I nodded at her, though it felt difficult to move beneath the torment that still flooded the room.

Thick and dense and unrelenting.

“Can you take him?” I asked, knowing I needed to get to Frankie Leigh.

“Absolutely.”

Mom took him, and I planted a kiss to his temple before I warily turned around to where she was tucked back in the farthest corner, still hugging herself with her head dropped, like she could disappear into the wall.

Could see she was trying to restrain the sobs that wracked her body.

Had only seen her like this once before—the last time we’d been together in this hospital.

Regret gusted and blew.

And I wondered what she’d thought. What she’d had to go through this morning.

I inched her way. “Frankie.”

Could feel her name slice through the dense air.

Could feel her flinch.

I kept moving that way, and with each cautious step I took, she slowly lifted her head.

“Frankie,” I murmured.

She turned to look up at me.

My chest squeezed.

The girl demolished.

Crushed.

Eyes red-rimmed and swollen.

Her spirit tortured.

Thrashing and flailing as it seeped into the atmosphere.

“Frankie, sweet girl.” The words barely made it over the gravel lining my throat. “It’s not your fault.”

Her mouth twisted, the girl choking out a sound that I knew shouted with misery. She pressed her face into both her hands, and I tried to pry them away.

“Frankie. Please, Frankie. Stop crying, sweetheart. It’s good news. It’s such good news.”

We needed to be celebrating.

Loving and laughing and hugging.

But her head shook in rejection.

Trembles tumbling down her spine and wracking through her body.

I could feel the piercing gaze of my dad, and I glanced that way, remembering the dire warning he’d given. He angled his head for us to follow him.

“Hey, sweet girl. Please . . . come with me. We need to talk.”

She clutched her chest at that, but she was nodding through the tears that kept pouring out, her head tipped down, refusing to fully face me.

Gulping around the distress, this alarm that screamed and pounded and roared in my chest, I took her by the elbow to guide her out.

Dad led us to a private waiting room, didn’t say anything as we stepped inside, let the door swing shut behind him.

As soon as he did, I turned and took her by the face.

Forced her to look at me.

“Frankie . . . what is it?”

Tears raced into my hands.

“Evan, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

Thirty-One

Frankie Leigh

Eighteen Years Old

Frankie Leigh knocked quietly at the office door. She was so nervous she thought she was going to throw up.

Nausea coiled in her stomach.

Nerves frayed and sparking and making her twitch.

From the other side of the door, she heard her uncle Kale call, “It’s open.”

Visibly shaking, she turned the knob.

This was the only place she could go.

Surprise curled her uncle Kale’s face into a questioning smile. “Frankie Leigh. What are you doing here? Come in and have a seat.”

He gestured to the two chairs that sat opposite his desk. Probably thousands of his patients had sat right there in front of him through the years, and she knew he would have given gentle diagnoses and plans and words of hope.

Frankie was almost afraid to feel any of it.

Terrified. Scared. Overjoyed.

Hope.

But it was there, and she prayed he would be able to help her. That he would know what to do.

She shuffled into his office and uneasily took a seat. Nervously, she twined her fingers over and over, trying not to rock to soothe herself, but doing it anyway.

Her uncle immediately caught on to her distress, and he stood from the desk. Rounding it, he came to kneel in front of her. He touched her knee. “Sweet Pea. What is going on?”

“I need your help, Uncle.”

He searched her face. “Of course. I’ve always told you that you could come to me for anything.”

She sniffled. “I know. That’s why I’m here. Because you’re the only person I can trust, and the only person who will really understand.”

Worry passed through his features, but he just knelt there, waiting.

The supporter he’d always been.

How many times had she sat in front of him as his patient? As a tiny girl, her daddy used to constantly rush her to the ER for any little scrape or bruise. Her daddy always so terrified to lose her. That this cruel world might steal her away from him.

Right then, Frankie Leigh fully understood.

“What’s going on, Frankie. You can tell me, trust me, with anything.”

A tear slipped free, and she frantically brushed at her cheek, that worry bottling in her chest and spinning her head and making her sick all over again. “I’m pregnant.”

She guessed that maybe he didn’t look all that shocked. She was eighteen and known to be wild and reckless and the first to experience every single thing in life.

What else would she be coming to him this way for? A freaking cough?

Tags: A.L. Jackson Romance
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