Hold on to Hope

“Could ask you for forgiveness again.” No doubt, the words were nothing but shards of broken sounds coming up my throat. My gaze dipped to Everett before it returned to her. “But I won’t. I won’t because I already know that you know how much I regret hurting you. You already know how much it kills me that you went through that alone. But I also know it would only hurt you and Everett more if I lived in that regret.”

I swallowed hard, chest stretched tight, my love and devotion so thick I was sure it had manifested in the room.

Become a living, thriving entity.

I laid my hand on her cheek, brushed my thumb over her trembling bottom lip. “You have taught me the most important lesson in life, Unicorn Girl. Every day that you ran free and loved without question and pushed me to love you back? You were teaching me that every single day counts. None of us know how many we’re going to be given, but what we do know is each one we take for granted is one that has been lost. And I don’t want to waste any more. Not a single one.”

I tightened my hold on her face. “And I am ready to chase after every single one of those dreams.”

Her teeth clamped down on her bottom lip, those brown eyes soft and warm and drinking me down. “I don’t think I ever really let go of them, never stopped believing in them, and they were granted when I least expected them.”

Her attention had drifted to Everett, her hand slowly rubbing his back the way that she did. She looked up at me. “I will love him for all the days I have, Evan. I will choose to protect him. I will choose to stand for him. The same as I choose to stand for you.”

“Frankie,” I murmured, brushing her cheek, her nose, her chin.

My insides twisted in affection.

I loved her.

Loved her so badly it hurt.

Her brow pinched, and her tongue darted out to wet her lips. “I’m sorry for what happened to her. He’s going to need us to love him even harder because of it.”

Disbelief pulled through my senses. A wash of quiet sadness.

Ashley was gone.

Found strangled in a hotel room in the next town over. Freak Fucker carved in her forearm with what was thought to be the same knife he’d brought here.

Did I hate her for doing it? For trying to set me up? Manipulate me out of money? Did I hate her for putting Everett in the danger that she had?

Yeah.

But I also respected the fact she’d run when she’d found out she was pregnant. That she’d done what she had to protect him, as stupid and greedy as she’d been. But I had to believe that maybe she’d simply gotten mixed up with the wrong person. Was being manipulated herself before she’d realized what she was doing and changed course.

Kristoff Manning, aka Chris, the piece-of-shit half-brother I’d had no clue existed, would survive.

They’d finally linked the description I’d given with a fingerprint that had been lifted from Frankie Leigh’s house. It’d hit, but rather than coming back with information about Ashley’s brother, that fingerprint had belonged to a twenty-two-year old from Birmingham, Alabama who’d grown up with a single-mom and had a history of mental illness and a string of arrests for petty crimes.

Fathered by Dane Gentry. Same as me.

Maybe he’d been manipulated, too. Brought up in a chaos and fear and hatred so extreme it had shaped him into a vile, sadistic bastard.

But that didn’t change what he’d done.

The horrible crimes he’d committed and the ones he’d intended to carry out.

Hating me because he felt like I’d had some kind of relevance in the fucked-up family tree that needed to be ripped up from the roots.

“I hate that Everett will forever have that part of him missing, but you and I both know what it’s like for a parent not to want us. To abandon us. We both know what it feels like. And the only thing we can do is fill him with all the love we can give him and support him in the times when he’s feeling the loss. That’s what Rynna did for you and what Kale did for me.”

She chewed at her lip. “But our parents didn’t love us or want us, Evan. My heart tells me that his did. That she loved him so much she was willing to sacrifice everything for him.”

I nodded, hating to agree but knowing it was true.

Frankie Leigh slowly sat up, crisscrossing her long legs and facing me, hair falling around her, shirt falling off one shoulder.

So damn pretty in the rising morning light.

She lifted her hands, earnestness bleeding out.

YESTERDAY I WAS TERRIFIED I WASN’T ENOUGH FOR HIM, EVAN. TERRIFIED THAT I MIGHT FAIL HIM. THAT I WOULDN’T BE GOOD ENOUGH. BUT I HAVE NO QUESTION THAT HE NEEDS ME, EVERY BIT AS MUCH AS I NEED HIM. EVERY BIT AS MUCH AS I NEED YOU.