Page 38 of Final Serenade

I felt his smile. It was in the air and stuck to my skin, making my cheeks burn and my legs weaken. Being next to him was electric.

Ten minutes later, we pulled up to a construction site with a large building on it that overlooked Hollywood and part of the Valley. Frank killed the engine.

“What are we doing here?”

“Dinner.” He stepped out of the car and headed toward the trunk.

I followed him. “You always pick the weirdest places. What’s it gonna be next time? The space shuttle?”

“I don’t know if I can make that happen.” His voice drifted through the night, and when I heard another smile in it, my tummy fluttered.

We were up in the mountains. Silence here was almost absolute. Gated properties with million dollar houses with views to die for lined the opposite side of the road. I imagined they belonged to movie executives or people like Frank, people with a lot of money who could afford to be away from the madness of the big city while still being able to watch it.

I heard the trunk open. “I didn’t want the ice cream to melt on the way here,” Frank said, pulling out a container. “So we’ll have to schedule that for next time. But crackers are happening.”

I moved closer, my eyes finally adjusting to the darkness.

“Could you grab this?” Something soft was thrust at me.

“As long as it doesn’t bite,” I whispered, hugging the tangle of fabric. There was a lot of it. A blanket?

Frank shut the trunk and motioned for me to follow him. “Just make sure to watch your step. It’s a long way down,” he joked.

“Is this even legal? Aren’t we trespassing?” I surveyed the crooked outline of the building drawn against the black, starless sky. It looked like the roof hadn’t even been started yet and the smell of cement and dust filled the air.

“No. I know the owner of the property,” Frank explained, carefully walking through the construction debris scattered across the lot.

He led me to an area hidden behind the building, which was covered with patches of grass and untrimmed bushes and had a great, unobstructed view of the city.

Frank set the container on a lonely bench sitting near the edge of the cliff and I stopped a few steps behind, intimidated by the intimacy of the situation. My eyes lingered on his back at first, then darted over to the shimmering net of lights below. The blanket in my hands felt heavy and my heart hammered in my chest like a kick-drum. Everything about this moment frightened me.

Frank turned to face me. I couldn’t see him well, just the lines of his silhouette, but I could still sense his gaze on me. It burned down all my walls and ruined the last of my self-control. I didn’t understand, why me? Out of all people, he’d chosen to bringmehere after seven years of silence.

“Pick any spot you like,” he said, moving closer. The warmth of his body was an invisible brush that painted goose bumps across my skin.

“Sure.” A shiver zipping down my spine, I tapped the heel of my foot against the ground. It was rock solid. Not very ass-friendly. “Are you positive we can’t sit in your car?”

“We can, but we won’t be able to see what I was going to show you from there.”

“You really know how to trick a girl into a late-night picnic.” I let the blanket fall loose and took a few steps to the right to find a grassier patch.

This was romantic and weird and all sorts of wrong. Frank sat next to me with his legs outstretched in front of him and stared at the busy curl of the freeway running between the mountains. He’d brought food and drinks. Water. Sprite. And an assortment of crackers and other exotic snacks I’d never seen before.

I breathed in deep and loud, trying to take as much oxygen into my lungs as they would hold. The air was clearing out now that we weren’t disturbing the ground and the Range Rover had been off and still for a while.

“See, right there.” Frank raised his hand and pointed at the road down below. “That dark spot between Cahuenga and Barham?”

Acid rose up the back of my throat when I realized we were above 101. “Yes.” I nodded.

“That’s where I crashed.” His voice was abnormally calm, as if he were talking about the weather and doughnuts.

My chest constricted. I didn’t want to hear any more, yet I knew I had to.

“I didn’t feel anything at first,” he went on, “during the collision. There was a delay. It all came at me when I hit the ground.”

“Were you still conscious?”

“Honestly…” He paused for a second and his breath hit my cheek as he turned to look at me, but I didn’t dare look back. I was afraid to move. “I don’t know what I was,” he continued. “I remember lying on the ground and hearing the noise of the cars as they were passing by. I felt exactly where I was broken. My legs, my arm. My ribcage. I wondered if that was how it would feel if I ended up in hell. I don’t remember anything after that. Not until after I woke up in a hospital days later.”

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