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

Then the weirdest thing happens. Her eyes crinkle. Her mouth tips into a
wide smile. The dimple pops. And my heart nearly tumbles out of my chest. She
looks…happy to see me.
I soak it up, greedy, starved. A look like that is once in a lifetime. Because
Frankie does a lot of grunting hello. Cursory, no-eye-contact waves. Of course, I
know she respects me, that she trusts me to be a decent person as it pertains to
our work, but this?
This is new. Rare. A knot of nerves tightens my stomach as I lift a hand
tentatively.
She raises her thermos of coffee in response and yells, “Come on! I can’t
throw this ball forever!”
Jogging down across the sand, I take the ball from Pazza when she next
bounds back with it. Then I throw it in a high arc through the air.
Frankie watches with narrowing eyes. “Show-off,” she mutters into her
thermos before she takes a sip.
“Says the woman with a mean softball pitch.”
She glances up at me. “You saw that, did you?”
“I did. You been holding out on me, Zeferino?”
“Hardly.” She sips her coffee again. “I haven’t thrown a softball since junior
year of high school, before…” Anther sip of coffee. “It’s been a long time. And
it hurts like hell. How I didn’t dislocate my elbow pitching like that, I’ll never
know.”
When she returns, I give Pazza an affectionate pat to her side, then throw the
ball for her again. “Well, it looks like you still have it.”
Frankie gives me a sidelong glance. Her cheeks pink a little, before her eyes
dart away. “Thanks.”
Silence falls between us, but I don’t mind it. I grew up with chaos—a family
of six siblings and two busy parents—and I know my way around it, how to yell
loud enough to be heard, how to shove and tease and vie for attention. But two
years into living in my house on the beach, this big house that I hope one day
grows as full of lovable chaos as the one I grew up in, I’ve learned to enjoy
quiet. So, I listen to the waves break on the shore. I watch the wind curl
Frankie’s hair up into the air as sunrise breaks over the water. And it feels
inexplicably right.
“Zenzero.”
I snap out of it. “I was staring. Sorry. You look good backlit by the sunrise—
that is, I mean, that was a strictly platonic statement…” My voice fades as a
blush burns my cheeks.
Frankie grins up at me. “Don’t worry. You’re still cute, even tripping over