Page 79 of A Shot at Love
”It’s silly.” Jules looked down, unable to hold Frankie’s concerned gaze. “I just got to thinking about how we met, how far we’ve come since then. I don’t know, it just made me emotional or something.” She forced back a laugh as her vision blurred. A tear managed to slip out before she could keep it from happening and Frankie quickly wiped it away.
“Hey, no tears.” Frankie scooted closer and cupped Jules’ face in her hands. “We’re going to be okay. We’ll make it work, we’ll figure everything out with work and your brother and —”
“Am I your girlfriend?”
The question hung in the air between them and Frankie smirked.
“Do you want to be my girlfriend?”
“Frankie…”
”Jules.”
“I’m being serious.”
Yeah, so maybe they'd skipped a few steps and maybe it was obvious to Frankie but Jules wanted to define it, she wanted to have the conversation where it was decided that they wouldn’t see other people, though they were both beyond that now anyway.
She didn’t want to be anyone else’s, she wanted to be Frankie’s, and maybe that made her a sap too caught up in what society said relationships needed to be but she didn’t care.
She’d questioned a lot of things in her life – from why out of every car on the highway that day was it their parents car that had been hit, why there was such little family left to care for her and her brother, why the world felt like it was closing in on her in those early years and why sometimes it still felt that way now.
But Frankie, the woman she'd fallen in love with, she had never been a question. She was the answer.
“I guess we kind of skipped over that conversation, didn’t we?” Frankie smiled and took Jules’s hand in her own, gently caressing the back of her knuckles with a featherlight touch that made Jules shiver.
“A lot happened pretty fast, so…”
“Mhmm, that’s true.”
Jules nodded, looking down at their hands and then Frankie scrambled over her and stood beside the bed.
“Come on. Get up.”
“No, Frankie…it’s, it’s fine. Really.”
“Jules,” Frankie pleaded. “Please.”
She gave in, heaving a sigh, and slid off of her bed to join Frankie beside it.
“Will you, Juliette Clarke, be my girlfriend?”
It was absurd, it really was. It was three o’clock in the morning and they were dressed in boxers and tank tops, their hair messy, the room lit by one small lamp, but somehow in the hushed quiet of the early hours it felt more intimate than any moment between them had.
Frankie took her hand and pulled her close so their bodies were flush. Her green eyes softened and she smiled so wide it made Jules’ own cheeks hurt.
“Will you be my girlfriend?” Frankie repeated, her voice light and sweet. She dipped her head, coming close enough to kiss Jules but stopping just before their lips touched. “Say yes.”
It was the best question anyone had ever asked her and Jules smiled, knowing there was only one right answer.
“Frankie Stevens,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around Frankie’s neck. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Chapter 35
Two Months Later
@basementdwellerpod: So this teamactually made the playoffs…a team that NO ONE cares about?!? WTF.
@womenshockeylvr:Frankie Stevens might finish her first year coaching at this level with one of the top five power play %’s in the league. FILE UNDER THINGS WE LOVE TO SEE!
