“You wanna talk about it?”
Risk’s question lingered as I filled my kettle up with water, plugged it in and flipped it on.
“It’s just weird,” I said as I prepared two cups with tea-bags. “I never knew something like that could be so scary. I felt stuck, trapped.”
“It sucks. I know.”
“I’m sorry you have to deal with that all of the time.”
“I’m sorry you had to experience it tonight. I’ll be more careful with you out in public in the future . . . being home kind of makes me forget who we are, you know?”
I nodded because I understood what he meant. Everyone in town loved the guys because we were all so proud of them, but Risk was just Risk to us and he’d let that familiarity catch him off guard.
“Next time we’re back here, we’ll have security with us. Everything is a mite easier with our team.”
I quickly understood the importance of having a security team. It would have made fending off the strangers with cameras a whole lot easier, that was for sure. I shook off the incident and put it behind me because dwelling did no one any good. I looked down and softly smiled. Oath was super cuddly, like he could sense I had had a bad night, so I snuggled him and kissed his head.
“My best boy.” I nuzzled him. “Aren’t you my best boy?”
When he meowed in response, Risk laughed.
“Why am I jealous of a cat?”
I put Oath down and he pattered over to where his food and water station was set up next to the doorway of the kitchen. He barely even glanced at Risk. Risk, on the other hand, was keeping an eye on him, which amused me.
“I don’t know,” I turned and leaned against the counter-top. “Why were you jealous of a sixteen-year-old boy hugging me in the diner tonight?”
I had wanted to ask him that question since I saw the way he looked at me after Sky gave me a hug. Risk’s smile vanished at the mention of it.
“Let’s put it down to a bad case of ‘mine’.”
That surprised me.
“Really?”
“Yeah,” he answered. “It pissed me off to see that kid hugging on you. Do I have any right to feel that way? Nope. Do I still feel pissed off? Yep.”
I crossed the space between us.
“Risk,” I placed my hands on his arms. “You hear how silly this sounds, right? He’s a child.”
“I’m aware.” His eyes searched mine. “I just . . . I don’t like anyone touching you, Frankie.”
Like he said, he had no right to feel that way, but it was crazy of me to like that he didn’t want anyone touching me, whether it was a kid or a grown man. At the same time, it just confused the hell out of me. I had no idea what we thought we were doing. We had kissed on the pier and now Risk was admitting he didn’t like a boy, or anyone, touching me. It was weird ground to walk on because we weren’t in any sort of relationship and I had to remind myself of that.
I loved Risk but I had to remind myself that we had no future.
“Let’s just forget about it, okay?” I smiled up at him. “You’re leaving soon for London, I just want us to have fun and spend time with each other while you’re here. No drama, no complications, just us being friends again. Okay?”
Risk nodded. “Okay.”
We were both in agreement, but a voice in the back of my head told me that both of us . . . we were lying.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
RISK
It was Friday, two days before we had to leave Southwold and go to London.
It was interesting to me that just days ago I was dreading coming home to Southwold because of Frankie, and now I was dreading leaving because of her too. A handful of days, that was all it took for her to mess my head up a million different ways. She said we were friends, but when I kissed her, she kissed me back somethin’ fierce. When I hugged her body to mine, she squeezed me to the point of pain. When she looked at me, I saw emotion for me in her eyes. Or at least I thought I did. I wasn’t sure if I was imagining her reactions to me because I wanted them to be real and not just some figment of my own imagination.
It was fucked up, but that was just the way things were.
“When we leave on Sunday,” May said, interrupting my thoughts. “Are you gonna come back?”
“Come back after the gigs?”
“No,” my friend replied. “Are you gonna ever come back?”
I looked from the road, to May, and back again.
“Of course,” I answered. “I’m not leaving Frankie again.”
I realised that I had made that decision the second I saw her in the PE hall of Sir John Leman’s High School. Now that I had her back in my life, there was no way I could just carry on without her in it. I couldn’t do it; I didn’t want to either.