Hold on to Hope

Asking him to hold them.

To hold her.

To take care of her.

“You are my favorite, Evan.”

“You know that you’re mine.”

“I saved myself for you,” she barely forced out.

He threaded his fingers through her hair, those eyes so sincere. So real and open. Exposing everything she’d wanted to see. “I know, Unicorn Girl. I know. I wouldn’t even have known how to be with someone else than you.”

E-V-A-N.

“I love you, Frankie.”

Nodding frantically, she wrapped her arms around his neck and held on with all her might as he positioned himself between her trembling thighs.

His hands were back on her hips, and he was slowly guiding her to sink down on top of him. Heat seared her to the core, too hot and too full and all wrong and just right, and oh God, she really was gonna cry. She pressed her face into his neck as he seated himself way down deep inside of her.

His hands were in her hair, tugging her back, forcing her to look at him.

And he didn’t say he was sorry because she knew neither of them were. She knew he just needed to see her face, to hear her as he guided her to move.

It was choppy at first. She thought maybe both of them were shocked. Overcome. Just . . . feeling the other.

Evan seemed to catch on really quick. “Frankie, oh fuck . . . shit. You feel so good. So good.” He mumbled it as he started to move in these erratic juts.

Quick, desperate urges of his body.

They were gasping and gripping and clutching the other.

Their mouths open. Lips barely touching as they watched each other.

And it was short and fast and the most intense thing she’d ever experienced.

She didn’t come, and that was so perfectly fine with her because Carly had already warned her it wasn’t going to be great the first time, and she still thought it was the most wonderful thing she’d ever done.

Then she was learning a whole new level of wonderful when Evan kissed her tenderly, his arm around her waist as he pulled her off of him and laid her out on his rug on the middle of his living room floor.

He buried his head between her thighs and softly, slowly sent her to oblivion.

And she experienced that ecstasy all over again after she’d been fast asleep curled up in his arms and he rolled her onto her back. As he crawled back over her, watched down on her like they were both lost to a dream as he took her gently.

Tenderly.

One of her knees tucked up under his chest and his hands running her entire body.

Bliss coming on like the slow fall of snow on a Christmas mornin’.

And oh God, did she ever feel it the next morning when he perched her on the edge of the island in his kitchen, when he loved her a little harder.

And she and Evan were suddenly having each other everywhere.

Sneaking away every chance that they could get.

Laughing and loving and kissing and touching.

Dreaming and hoping and making all the promises that they could give.

She already loved him with all her heart, but she loved him even more loving him in this brand-new way.

The two of them learned the other. Experienced all they had to give and all they had to take.

Shared their fantasies and found no shame in it.

He fucked her in the shower and she sucked him off in the front seat of his car and he pinned her to the wall in the storage pantry of the café where she was pretty sure they were committing every health code violation in existence.

And he made love to her out on the soft grasses where their old treehouse was falling apart and he bent her over the back of his parents’ couch with the sunlight shining through the window while everyone else was out back.

Frankie was quick to discover that she liked it a little rough. Hard and raw and full of demands, and she didn’t mind at all when he wanted to try dirty, decadent things.

The boy took her in every way. Body and soul and heart and mind.

And they got so recklessly in love. So in love that nothing else mattered. Evan made promises that Frankie had wanted to hear for her whole life, and he was finally believing all the things she’d always wanted him to believe.

“I love you.”

“You’re mine.”

“I’m going to marry you.”

“Nothing can ever come between us.”

And they forgot about everything except for them.

And he loved her on the Heart of Stone that could never be broken.

With the stars shining so bright above them.

Their bodies joined together.

No barrier between.

No separation.

ONE.

And everything was so perfectly right until that unbreakable rock split right down the middle.

Until the foundation they’d built crumbled beneath their feet.

Twenty-Nine

Frankie Leigh

Sunlight poured in through the window, nudging me from sleep. The arms that were wrapped around me from behind curled tighter.