Chapter 44

All day, I try to keep my mind busy.

All day I fail, and my eyes continually drift back to the door, even as I clean the entire kitchen from the mess of baking yesterday. Even as I clear up the entire mess we made of Christian’s room last night and then go on a laundry rampage, washing every single semi-dirty article of cloth that I can find in the house.

Because, I mean, where is he? Where did he go?

Is he mad at me? Did I – did we go too far? Should I have made myself get up in the middle of the night and gone back to my room? But how could I have done that – how can he be mad at me for not doing that?

I scowl, glancing over at the door, thinking that I certainly didn’t make him wrap his arms around me in the middle of the night –

“You need to stop,” Frankie murmurs from his place beside me on the couch. His eyes are focused on the TV as he plays his video games, but clearly he’s attuned to the anxiety buzzing through me.

“Stop what?” I ask, pausing as I fold a deliciously warm and fluffy white towel.

“Stop watching the door like a golden retriever, waiting for him to come back.”

I scowl, hating that he caught me doing that. I return my eye back to the towel and continue folding. “I’m not watching the door.”

“Liarrr,” he replies, the word sing-song. But then he shoots me a grin, and I smile back, not bothering to deny it anymore.

“Well, what am I supposed to do, Frankie?” I say on a sigh. “I’m trapped here – honestly, I do feel like a golden retriever. He controls everything – my entire access to the outside world, my fate, my life.”

“Not totally true,” Frankie murmurs. “You have his credit card, after all. Golden retrievers don’t have credit cards.”

I laugh a little, shrugging because he’s got a point. Christian has made it pretty clear that I can have whatever I want, do whatever I want, as long as I stay in the house. Still…I mean, my desire to have him back here isn’t just because he’s controlling my life. It’s because I need to know where we stand – need to feel the ground under my feet again.

“Iris, you’re breaking my heart,” Frankie sighs, pausing the game, and it’s only when I turn my head back to him that I realize that my eyes had again turned towards the door.

“What?” I ask, confused.

Frankie puts his controller down and turns to me. I scowl, hating the amount of pity in his eyes. “So, seriously nothing happened last night? Nothing sexual?”

“No, Frankie!” I say, leaning forward to smack him on the shoulder, which makes him grin. “You saw us when we woke up – we were totally clothed! We –“

“I mean, people can put their clothes back on after they’ve had sex, Iris,” Frankie informs me, rolling his eyes.

“Not with me they don’t,” I retort, folding my arms over my chest and raising an eyebrow at him, which makes him burst out laughing.

“Touche, touche,” he murmurs, holding up his hands like he concedes the point. “But okay, even if nothing sexual happened…” he hesitates now, studying my face, “nothing…romantic?”

I glance away, my lack of words answering for me.

“See?” he says, soft, not without empathy. “I could tell.”

“I mean, it was nothing big,” I murmur, tracing the perfectly-straight lines of the folded towel before me. “It wasn’t even anything I could point a finger at and be like ‘there, that’s when it happened, that’s when it got romantic.’ But..”

When I look up, I see Frankie nodding, understanding.

“How did you know?” I ask, turning my head, anxious now that I’ve been obvious.

“Because,” Frankie replies, reaching out a hand and putting it warmly on my knee. “And, Iris, I say this because I think you need to hear it…”

I sit up straight, knowing that whatever comes out of his mouth next is going to be bad.

“But…” he continues, “you’re acting just like the thousand other women who develop feelings for Cristian Romano and who get left behind when he moves on.”

My mouth falls open as I stare at my friend, feeling like I’ve been shot right through the heart.

Because…I mean, that was way worse than I thought it would be.

“Frank,” I say, angry now and leaning forward to meet my friend’s eyes evenly, “I am not just like a thousand other women to Christian.”

“I know,” he says, patting my knee gently. “I get it, Iris. You have history, and a great deal of intimacy with him. I get it. But the result…” he slowly shakes his head, the pity back in his eyes. “Let’s just say…I’m very used to meeting golden retrievers. Girls stay overnight, Chris leaves in the morning, girls sit with me on the couch all day, watching the door…”

He grimaces, watching the horror that overtakes my face.

I blush, terribly embarrassed, and Frankie has the grace to look away and let me have my space with it.

“We’re just friends,” I murmur, saying it as much to myself as to him.

“They’re all just friends,” he murmurs back. “But…honestly, Iris, the sooner you realize that he’s serious about that the better. There is no long game here – Christian does not want a girlfriend, or a wife. I get that you’re important to him – I really do. But I really, really don’t want you to get your hopes up.”

I sigh, slumping down over the warm laundry and putting my head on Frankie’s shoulder, which he lets me do. When I look up at him, I see a warm little smile on his mouth.

“This is our secret, right?” I murmur, limp with hopelessness and disappointment. Because Frankie is right – I did want it to go further, I was hoping for more, even though Christian has let it be known like a thousand times that he sees me as a sister, that he does not have girlfriends, that things between us are not going that way.

“Our secret forever, Bambs,” Frankie says, cheerful again, letting the moment pass as I very much want it to do.

“And don’t tell Nico,” I mutter, thinking already how embarrassing that would be. Nico, I intuit, would hold the news of my secret hopes over my head.

Frankie laughs. “Nico last of all,” he replies. “Death first. Besides, he’d be no fun to tell, Nico doesn’t like gossip – he’s so boring.”

I laugh, snuggling closer to Frankie, who again lets me. We fall into silence then as I watch Frankie murder digital aliens and quietly put the pieces of my heart back together.

And even though I’m determined not to fall into it again, to steel myself against Christian, to take him at his word that there’s nothing but friendship between us.

Well…I just can’t help that little ember of hope burning deep within me, can I?

Because even if he does think of me as his sister…

Well. Then it’s probably a good thing that he only has brothers, considering the way we woke up this morning. Conscious or not, there is part of Christian that responds to me in a way that is beyond friendship. And frankly, beyond just sex, too.

I know it, deep in my bones.

But knowing that…well, it doesn’t help me very much right now, does it?

“Can I play?” I ask Frankie, my head still on his shoulder.

Eagerly, he picks up the spare controller sitting on his other side and holds it out for me. “I thought you’d never ask.”