Page 89 of Gravity of Love
“Right.” She lifted her pointer finger in the air. “Just a quick question. What time are you picking me up?”
He stared down at her, his expression as blank as his recall of what she was referring to.
It didn’t help when she asked, “Am I meeting you there?”
He blinked.
“Thewedding,” she emphasized.
“Oh, right.” Last night had served as a reset to his brain. Sex with Frankie had wiped his mind like an Etch-A-Sketch. He’d completely forgotten that Poppy was going as his plus one.
“Ahh!” she huffed in offense as her jaw dropped and smacked him on the arm. Hard. “You didn’t remember I was going?!” she asked in an accusatory tone.
“Five. I’ll pick you up.” That way she could drink. He knew that Poppy liked to let loose, or in her words, get lit. He had no plans to do either. He turned, assuming the conversation was over, but was stopped once more.
She grabbed his forearm, spinning him back towards her. For a scrawny thing, she was surprisingly strong. “Wait!”
If this was about what she would wear, so help him.
She pulled her phone out of her pocket faster than Wyatt Earp on speed. In .0000000001 seconds she was scrolling. He inhaled slowly through his nose in an attempt to calm himself in what he assumed would be a virtual slideshow of dress options he gave absolutely zero fucks about.
His preparatory Zen turned out to be unnecessary when she turned the device, and on the screen was a photo from Frankie’s Instagram with her and her two brothers—Niko and AJ, the infamous Costas twins—standing in front of a wall at what looked like an urban ax-throwing bar. Frankie, all five-foot-she wished-one of her, had a plaid shirt cinched at her waist, an ax raised in one tiny fist, and a face that said “bring it” with absolute conviction. AJ and Niko stood six-foot-two and a half and six-foot-three, respectively, flanking her, each holding their own giant ax, both with open-mouth smiles that told Liam Frankie had just said something hilarious, and they were cracking up.
He shook his head as a smile tugged at his mouth, and he quietly remarked to himself, “She’s going to kill someone with that thing.”
He hadn’t meant to say it out loud, it just came out. He found that happening a lot with Frankie. When he was around her, his entire body was a patellar tendon, and she was a reflex hammer. His reactions to her were entirely involuntary.
His sister either ignored him or didn’t hear him.
“Which one is that?” She pointed to AJ, the taller of the twins, one of only two physical differences.
“AJ.”
She pursed her lips, her expression thoughtful and considered. “He looks like a Greek-god version of Henry Cavill with a better smile.”
“Don’t let Frankie hear you say that,” he warned.
Frankie wasveryprotective of her brothers. Maybe more protective of them than they were of her. And more protective of AJ than of Niko. She was a mama bear. He’d never thought about why, but it could have been because her mom had suffered with both mental health and alcohol issues and had been so fragile. And after their dad passed, she’d been the one there to pick trying to pick up the pieces even at five.
She shrugged, undeterred. “Relax, I’m just window shopping.” Then immediately demanded, “Stats.”
“Male, thirty-one, six-foot-three, two hundred and ten pounds, twelve percent BMI.”
She rolled her hands in the universal sign for him to continue.
“He’s a good guy.” Liam considered it for a moment. “He is the best guy I know.”
She rolled her eyes, prompting, “Job. Relationship status. Baby mama situation.”
The last two were easy to answer, so he tackled those first. “No kids. Single.” He hesitated on the first since the answer was complicated. “He’s just got back from deployment.”
“Which branch?”
“He works in intelligence.”
“Oh, my god! It is like getting a confession from a mime.” She sighed in frustration. “Is he funny? Is he smart? Does he drink a lot? Is he a serial killer, or worse”—she gasped dramatically as she did the sign of the cross—“does he do CrossFit?”
She crossed her fingers as if him saying, yes, he does CrossFit, would be the most devastating of all responses. That was funny because he remembered something about the Costas having a running joke about CrossFit.
