Hold on to Hope

“Yeah.” It was all a sneer.

I huffed out an incredulous sound, unwilling to give him the truth. That Evan was my life and my heart and my everything. My best friend. My first lover. The love that would burn inside of me until the day that I died.

That he was the kindest, most generous person I’d ever met.

If Jack wanted it that way, then fine.

“Yeah, I let that freak fuck me. And one time with him was better than a hundred times with you.”

It was a low blow, but I’d never in my life stood aside and let someone call Evan names. It just wasn’t in my makeup.

Maybe I should have thought better of it this one time because Jack was whirling away from me. A roar of rage ripped up his throat as he stooped down and grabbed something from the ground. Faster than I could make sense of it, he hurled it.

I screamed as glass shattered. Shock jerked my attention to my car that now was sporting a busted-out side window from the big rock he had thrown.

I reeled back, and Jack was gripping at his hair.

Enraged.

It was the most emotion that I’d ever seen from him. The ugliest kind.

That fear streaked. A flashfire. My heart raged in panic as he got back in my face. “Bullshit, Frankie. You and I belonged together. I fucking love you, and I’m not going to let some pretty boy asshole come in here and steal you away from me.”

Dazed, I stumbled back, feet getting tripped up by disbelief and panic. “Are you crazy? You just threw a rock through my car window.”

Maybe I was needing to repeat the obvious.

Unable to believe that Jack could be so volatile.

“I love you, Frankie Leigh.” This time it was desperate.

He’d said it so many times. A casual love you or love ya or a heart at the end of a text.

I’d never said it back.

“Say it.” His words were grit, hands in fists at his side. “Say it, Frankie Leigh.”

Shaking my head, I stepped back. “I . . . I can’t.”

I could almost hear the shout coming up his throat before it was silenced by the door swinging open and the commotion on the porch.

“What the fuck?” Josiah’s voice boomed through the air, busting through the vat of fury that held Jack hostage. Carly’s shock spilled all over the place when she stumbled out behind him.

Milo started barking like crazy.

The three of them rallying at my side.

Jack stepped back, slanted a glare at the three of them standing guard before he glowered back at me. “This isn’t over, Frankie. Not by a long shot.”

Then he turned and stormed away, slamming into his house, leaving me staring there behind him.

Fifteen

Frankie Leigh

Seven Years Old

“Come on, Evan, let’s go!” Frankie scrambled up the rocks in front of her bestest friend in the whole wide world. She made sure to look back at him so he could read what she said since his ears didn’t work.

She was learning her signs better and better, but sometimes she got them all wrong and Evan started cracking up laughing at her.

She liked it when he laughed.

Sometimes she messed up even worse so she could hear it.

He started up behind her.

“You comin’, slow poke?” she asked, grinning over her shoulder.

“I’m comin’,” he said in his rasping voice. “What, you think I can fly like you, you crazy unicorn girl? Just don’t go jumping off a ledge. Last thing I need to do is have to come after you. Your daddy is right. You’re nothin’ but trouble.”

She giggled when she looked back to watch him climb, his reddish hair looking like flames of fire where it whipped all around his face, his green eyes so big behind his round glasses, his hands holding onto the slippery rocks as he climbed up behind her.

Her favorite, favorite froggy.

Frankie made it to the top, her chest feeling heavy with her breaths and her heart beating so fast from working so hard to get up there. She plopped down by their favorite rock, her back leaned against it, huffing up a storm.

Evan slumped down beside her.

“Whew,” she exclaimed. “I didn’t think I was gonna make it all the way up here. That was hard work. Did that feel like hard work? Does your heart feel funny?”

Evan giggled, his eyes watching her mouth. YOU TALK TOO FAST, he signed really slow so she could read it. AND YOU WORRY TOO MUCH, TOO. MY HEART’S ALL FIXED!

His eyes went wide like a bug’s.

Frankie laughed. “I have to worry about you because you’re my best friend and I have to take care of you.”

He smiled that smile she loved, that one that made her chest feel tight and like she was the happiest person in the whole world. “No way, your dad said it’s my job to take care of you. Said I have to make sure you don’t go and hurt yourself again. You’re the one who needs to be careful. You’re gonna end up in the hospital if you don’t and my daddy is gonna have to patch you and then your dad is gonna be mad at me.”