mav. I'll have the decency to at least take him outside,” I say with a smirk.
“You're a bad motha—”
“Shut your mouth,” I finish for him.
We look at each other and laugh. I’m pretty sure it’s the first real laugh we’ve shared since we got here.
“This should be interesting,” he says as he strides toward the door. “I'm just going to grab some coffee for us. I won't be far and Reggie is in the waiting room if you need him,” he calls over his shoulder.
I grunt in answer, my eyes never leaving Cristiano, who is back to watching Frankie. I hate it. I hate this whole situation obviously, but I hate that she is so vulnerable lying here and that people are seeing her like this. My girl isn’t weak or timid, she’s a scrapper, but also so elegant in everything she does. I like to tell her that she’s “Classy as Fuck.” A lady in every sense of the word, but still wouldn't hesitate to cut a bitch if need be or tell you to go fuck yourself. Ergo, “Classy as Fuck.” Just the thought makes me smile. That ends real quick though when I hear him enter the room.
By the time he makes it over to the other side of the bed, I’m so tense my leg is bouncing and I can feel the muscle in my jaw jumping like mad. I glance up to find him scowling at me.
“What happened to your face, Deacon?” he asks in an accusing tone that I do not fucking appreciate. Not one fucking bit. It’s like all of these assholes forget what I do for a living, and why are they all so quick to assume I put hands on her? Just because my job is to hurt people doesn’t mean I’m a monster.
My eyes narrow and that twitch in my jaw takes off as I clench my teeth and count to ten, reminding myself that I told Mav that I wouldn't lay anyone out at her bedside—though when I said it I didn't realize how hard that would be.
“What the fuck do you think happened to my face, Flashdance?” I snarl and he flinches a bit, though I’m not sure if it’s from the venom behind my words or the use of his little nickname.
“I had a fight the night that she called me for help, you fuck,” I growl, trying with everything I have to reel in my temper. “Don't think that you can waltz your pretty boy ass in here and start making assumptions and accusations. If you think for one minute that I'll put up with that shit from you, or anyone else for that matter, for even one second, you are sadly mistaken. Sadly fucking mistaken. So I suggest you take that bulllshit somewhere else.”
I hadn't realized that I am now standing and leaning toward him over Frankie's bed until Reggie pokes his head in.
“Hey, Deac, bro, you okay in here?” he asks in that scary, low voice of his.
I don’t even bother looking at him, keeping my gaze focused on this motherfucker, when I ask, “We good here, Flashdance, or are you ready to go?”
He looks down at Frankie and shakes his head.
“No, we're good. I'm sorry. I—I wasn't prepared to see her look like this and then I saw you and all of your bruises and I just—just lost my head for a second. I apologize,” he says in a quiet voice.
I don’t acknowledge his apology, leaning in and kissing the Princess on the head, and then on her wrist, whispering low in her ear, so that only she would hear, that I’m sorry for losing my shit and that she can give me hell for it later. I kiss her again and sit back in my seat, taking her hand and placing one more kiss to the inside of her wrist, taking a second to just breathe her in and let her heart pulse against my lips. It soothes me a bit, that soft throbbing telling me that my girl is still here, still fighting.
Cristiano shifts from foot to foot and clears his throat.
“Can I have a minute alone with her?” he asks timidly.
I look over at him, my eyebrows pulled low and give him a dubious look. “Not gonna happen, I don't leave her unless it's absolutely necessary, and I just got back from grabbing a shower, so I'm good.”
He huffs out an exasperated breath, which I ignore.
“Fine, can you tell me what happened to her then? I got a phone call from a friend of ours who happened to see the story on the news and I came immediately. She said that the news wasn't saying much. Is it because they don't know anything?”
Answering him is like torture. I don't want to talk to him at all, let alone hash out what happened that night.
“They don't know much because she hasn't woken up to tell them what went down yet. All they have to go on is that she said Andrew’s name when she called me and that they haven't been able to find him since that night.”
I can see the shock and confusion on his face.
“Why? Why would he do this to her? I don't understand.”
That makes two of us, but I’m not about to bond with his ass over it.
“I called her just a couple of weeks ago when I heard the news that she was engaged,” he says more to himself than me.
“You spoke to her?” This was news to me. “Did you talk often?”
He gave a tiny shake of his head.
“No, maybe a few times a year. My girlfriend didn't like it. I called her to congratulate her, but I couldn't do it.” He shakes his head again as if remembering. “I told her not to marry him, that I'd move back, teach with her, and compete here.”
If I thought I was tense before, not even close. Now I’m about two point five seconds from completely going ballistic at his words. It’s as if he doesn’t even realize that he’s saying them out loud. He almost seems dazed and a little out of it, but still he goes on.
“She was so angry. She said ‘Why does everyone keep doing this to me?’ I didn’t understand what she meant, and before I could ask her, she hung up on me, and I haven’t talked to her since.”
He’s still looking down at her, holding her hand, lost in his own thoughts, and I in mine. I knew what she was talking about. First me and then him…seems like Cristiano didn’t realize a good thing when he had it right in front of him either. I’ll be damned if I’d give him a chance to change that though. This Rico Suave motherfucker is not going to get in between me and Frankie. I’ve already let Andrew do that and it nearly killed her. I am done with that shit. I’m ready to fight dirty if I have to, and the way he’s looking at her with love and longing in his eyes and the gentle way he holds her hand tells me that I’m going to have to do just that. I’m ready. She’s worth it and we both know it.
Before I can voice my plan and start an all-out war, Mav sticks his head in. “Times up. I gotta get my Princess fix before Guy gets here.”
He looks like he’s about to argue. I can see how pissed he is that he really has no say, no place in her life anymore that would earn him the right. He just nods and then leans down whispering in Spanish. I’m not fluent, but I understand enough because of Frankie and her love of languages, always spouting off with her multilingual talents. I catch every couple words and they piss me off. I hear “Blah, blah…I’m here now, my love…blah, blah…safe….blah, blah, blah…not leaving again,” before I clear my throat and ask, “Shouldn’t you go and call your girlfriend, let her know that you landed safely?”
The look he gives me is murderous, which does nothing but make me smile at him. He lays her hand down and walks out without another word to either of us.
“Well, that went well, huh? Reggie said there had been a ‘moment.’ You want to tell me about it?” Mav asks, his eyebrows raised.
“Not really, though I will say it’s a good thing that you made me promise not to go to blows before you left.”
I’m not sure why I expect him to be surprised by that, but he isn’t.
“I’m not a dumbass, Deac. I see you, brother. I see how you’re barely hanging on to your sanity as it is and then he shows up. You’re a minute away from detonation, and it’d take a whole lot less than Cristiano to set you off right now.”
He must see the pissed off look on my face because he quickly says, “Nobody blames you for being on edge, Deacon. Hell, we’re all riding the fence right now. We’re just not as volatile as you are.”
He says the last part on a chuckle to lessen the blow a bit. He’s right, I know it, and clearly so does everyone else.
Long after Mav leaves, I’m still sitting here just watching her, willing her to wake up. I sigh loudly and pull my chair closer to the bed, taking her hand in mine and brushing the hair off her forehead, careful not to touch any of her wounds. Her mouth is pulled down in a frown, which is not the norm for my girl when she’s awake, but it reminds me of a time when we were younger.
“Hey, Frankie, you remember that time in high school that tool, Nick, asked you out? He came to your dad’s to pick you up and my brothers and I made sure that we were there to answer the door?” Smiling as I recall his face, I continue, “He was so scared, Princess. Stuttering and shit. It was so hard for us not to laugh at him. Fuck, you were so pissed.” I laugh softly. Gently, I take her hand and place a kiss to my spot, exhaling against her wrist and say quietly, “Even then, I knew, Frankie. Even then, when I was too young to appreciate you, when I was doing my best to keep the guys away from you, pretending like I was doing it to protect you like some kind of big brother. Even then, I knew that I loved you and not just like the pain in the ass little sister that Mav and Sonny treated you like. I loved you, but I wasn’t ready for you. I hadn’t earned the right for you to love me back yet.”