Page 30 of Frankie and the Fed (Untamed Rascals #3)

I stared at Frankie as she walked away from me, my heart beating out of my chest.

Of course, she wasn’t going to give up that easily. I should have expected she would do something drastic. She never cared about her own goddamn safety. Not that she knew what was at risk right now.

She didn’t know she was in the crosshairs of a very dangerous game. One that seemed to add up less and less the closer I looked into it.

I waited until she was halfway to the bathroom before following her. Some kind of invisible leash connected us, and I couldn’t help myself. She didn’t notice me as I looped around the back of the building to the dumpsters, the bag with our uneaten lunch in one hand for an easy excuse.

I could hear her in there, though—the water running for too long, her sighs of defeat .

I did that. I hurt her.

“She’s still keeping secrets, Frankie.” She said, loud and clear.

Misery sliced through my chest, lodging itself in my heart and squeezing it tight, stealing my breath and sanity. I couldn’t see anyway for this to end without breaking her heart. Mine was already gone. It belonged to her the moment she smiled at me.

“ One day,” my dad said, “you’re going to meet someone that just gets you. That sees past all the disguises you wear to the heart of who you are, to the hidden parts you can’t even see yourself. That’s when you’ll find happiness.”

Naively, I didn’t expect it to go the other way. It made perfect sense it would. That I would see through someone’s disguises. I wasn’t prepared for what that was like.

That’s exactly what happened with Frankie. In truth, her disguise today wasn’t a bad one. I doubt anyone else could pick her out of a line-up.

She shone like a beacon to me, blinding me to anything that wasn’t her. I knew her. The way she held her head when something caught her eye. The exact slope of her shoulders and curve of her hips as they led to her thick, gorgeous thighs. Everything about her was burned into my memory.

Maybe if we had time together, that beacon would dim, or my eyes would adjust and I would see other things in life again, but for now, she eclipsed everything else. I knew what I needed to do. I just wasn’t sure if I could do it.

I wanted her to see me—the heart of me—and recognize me even through my masks, to know who I was at my core. She needed to see me through the lies, but I didn’t know how to do that without putting her at more risk.

If she ever learned who I really was, she’d hate me. The weight of that crushed my soul.

The creak of the heavy bathroom door startled me. I pushed off the wall and closed the lid to the dumpster loudly enough to draw Frankie to me.

“Ready?” she said, too chipper, too bright.

“Yeah. My car is still at Eclipse.” As much as I wanted to spend every moment with her, I needed to crash the shipment tonight and finally sort out this mess.

“Of course. I…” she stopped herself from saying more, and I didn’t know how to bridge the gap I created. I couldn’t, not really. It was better this way.

So why did it feel like my world was spinning off its axis, out of control, and heading for destruction?

We drove in silence, and she simply grabbed my hand and squeezed it before letting me go.

Tears fell as I drove off. A moment of weakness. One moment to grieve what I’ll never truly have before I have to move to protect the one person I actually cared about—maybe even loved.