Chapter 13

Levi

Frankie sure knew how to make an exit. I turned and watched her leave, head held high, wielding a bottle of champagne in each hand.

When I turned back, the bartender was still standing there looking at me. From the disapproval in his gaze, I assumed Frankie had told him a little bit about our situation. I wondered if the hotel had another bar I could go to where I wouldn’t be judged all night.

“What?” I asked.

The bartender jerked his chin toward the exit. “Aren’t you going to go after her?”

What did he think this was? An airport scene in a cheesy nineties romance film?

“No. I’m not going after her.” I lifted my glass, signaling that I wanted another drink and I didn’t want to talk anymore.

Instead of getting me a drink, he leaned onto the counter and crossed his arms.

“Why not?”

I sighed in frustration. “I’m sure you heard her. She doesn’t want my pity. She wants to be left alone.”

He shook his head. “She never said she wanted to be left alone.”

“No, I figured that one out myself when she stormed out of here with enough champagne to put herself into a coma.”

“I’ve spent the past half hour talking to that girl, and I’ll tell you right now, alone is not something she wants to be.” He removed my glass and started wiping down the bar. “Of course she doesn’t want your pity. Nobody wants that. She wants your compassion.” When I didn’t say anything, he looked up at me mid-wipe and paused. “Surely there’s some way you can relate?”

As I learned today, there was. When Frankie spoke about her ex-husband, I recognized the hurt in her eyes. The betrayal. Much as I tried not to think about Evelyn, I still wondered from time to time what about me was so horrible that she had to leave without even saying goodbye.

I still hurt.

I finally stood from my stool, and the bartender nodded approvingly. Not that I needed his approval. I settled the tab before I left, taking care of Frankie’s portion too even though she requested to pay on check out. It seemed fair since I was the one who’d driven her to drink.

I entered the room and was surprised to find that even though it was getting dark out, all the lights were off.

“Frankie?” I called, flicking on the kitchen light.

There was no answer except the icy click of snowflakes as the wind swept them against the window. The door to Frankie’s room was ajar, but she wasn’t inside, and I checked the other rooms too with no luck. If she hadn’t come straight back here, where was she?

I did another lap of the suite but still couldn’t find her. I was just about to go search the rest of the hotel when I noticed the curtains were drawn in front of the French doors.

Sure enough, I pulled back the curtain and saw a mass of blankets in one of the deck chairs that I soon recognized as Frankie. She was holding one bottle of champagne, and the other rested in the snow at her feet. The deck was covered and shielded by the sides of the building, but it was freezing still. What was she doing out there?

I walked back through the living room to my room and rifled through my suitcase for another sweater, grabbed a spare blanket from the closet, and walked back to the French doors, turning off the lights as I went. I wrapped the blanket around my shoulders and slipped out onto the deck.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey.” Frankie raised the bottle to her lips and drank.

“Mind if I join you?”

She shrugged. I took that as a yes and cleared the snow from the seat next to her. I surreptitiously grabbed the other bottle of champagne and, when she didn’t protest, popped the cork off and took a drink.

We sat like that for a while, watching the snow whip through the air, listening to the howling of the wind. The clouds looked brown in the darkness, and I wondered how much snow they had left in them.

Finally, I did what I came out here to do. “I’m sorry about the things I said to you.”

“Which things?” she answered dully.

“All of them.”

“I don’t want you to apologize just because you feel sorry for me.”

“I’m apologizing because it’s the right thing to do, and it’s probably about time I started doing that.”

She glanced over and cocked a brow. “I didn’t think cabin fever set in this quickly.”

“Look, you’re different than I thought you were,” I explained. “The whole situation with you and Val was weird to me. It was hard for me to understand. It still is, but at least I know you’re not just a leech.”

“Do you know why Val hired me?” Frankie asked.

“I’ve been asking myself that question for months.”

She glanced over at me, half her face cast in shadow. “She’s lonely. Her only friends are people she knows through her family, and they’re all just as shallow and vain as you seem to think she is. She wanted to have somebody there for her who she could count on not to talk shit behind her back. Someone every bit as invested in her happiness as she was. Garrick has you for that, but Val didn’t have anybody.”

“I guess I never thought about it that way.”

Frankie adjusted herself in the chair so that she faced me, cradling the bottle of champagne in front of her.

“I don’t know you very well, but to me it seems like your problem is that you have difficulty accepting people at face value.”

“That’s not a problem,” I replied. “You should never take anything at face value. People especially.”

“But you did once, didn’t you?” Her lips came together in concern—genuine concern. Maybe we both had a touch of cabin fever.

“Do you think the fact that the woman you loved abandoned you has anything to do with your inability to trust people’s good intentions?”

I took a swig and frowned at her. “You don’t skirt around things, do you?”

“Not my forte.”

“It’s never too late to learn the art of tact.”

Frankie scowled. “Hey. We had a brawl over a remote control earlier that devolved into a mudslinging contest. We’re beyond tact.”

The icy look she gave me went well with the snowflakes peppering her dark locks. She looked like an ice queen.

“There’s nobody up here but us,” she continued, gesturing around into the blackness. “I don’t know anybody you know except your brother and his fiancé, and the last thing I’m going to do is screw up my relationship with my favorite bride by gossiping about the best man. You’ve got an opportunity to talk to somebody here.”

“What? So you expect me to bare my soul to you just because we’re alone for the first time?” I chuckled and took a drink of champagne. “I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

“It’s no skin off my back.”

“Good.”

We sat in silence, and Frankie looked back out at the row of trees in the distance. I thought about everything she’d revealed to me tonight and wondered why she did it. Was it all a ruse to get me to share my own sad story? Or maybe, as she claimed, Frankie was a good deal more genuine than I gave her credit for.

I released a breath and chewed my bottom lip. “What you said. That probably has something to do with it.”

Frankie looked back over, cocking an eyebrow. “What I said about what?”

“About Evelyn. My ex.” I couldn’t believe I was doing this. Screw cabin fever, this was full-on insanity.

“Her leaving blindsided me. It was easier after that to go heavy on the suspicion anytime I met someone new. At least that way they wouldn’t have the chance to get one up on me.”

I figured Frankie’s rose-tinted view of the world would make it unconscionable to behave so coldly, but she didn’t condemn me. She nodded.

“I get that. I haven’t had a best friend since. It’s a shitty way of seeing things, but you can’t help wondering whether the trust fall you’re participating in is going to end with you landing in a snake pit.”

“Yeah.” I drank.

She drank. “Yeah.”

After a minute, Frankie cleared her throat. “Look, you think I’m overly positive and annoying. I think you’re a bit of a snob. None of that has changed. But now that we understand each other a little better, I think we can both agree that we just want what’s best for the bride and groom. You don’t have to like me. I certainly don’t like you. But I want Val and Garrick to have a happy wedding without worrying about us. Do you think we could sheathe our blades and try to get along?” She offered a small smile. “I mean, we’re not that different.”

We weren’t, were we? I was beginning to see that Frankie couldn’t be fake if she tried. That meant she genuinely cared for Val.

“Sure.” I reached my bottle across and tapped the neck against hers.

We both drank. I wasn’t sure where to go from here. I’d never made a truce with anybody before.

Apparently, Frankie was thinking the same thing. “What are we supposed to do now?” she asked. “It is...tense.”

I tried to think what Garrick would do. In the process, my mind flashed back to the box of condoms I’d shoved in my closet, and my cock twitched.

I shook myself out of it.

What would Garrick do? He would find a way to break the ice.

I tipped my head back and searched the wall for a light switch. Finding it, I flicked it on and flooded the deck with light.

“Hey!” Frankie covered her eyes. “Too bright.”

The light spilled out onto the snow, extending down the back slope. I had an idea.