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Where’s Frankie? Is everyone outside? At this hour?
Insides knotting, I decide to check the sauna next.
Until the toilet flushes upstairs.
Shit. I forgot to look there.
Changing directions, I spin toward the stairs.
The entryway door opens just as I turn, and Denver steps in, shaking snow from his perfectly combed hair.
“What happened?” I pause at the bottom step, gripping the banister. “Where is everyone?”
“Your brothers beat the shit out of each other. They’re cleaning up the destruction in the workshop now, and they better be quick about it. They’re leaving tomorrow to hunt.”
I let that sink in, my thoughts catching and hanging on words. Beat. Destruction. Leaving. And the one word he didn’t say. Frankie.
If they fought over her, which I’m certain they did, they would never admit it to Denver. So I move on to something he may know.
“Who let her drink?” My eyes fall to the empty tumbler on the coffee table.
“I did. Just one glass.” He scoops it up and carries it to the kitchen. In his usual fashion, he makes me wait as he washes the tumbler before returning. “She came inside earlier, her eyes red and puffy. I know she cries, but she’s good at hiding it. When she came in, she was unguarded. Visibly shaken. I caught her in the aftermath of…something. So I made her a drink. Then I went outside and found your brothers trying to kill each other.”
He doesn’t look upset about it. If anything, he looks downright pleased.
That can only mean one thing.
“Fuck.” I fly up the stairs.
If they put their dicks anywhere near her, I will never forgive them.
The closed bathroom door doesn’t discourage me from barging in.
Bent over the toilet, she grips the porcelain base and vomits.
“Frankie.” Heart sinking, I skid onto my knees beside her and gather her hair. “Shhh. It’s okay.”
“I can’t.” She pukes again, tears streaming from her eyes with the force of her heaving. “I can’t do this. I’m sick, Wolf. I’m so fucking sick and fucked-up.”
“Don’t say that. You’re not. Just let it out. It’ll pass.”
“You don’t understand. I’m not well.” She slams her hand down on the toilet seat and dry heaves. “I’m fucking married.”
“Nope. Nuh-uh. The second he cheated on you, your commitment to him ended. All bets are off. You’re a free agent, baby.”
“A free agent? Are you serious?” She stretches out an arm, indicating the cabin, the frozen wasteland. “There is nothing free about my situation.”
My teeth clack together, biting my tongue as I swallow the string of objections I want to hurl at her. She’s free to be with me. Free to love me.
“I have to end this.” Her broken, whispered words drop like missiles in my gut, opening wounds that will never close.
“Don’t even think that. I won’t let you.” I shake her. “Do you hear me?”
“What are you talking about?” She peers up at me, wiping tears and snot from her sad, angelic face.
“Suicide.”
“What? No, I—”
“No? You begged Kody for death on that hillside.”
“I didn’t beg him for anything. I told him to go away and let me die.”
“Actually, you told me to walk away and let Kody do what he came there to do.”
“Right.” She drops her head and closes her eyes. “I don’t think…I—I’m not ready to die.”
Could’ve fooled me.
She looks hollow. Empty. Dead already. If I pressed my face between the teeny bumps on her chest, my cheeks would be cold and untouched, like sinking into dissolution. She’s all bone and colorless flesh, and there’s so little of it.
“Write him a letter.” I hook a finger beneath the fallen strap of her top and slide it back to her shoulder.
“Who?”
“Monty. Write to him in the scrapbook. Vent all your feelings. Might be cathartic and shit.”
“Is that what you do?”
“To whom would I write?”
“Your mother.”
A black cloud fills my vision, and I quickly blink it away. “Nah. All good there.”
“Liar. Tell me about her.”
“Nothing to tell.”
“What were your last moments with her?”
“It’s all so very boring.” Feigning a yawn, I wave her away.
“I want to hear it.”
“Okay, well, I told her to eat a dick.”
“And?”
“She ate some dicks. Then she played with them. And rode them. And—”
“Wolf.”
“I know, I know, but in that final, final moment…” Pausing for dramatic effect, I flick my fingers. “I was like peshaw, bitch. And the bitch peshawed.”
“Do you know what this is?” She points at her decisively unamused face.
“Your amused face?”
“Irritation.”
“You want to be irritated with me, but you can’t. You’re more like an artificial substitute for irritation. The aspartame of irritation. Zero calories. Guilt-free. Not irritated at all.”
“Just once, Wolf. Just one fucking time, give me a straight answer.”
“No can do, Princess Peach. I’m an always forward, never straight kind of guy.”
Disappointment pinches her features, and I almost feel bad about it.
“I need a shower.” She pushes away from the toilet and stumbles to her feet.
