Always Only You by Chloe Liese (z-lib.org).epub

for my name is like the last aching scar that just won’t fade. Nobody calls me
Søren, except Axel when he’s looking for a fight.
When Frankie says my name, it sounds warm, and when I let my imagination
get carried away, I’d even say affectionate.
I pull into my driveway. “An Alusky.”
“Yes. And she doesn’t eat big, tough, hockey players. She eats grain-free.”
Throwing the car in park, I peer over my shoulder. “Well, I’m grain-free,
too. This isn’t comforting, to hear your wolf is paleo.”
“She’s not a wolf!” Pazza nuzzles Frankie, gently knocking her back on her
seat. Immediately the dog whines and drops her head to her lap. “I’m okay,
Pazza.”
“Do we have everything she needs for now?”
Frankie smiles at me over the dog’s head. “Yeah. Lo made her enough food
to last a few days.”
“You make her food?”
Frankie’s eyes narrow. “Yes, Søren.”
“Don’t ‘Søren’ me, Francesca. It was a question.”
“You repeated what I said.”
“I was just surprised, Frankie. I’m not judging.”
“Good,” she says. “Because feeding your dog fresh food is proven to
increase their health and longevity.” Frankie kisses Pazza’s head. “I want her
around for as long as I can have her.”
There’s tenderness in Frankie’s voice that I’ve never heard before. At work
she’s brisk and no nonsense. But just like when I surprised her the other night
bringing her that shirt and ended up sharing her takeout, it’s another side of
Francesca Zeferino that makes me feel even more off-the-table feelings for her.
Which is disastrous. Super disastrous. I might not read romance novels as
voraciously as Viggo, but I’ve picked up enough in my day to know that
forbidden love is a messy trope, about as fraught a story line—besides love
triangles and eff those—as it gets.
Exhibit A: Romeo and Juliet. Their love is forbidden, the timing is terrible,
but they’re so infatuated with each other, they throw caution to the wind.
Impatient courtship, shotgun wedding, miscommunication, hotheaded tempers,
violence, missed connections, it all ends in the star-crossed pair offing
themselves.
Yep. Forbidden love is the one to avoid. Which means, of course, that I find
myself in the thick of it. Typical life of Søren Bergman.
I step out of my car on a sigh, circle the van, then slide open the backpassenger
door.