Hold on to Hope

I spread my hands around her waist, stretching out my fingers so I could hold her tight. I pressed my lips against hers and whispered the words. “Let me love you.”

Cinnamon eyes flared, fingers digging into my shoulders. “As long as you promise you’ll never stop.”

“Never.” My mouth crashed against hers, and she was in my arms.

I was kissing her like my life depended on it, and I was pretty damned sure that was the case. This gorgeous girl who had been purposed for my life.

Written in my stars.

I thought maybe every single one of us had our own constellation.

A map drawn out in the heavens.

An intricate design that had been created just for us.

If that were the case?

Then Frankie Leigh was my North Star.

Twenty-Three

Frankie Leigh

Evan carried me into my bedroom.

Like that was exactly what he had been made to do. His arms made in the perfect shape to hold me. To cherish and adore me.

The same as I had been made for him.

A flawless give and take.

He wrapped a hand in my hair, the man controlling the desperate, urgent kiss as he moved for my bed.

With each step he took, he stirred the energy that flash-fired through the space.

Lapping up and rising higher.

Flames licking my flesh. A need unlike anything I’d ever experienced pouring into my body.

“Frankie,” he rumbled at my mouth. So seductive. So right. “Never. I’ll never stop loving you. I never did. How could I? Not when it’s always supposed to have been me and Frankie Leigh.”

Oh God.

His words hit me like a straight shot to the heart, everything a thunder as it raced through my veins, my spirit desperate to reclaim what I’d thought would be lost forever.

My hands made a desperate play to touch him everywhere. Rushing over the rugged sides of his face and smoothing at his neck, fingertips digging into his shoulders.

His lips pushed and pulled and danced over mine.

Tongues tangling as we fought to get as close to the other as we possibly could.

Distance was no longer an option.

“Evan,” I whimpered at his mouth, knowing he could feel me. That he would drink down my words through the fierce connection that only he and I could share. “I love you. I never stopped for a day. Not for a second.”

It was a murmur of need.

A flood of desire.

A declaration of devotion.

Our connection spun through my room.

Fierce.

Stronger than it had ever been.

He grunted a rugged sound. Every touch of his hands read every innuendo and intimation, his breaths jutting out to brush my heated skin.

I shook in anticipation. In this want that had simmered for years that now had reached an all-out boil.

It felt like all the molecules that had been scattered in our separation, lost in our dissolution, had gathered to a pinpoint.

A ferocious, unrelenting force that wrapped and knitted and interlaced.

Threading us together in the most intricate way.

In a way that could never be undone.

Every stitch dependent on the other.

Carefully, he laid me out on the mattress before he straightened.

I pushed up on my hands, soul arching for him. “Promise you’ll never leave me.”

He stood at the side of my bed and looked down at me like I was the rising sun when for so long his world had gone dim. Tenderly, he cupped my cheek. “I will stay with you for as long as my heart will allow. It’s always belonged to you, anyway.”

He was cast in lapping shadows, a silhouette of everything I’d ever dreamed could be mine.

His wide chest was still heavin’ from the exertion, his face battered and bruised and the most beautiful thing that I’d ever seen.

I WAS MADE FOR YOU, FRANKIE LEIGH. JUST LIKE YOU WERE MADE FOR ME.

The stroke of his hands was powerful.

A current raced with each movement, a promise reaching out to rush over me as he signed his forever in the dense, dense air.

Something flashed across that beautiful face.

Hesitancy and resolution.

“Just have to make sure this is the life you want, Frankie Leigh.” His rough voice scraped the air, words like blades that cut through every question and worry and hurt.

He fisted his hands at his sides. “Because I think we both know there is no coming back from this. I touch you tonight? It’s done. I’ve gone without you for too long, and I promise you, I’m not about to let go of you again. But you need to know . . . Everett is now a part of me. You want me? He’s going to be a part of that package. And I don’t know if he’s inherited this affliction. If this life is going to be spent fighting for his health the way my life was.”

He fisted a hand at his chest, torment bleeding out of him at the idea.

“This life might not be easy, and you need to know what you’re signing up for.”