Page 14 of Gravity of Love
“The average was skewed during the pandemic when you were binge-watchingTiger King,Schitt’s Creek,The Queen’s Gambit,Squid Game, andTed Lasso.”
Oh, right. She remembered that. She messaged him every day talking about those shows and demanding he watch them, which he did for her. She just worried about him because he was alone that entire time.
“Bye, Frankie.”
“I love you, AJ. Bye.”
The call disconnected, and she leaned back in the seat, wondering why Liam had taken a job in a small hospital. And why he’d been there for seven years. He could have worked anywhere. Part of the reason he and AJ bonded was their intelligence. He graduated from medical school at twenty-two. If he wasn’t going to stay in the Navy as an officer, she thought for sure he’d end up in a prestigious hospital like the Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, UCLA, Cedars-Sinai, or even back at Stanford.
She glanced up at the neon sign at the entrance that read: Pine Ridge Emergency Room. “Why are you here?” she whispered under her breath.
If she hadn’t humiliated herself the last time she’d seen him, and if she wasn’t in such a strange place with his brother, she would go in and ask him. It’s what she wanted to do. It was what every cell in her body was telling her to do. But there was no way she could.
She closed her eyes and remembered the night of his mom’s funeral. She’d climbed through his window, the same way she had probably a hundred times before. This time she found Liam sitting on the edge of his bed. It wasn’t until she got closer to him that she realized he was crying. She started to hug him, and he pulled her into him and sobbed against her belly.
His entire body shook as she ran her fingers through his hair and rubbed his shoulders. She would have stayed like that all night. As it was, she had no idea how long they were like that. It could have been ten minutes or an hour, she had no clue. But then he looked up at her, and she was sure he was going to makea joke or something to make light of her seeing him like that. But, oh boy, she was wrong.
When his eyes met hers, the intimacy in his stare caused Frankie’s world to tilt a few degrees, as if a secret had just been spoken in a language only the two of them could understand. She’d never seen the look he had in his eyes. The intensity was so private, so personal. If it was anyone but Liam, she would have felt like she was seeing something she wasn’t supposed to. But it was him, so she couldn’t look away.
What happened next took her by complete surprise. Until that night, Liam had always treated her like a doll, like she might break. He was measured, careful, and protective. But this energy was different. It was reckless, unguarded, and even…dangerous. His hand slid up her jaw, thumb grazing her cheekbone, and he pulled her closer with a gentleness that bordered on reverence. His lips found hers—soft, at first, barely there, like he was testing the illusion before daring to touch the reality.
The kiss was nothing like she’d shared with her high school boyfriend or other guys she’d made out with at parties. Liam kissed her like she was the only thing tethering him to earth. There was a hunger in him, a desperation, but also an impossible restraint, like he was afraid she’d vanish if he moved too quickly.
Frankie’s hands found his shoulders—broad and warm even through the thin fabric of his t-shirt. He held her close, possessively. It felt like he was letting himself drown in her. She’d never felt so powerful or so needed. His mouth moved over hers, slow and searching, asking questions she couldn’t answer with words. She threaded her fingers through his hair, tugging him closer. His hand splayed across her lower back, holding her steady as her knees went weak.
At the first wobble, he gripped her thighs and pulled her onto his lap so she was straddling him, one knee on either side of him, the thin cotton of her dress riding up her thighs as she pressedcloser. Liam’s breath hitched, and for a second, he pulled back to look at her—not just a glance, but a long, searching look, as if memorizing her face. The tip of his nose brushed hers, and she felt the soft tremble of his inhale before he kissed her again, this time harder, deeper. His hand cradled the back of her head, fingers curling into her hair, while his other palm slid up her outer thigh, slow and deliberate, igniting a trail of goosebumps in its wake.
Frankie rolled her hips into him, her core grinding against his rock-hard erection pinned behind the zipper of his slacks. As she moved faster, chasing the friction, the pleasure, a deep groan ripped from the back of Liam’s throat as his body tensed, every muscle taut as her hands explored his shoulders and back. She kissed him with everything she had, tasting grief and longing and something she’d been starving for—him. His hands moved with increasing urgency, one cupping her nape, the other gripping her thigh, then her hip, then—so slowly it made her shiver—the curve of her ass.
He broke the kiss, breathless, and pressed his forehead to hers. “Frankie,” he whispered, her name was a confession, a plea, a warning.
She didn’t want to stop, so she arched her back and tugged the fabric of her dress covering her shoulders down, taking her bra straps with it, exposing her breasts. Liam exhaled a deep, animalistic growl, like he’d been holding his breath for years before his mouth closed over her left nipple. She gasped as his warm, velvet-soft tongue licked her puckered flesh, sending a bolt of sensation shooting through her.
Her fingers tightened in his hair as he sucked and flicked his tongue, swirling and teasing her nub. His teeth grazed and nipped just enough to make her squirm. He kept one arm wrapped around her back, holding her in place, while his other hand slid up her leg, under her dress, and this time he didn’tstop at her hip. He dipped between her thighs, found the edge of her panties, tugged them aside, and slipped his fingers beneath the silk. Frankie clutched his shoulders, bracing herself, but nothing could have prepared her for the way his touch undid her, made her forget the world outside the room entirely.
The first press of his finger was gentle and exploratory, but then he found her clit, circling with exquisite slowness before flicking it lightly. At the same instant, he bit down softly on her nipple, and every neuron in her body fired at once. Frankie bucked against his hand, and he matched her rhythm, his thumb working her pleasure button in time with the steady pressure of his tongue. She could feel herself getting wetter, could feel the heat building in her core, and she moaned, shameless and raw.
He kept at it, relentless and patient at the same time, coaxing her higher and higher until the release crested and snapped inside her. She came hard, shuddering, every muscle seizing and then melting all at once. Liam held her through it, murmuring her name into her skin, his tongue tracing the tiny goosebumps on the outer edges of her areolas before pressing soft kisses to the top of her breast and neck as she tried to catch her breath.
When she finally floated back to reality, she collapsed against him, boneless, burying her face in his shoulder. He wrapped both arms around her, enveloping her completely, and held her as if she was the one who needed comforting. His hand stroked her back, slow and steady, and with the other, he traced lazy circles over her hip, coming to rest just above her waistband.
After a few minutes, when her head stopped spinning, Liam shifted, he was lying on his back on the bed. He pulled her close, tucking her into the crook of his arm so her head rested on his chest. His heartbeat was still racing, and Frankie smiled into the fabric of his shirt, feeling the thrum beneath her cheek.
They stayed like that for a long time. He kept running his fingers through her hair, occasionally dropping a kiss onto thecrown of her head. Neither of them spoke, it felt like talking would break the spell, or worse, invite in the world outside his bedroom. She wanted more, wanted him to be her first, but she didn’t tell him that. Instead, at some point, she fell asleep…and when she woke up, he was gone.
That was the last time she’d seen or spoken to him—until she saw him walking towards her in the emergency room.
5
Liam’s headlightsswept up the long, sloping drive, carving two pale tunnels through the dense, inky blackness of the mountain night. He’d stayed late at the ER, catching up on paperwork and eating vending machine peanut butter crackers for dinner. The hospital’s fluorescent buzz followed him all the way home, sticking to the lining of his brain like a fog. He been awake for thirty-six hours and should be exhausted, the kind of exhaustion that flattens you—except instead he felt wound up, itchy, like something unfinished was stretching his skin from the inside. He couldn’t shake the feeling he’d had since his visit with Taylor.
It wasn’t Taylor, though. He could admit he’d had a mild interest in her, which was more than he’d had in anyone else over the past few years, but that wasn’t what was clinging to him like the glue residue of anti-theft/tamper-proof stickers. He feared he needed the emotional equivalent of WD-40 and a putty knife to scrape off what had attached itself to him. It was something he couldn’t shake. More specifically, someone. It was the scent. The floral, vanilla scent. But even more than that. He’d had a feeling today that he hadn’t felt in eleven years. Whenhe was dealing with the code-white, he felt a warmth spread through his chest. A warmth he only ever felt with one person.
He reached up and placed his hand in the center of his chest, where the heart was actually located behind the sternum, despite the commonly held belief that it was on the left side of the body. The Pledge of Allegiance contributed to the misconception.
His palm pressed against the cotton of his white button-down shirt. Beneath the material was the tattoo he’d gotten six months after his mom’s funeral. After graduating from medical school, some of the people in his class were going out to get the year tattooed on them to commemorate the accomplishment. He went along with the intention of getting a tattoo in honor of his mom, which he did end up getting later. But when he walked into the shop and saw the flash on the wall, he chose something else. He got a simple outline of Mighty Mouse flying with his fist in the air, located directly above his heart. It was a nickname he’d given Frankie when she was five.
Growing up, he always had a special place in his heart for Frankie. She and her brothers, AJ and Niko, were basically siblings to him. Which made what happened the night of his mom’s funeral even worse. He’d always been more protective of her than the three boys, but she was a girl, and tiny. He always liked being around her more than Niko or Tristan, but that was because they never shut up. AJ didn’t say much, and he was smart, so he never minded hanging with him. Frankie talked a lot, but he could listen to her all day. She was never annoying. She talked because she had something to say, not just to hear her own voice. She was opinionated, smart, funny, and he never knew what was going to come out of her mouth. Most people were predictable, but he was always surprised at the things she came up with.
