Page 9 of Made in Love and Blood

Because yeah, her father would hang the stars for her, but he couldn’t manage to show up to a fucking soccer game once a week. What could she tell Coach? The truth hurt worse than a lie?

•••

“Are you ever gonna invite me in?” James asked. “We’ve been dating three months, and I haven’t even seen the inside of your foyer.”

Frankie stayed quiet. Was foyer the right word for the marble water fountain and winding staircase that greeted guests into her family’s estate? It didn’t matter. Her father had rules.

“Not yet,” she eventually replied.

James pulled a face, annoyance pushing out his tsk from between pouting lips. Maybe he thought she didn’t hear or see it as she pulled her dirty soccer jersey off to replace it with a hoodie.

“So, when?” he returned.

“When my father’s dead.”

That shut him up with an audible snap of his jaws. “You’re joking, right? You can’t have anyone over? Or just—”

“Just you.”

Actually, her father had a list of people who could and could not enter their property from the security gate, and even a second more extensive list at the gated community where their estate had been initially developed. Something else her family owned, not that James had any clue about that side of her life.

Not giving him time to think her comment over before she removed herself from the conversation altogether, Frankie exited the Hummer and slammed the door. She stood up on the sidebars to lean inside the window.

“Don’t be offended, it’s harder to get let in than you might think,” she said.

“Right.”

He eyed the gray hood she had pulled over her golden-brown hair disdainfully. “You coulda kept the hoodie off for five minutes. You’ve barely let me see you in a sports bra. I mean, there isn’t much to see, but...I’d still like to.”

James seemed oblivious to Frankie’s narrowing stare.

“Excuse me?”

“Shit, I was just joking.”

“About the size of my tits?”

“Well, I mean, I wouldn’t complain if you went up a size. That’s all I’m saying. Don’t all girls like you get something done for their eighteenth? Pretty standard practice. It’s not like you need your nose done.”

She blinked a couple of times, digesting what he had just said. As if it were the easiest thing in the world to do, she decided to throw another bomb into her life by finishing something that felt like it had started destroying her first.

“You’re a joke,” Frankie deadpanned.

“Huh?”

She made herself not laugh. Somehow.

He had that cute, boyish thing going on with his dirty blonde hair that always seemed to cling to his eyes. His broader build spoke to his defensive position on the football field. The guy was kind of an asshole, too. That didn’t help.

Honestly, she didn’t like James. That’s not why they went out.

“You’re a joke,” she repeated slowly and then pointed at the looming home that climbed several stories high and stretched farther on either side than he could see from his position behind the wheel. “Do you really think I need a fancy injury lawyer’s son as a boyfriend? Is that what you think I wanted?”

James’ mouth opened to speak, but she barked out a laugh that tasted as bitter and dark as her heart felt. “Get fucking real. Layla and Nat drooled over you at every rally and never missed a chance to treat me like shit whenever they got the chance. Imagine how it felt for them every time you dropped me off at a practice or game these last three months. You would’ve looked so fucking stupid in your white tux and pink cummerbund at prom, but it isn’t even worth it anymore. I’m so sick of hearing you talk and—”

“Fuck you,” he snapped, lurching toward Frankie although the seatbelt kept him from going far. She laughed louder as she jumped back from the Hummer and landed easily on the ground, bag over her shoulder.

“And the only thing that kept me listening this long was that thing you do with your hand,” she added, just for spite.