The Grifter
Chapter 17

Frankie had never really given much thought to having kids. She had hazy memories of having maybe wanted them, once, back in the Before Times, when her shoulder had been intact and her life had looked about a hundred and eighty degrees different than it did now. She certainly liked most kids, even though her experience with them was severely limited to being Zia Frankie and handing out Halloween candy at the APD’s annual Trunk or Treat event. But she was a recovering addict, who needed a predictable, well-ordered routine to stay on the level. Even with her carefully crafted schedule, it took all her energy some days to not think about using. There was a huge gap between letting it into your headspace and actually doing it—one that she hadn’t gotten close to closing for a very long time. Still, she had some very real demons that she’d never be fully rid of, and as a result, taking care of herself was a full-time affair. She couldn’t possibly do that and have a kid, whose needs would rightfully have to come ahead of her own.

Super inconvenient, then, that Frankie’s ovaries had just detonated at the sight of Shawn gathering his daughter in his arms and carrying her off to bed.

“Hey,” he said, reappearing from down the hallway, and gah, the fact that he’d clearly tucked Isla in and was now flying solo didn’t make him any less s3xy.

Think cold thoughts. The kind that have icicles growing on them. The kind that definitely do not have the sort of biceps you want to bite. “Oh, hey!” Frankie said, too fast, and God, she was doomed. “I, ah, take it Isla’s down for the count.”

“Yeah. We had kind of a long day.”

Frankie knew she should mind her own business. Everything Shawn was going through right now was both highly personal and highly emotional—two of his least favorite things. But he’d asked her for a lifeline yesterday, and as far as she knew, those didn’t really come with a statute of limitations.

“You want to talk about it?” she asked.

In true Shawn fashion, he took a minute to answer, sitting down next to her on the couch. “The psychologist, Dr. Easton? She said Isla’s not talking is entirely normal.”

“So, you both met with her, then?” Frankie turned toward Shawn, who nodded.

“Her assistant spent some time with Isla while the doc and I talked, then she met with Isla one-on-one, and then, we all talked for a little while together.”

“Wow, that is a long day,” Frankie said. Even fifteen minutes of therapy could be exhausting if you dug into a particularly raw wound. “How was it?”

Shawn shook his head. “I’m not sure. I mean, Dr. Easton is really nice, and she helped me come up with some good words to tell Isla that Lori died. But at her age, Isla’s not really equipped to understand things like finality and irreversibility. The doc’s words, obviously.”

“They make sense,” Frankie countered gently. “So, even though you told her that Lori died, she might not really understand that it’s forever yet?”

“Exactly. It’s probably why she isn’t grieving the way an adult would.”

Well, that explained why Isla hadn’t cried or carried on. At least, not yet. “So, how are you supposed to help Isla if she isn’t able to process what’s going on?”

“Dr. Easton just said to keep it simple but not gloss over anything. Annette said Isla was a happy kid. Is? I don’t know.” He blew out a breath. “But there aren’t really guidelines for this, so it’s hard to know what Isla’s grief will look like. Or how I can help her, especially if I can’t even make her feel comfortable enough to talk.”

The look on his face hit Frankie right in the solar plexus. “Hey. Hey, look at me.” She inserted herself right in his line of vision, even though she knew it was a brash move. “You’re doing fine, Shawn. You’ve given Isla a safe space. You’re making sure she has what she needs.”

“That’s just it, though,” he said, emotion flickering through his dark blue stare. “I can learn to make chicken nuggets and braid her hair and take her to the dentist. But what about the rest? What about the part that’s really important?”

“I’m sorry. I’m not following,” Frankie said.

As if a pressure valve had been released, Shawn’s words poured out with no hesitation. “Everyone keeps telling me I need to make sure Isla feels safe. That that’s the most important thing. But the reality is, I can’t keep her safe.”

Frankie shook her head, adamant. “That’s not true.”

“I didn’t keep you safe eight years ago.”

Realization bouldered into Frankie, stealing her breath. “That’s entirely different.”

“But is it?” Shawn asked. “Your safety was my responsibility, at least in part. You were nearly killed. Then, I didn’t know how to be there for you afterward. All I did was wall you off instead. The whole thing eventually broke us up.”

“Lots of things broke us up, Shawn.” Frankie paused for a deep inhale. This was the exact conversation that her sponsor, Bailey, had suggested she have with Shawn, one that would let them move on from their past, once and for all. Not in a sh!tty club, not when they were pretending to be other people, but here, together, in a place where they could be really honest.

They both deserved that.

“Look, eight years ago, I was in a ridiculous amount of pain. That’s not anyone’s fault,” she added, partly because it was true and partly to erase the guilt that had just moved through his stare, “but it is the truth. I was literally hurting. I was emotionally devastated, and I was absolutely furious at circumstance. I felt every dangerous, terrible, pure sh!t emotion in the book, and they scared the hell out of me.”

“They scared the hell out of me, too, Frankie,” he said, and even though her heart raced faster, she didn’t shy away.

“I never saw that, though. You were at my bedside every day and every night, but after that first horrible day, you never showed any emotions,” she said gently. “I know now that you felt guilty. But at the time, I thought you weren’t feeling anything, and I felt too much. I had no idea how to verbalize that. It was just so overwhelming that all I wanted to do was stuff it down and dull the pain, when what I really needed was to let all that ugly crap out so I could sort through it rather than pack it away.”

“I felt a lot,” Shawn said, his voice like sandpaper. “I felt…God, scared. Helpless. Guilty, so guilty. Not just like it was my fault, but like who the hell was I to even have all these feelings? I didn’t get stabbed. I wasn’t in the hospital bed. I didn’t need two surgeries. Unloading my sh!t on you felt like the worst sort of selfishness, so I kept it from you. I shoved it in and told myself I’d deal with it on my own. I had no idea it would make you feel like you couldn’t tell me how you felt.”

“I kept things from you, too,” Frankie whispered. “Not just the pain, but how scared I was, that I was using, all of it. I got to the point where I’d score from anyone, even dealers I knew were horrible people, just to get high enough to forget. And the whole time, I was lying to you and everyone else about the fact that I was doing it.”

This next part, she’d never told him, mostly because things had happened so fast, but then, later, because she’d had no idea how. But Shawn had told her how he’d felt that night in the club, and he was telling her again, now. She owed him the same honesty.

“My physical therapist caught me using. I think he’d been suspicious for a while. In hindsight, I probably wasn’t nearly as slick about using as I thought I was.”

Shawn’s black brows rose, but he gave her the space to air out the rest. “He caught me shooting morphine right before one of our sessions. I’d stolen it, of course. But the thought of yet another PT session where my shoulder wouldn’t do all the things it had once been able to was just too much for me to bear. I know now that I was spiraling, and that part of why I was struggling with the therapy so much was because I was too high to do it. But that moment, when my physical therapist caught me in the act and I couldn’t talk my way out of it…”

Frankie paused, but only for a breath. “All that stuff they say about hitting rock bottom is true. In a way, that moment was worse than getting stabbed, because that was when I knew.”

“Knew what?” Shawn asked, his voice utterly quiet, yet somehow still strong.

“That I might not have died the day I was stabbed, but it could still kill me. It would kill me, if I didn’t stop using. And I knew I couldn’t wait for even a minute to get help. If I’d waited, I’d have found a way to not go into rehab. I had to go right then and there.”

“And so you did.”

“It was a rough ride,” she said. The memory of the anger and despair and, God, the bargaining she’d tried to do, kicked at her, but she refused to push them away. “But I had to learn how to muscle through the hard stuff in order to get sober. I missed you, though.”

Shawn blinked in the soft light, and ah, she’d surprised him. “I missed you, too. So much.”

“None of what happened was either of our fault. I know you’re worried that you’re going to screw up again, but”—Frankie slid forward, grabbing Shawn’s hand—“you never screwed up in the first place, Shawn. Just be there for Isla. She’ll lean on you when she’s ready. And if you need someone to lean on while you wait, you can lean on me. Okay?”

Emotion flared in his eyes, but he didn’t look away. “Okay.”

Frankie smiled. “Now, what do you say we watch something that isn’t animated? Because I’ve got to do something to get that earworm of a song out of my head.”

“That sounds really good,” Shawn said.

He didn’t let go of her hand for the rest of the night.

Frankie was a creature of habit.Mostly, her schedule was fixed so she wouldn’t deviate from it. NA meetings every Wednesday. Calls with Bailey every Friday. Yoga three times a week. But for the last three days, her schedule had shifted to working at the precinct all day, then heading to Shawn’s to spend the evening with him and Isla. This new normal wasn’t permanent, Frankie knew. But she looked forward to that time with them, enough to shift to lunchtime meetings and morning calls with Bailey. Plus, she’d promised Shawn he could lean on her. Being there so he could do that just felt right.

Even if she had been thinking so many cold thoughts to keep from giving in to her hot feelings, she was practically an iceberg.

Pushing the thought out of her (l**t addled) mind, Frankie knocked on the door in front of her. Shawn’s appearance in a snug gray Henley and flawlessly broken-in jeans did not one thing to douse the heat in her panties, and God, she was seriously going to have to figure out a way to get this out of her system.

“Hey! Hi.” Closing her eyes, she forced herself to take a damn breath.

But if Shawn noticed her flustered state, he didn’t question it. “Hey. Come on in. I’m trying my hand at spaghetti and meatballs, and it’s…” He glanced at the kitchen. “Well, we might be ordering a pizza.”

“Oh, Lord.” The weird tension in Frankie’s chest disappeared in a poof of laughter. “Okay, let me help.”

“Really?” Shawn asked, but she was already shrugging out of her leather jacket and pushing up the sleeves of her sweater as she headed for the kitchen.

“Um, I come from a massive Italian family, remember? I can make spaghetti and meatballs in my sleep. It won’t be as good as my cousin Angelina’s, or nearly as good as my nonna’s, but it’ll do.” She paused to send a glance at the small kitchen table, where Isla sat with a coloring book and a set of fat crayons, quietly drawing away. “Hey, Isla! I’m super glad to see you. Do you want to help me save your dad’s spaghetti and meatballs? He needs just a teeeeensy bit of help. I’ll probably need an assistant.”

Isla looked at her for a second, as if weighing her options. After a beat, she nodded, climbing down from her chair and sock-footing her way over to Frankie. Isla seemed to have gotten used to Frankie as she’d started adjusting to her new normal, and Frankie had to admit, watching her with Shawn warmed something in her sarcastic little heart. It wasn’t some maternal longing, or anything—Frankie was pretty sure things like that were lost on someone like her. But Shawn needed help muscling through every day, and she knew how to do that. He wasn’t looking for a babysitter—he already had one, and apparently, Annette was pretty awesome. He damn sure wasn’t looking for a mommy replacement, and Frankie would be damn near the last qualified human on earth for the position, anyway. He was just looking to figure things out with his kid.

Also, looking at her out of the corner of his eye, mostly whenever he thought she wasn’t looking, and suddenly, the heat Frankie felt had nothing to do with the kitchen.

She cleared her throat, because she was pretty sure pouncing on him would be frowned upon. “Let’s see what we have, here. Spaghetti, check.” She held up the box of pasta. “Jarred sauce, I can work with.” She got to the frozen meatballs and fought the urge to weep on behalf of her family. Gently, she said, “Next time, I’ll show you how easy it is to make these from scratch. But for now, I think we can figure this out.”

Frankie moved to the sink to wash her hands, then waited as Shawn dragged a chair over for Isla to do the same, then moved it so she could stand beside Frankie at the counter. Shawn stood behind Isla the whole time with one hand at the ready, and the way he looked out for her safety without even realizing it made Frankie’s heart squeeze. She let Isla help her pour the jarred sauce into a stock pot, then shake in some dried spices and stir. They counted the cups of water for the pasta pot, Frankie and Shawn out loud and Isla on her fingers. The meatballs went into the sauce, and Frankie hung back with Isla while Shawn put both the pasta pot and the sauce on the stovetop and kicked up the heat.

“Now we have to wait for a bit,” Frankie said. Her cell phone buzzed in her back pocket, capturing her attention. “Who would be—” Her heart tripped as she caught sight of the caller ID. “Shawn. My burner phone is routed to this number when we’re not at work. It’s Alfie.”

Shawn scooped up Isla in an instant. “Hey, kid. I’m going to set you up in the bedroom with your game for a minute, okay?” There was very little chance that Isla would make any noise, but they couldn’t take the risk, however small.

Frankie waited until Shawn had cleared the threshold of the kitchen with his daughter before bringing the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

“If it isn’t my favorite baby girl.”

Ugh, his voice alone made her skin crawl. “Hey, Alfie. Oh, my God, I’m so glad you’re calling.” Shawn came back into the kitchen, and she held a finger to her lips. “I thought you’d forgotten about me.”

“Now, how could I forget about you?” he asked. “I promised I’d have your back, didn’t I?”

“Does that mean you talked to your guy? Because I’m starting to get desperate, Alfie.” She forced her voice to wobble. “Please. I’m gonna get kicked out of my place.”

“Aw, sweetheart.” Alfie’s grin practically slithered over the phone line. “You don’t have to worry. I know it took me a little while, but that was just because we had to get things right on our end.” Translation: Beck had to run background intel on your aliases. “But we’re all good. Why don’t you and Shawn come around on Friday night? We can get things rolling.”

“You want us to come to the club?” she asked, not quite believing her luck. They already knew the layout, and surveillance would be a breeze.

Of course, this was Beck she was dealing with. She should’ve known better. “No, no,” Alfie said. “We’re, ah, gonna change that up. My guy is pretty cautious. Don’t take it personally, baby. How about I text you the location on Friday, okay?”

Damn it. “Come on, Alfie,” Frankie cooed, trying the only option she had. “You know we’re good for it. Plus, Shawn might give me a hard time if I can’t tell him where we’re gonna hook up. We don’t want to get busted, you know?”

Alfie laughed. “Oh, yeah, no. You definitely don’t have to worry about that. I’ll text you the time and the place, honey. You’ll thank me later.”

With that, the line went dead.

“You caught all of that, right?” Frankie asked.

“Yeah.” Shawn nodded. “Surveillance is going to be a righteous pain in the a*s without having a location ahead of time. There’s no way for us to have the upper hand. Hell, we won’t even have a level playing field with Beck calling every shot. Which I’m sure is his point.”

“He’s all about control,” she agreed, “but that’s fine. For now, we’ll just stay smart and let him think he’s got it all. So what if he makes us meet him in the middle of the night in some random place? We’ve got the meet, and we’re getting closer to taking him down. That’s what matters.”

A thought flickered through Frankie’s mind and snagged, later than it should have. “Sh!t, Shawn. Are you going to be okay to do this? If you need to stay with Isla—”

“No.” Shawn stepped in, so close she could see the muscles in his jaw clench in determination. “This is my job, and—at least for now—I’m your partner. I’ve already talked to Annette about working odd hours and overnights on occasion, and she’s got a spare room for Isla at her place for when I have to work late nights. We need to do this. I’m going to see this case through.”

Frankie took a breath, her heart beating a wild pattern against her rib cage. She knew the case was important—it was the entire reason she’d come back to Remington in the first place. She definitely knew that wanting Shawn would invite all sorts of intense emotions that could rattle them both. She shouldn’t want his mouth on hers again. She shouldn’t want to wrap her legs around him, to scream his name as he made her come, to hear him scream hers as she did the same to him. These were all undeniable truths.

But that fierce, quiet determination he’d always put to being her partner—and was now putting to being Isla’s father—sailed right through her, landing in all the soft, dark places she’d thought no longer existed.

Yes, it was risky, and yes again, she knew she should play it safe. But as she nodded and told him, “Okay,” Frankie also knew that despite how much she shouldn’t, she wanted Shawn anyway.