Echoes of the Heart - Casey, L.A. (digital ebook reader .TXT) 📗

down the counter. She wasn’t a rude person so there had to be a reason for her to give me the cold shoulder.

“Hey, Frank.”

She mumbled a response that wasn’t coherent to me.

“Is everything okay?” I questioned. “Joe is out front talking to—”

“I said I’m busy and I can’t talk. Are you deaf?”

I didn’t even have a second to ask what was wrong, but I knew something was wrong. Frankie turned and walked directly into the kitchen of the diner. The ice in her tone had caught me off guard. I watched her go for a moment before I snapped out of it and followed her. She was in the kitchen on her own and from what I could see when I entered the diner, the place was devoid of customers. It was just the pair of us.

“What’s going on?”

“Staff only!” Frankie jumped with surprise, turned to face me and quickly put her hand behind her back. “You shouldn’t be in here.”

I frowned. “What’s happened?”

“Nothing,” Frankie blurted. “Nothing happened, so you” – she glared at me – “can leave.”

I bristled at her tone.

“I’m going nowhere until you tell me what the fuck is going on.”

“Don’t you speak to me like that, Risk Keller,” she snapped. “Get out.”

Joe and Anna entered the kitchen just as Frankie shouted at me.

“Frankie,” I said firmly. “What the fuck did I do?”

“Stop cursing!”

Christ.

“Tell me what I did to piss you off so much and I will. And while you’re at it, tell me why the police are here.”

Joe and Anna glanced at one another, then left the kitchen without a word spoken, leaving us alone once more. I was getting more and more pissed off by the second so I crossed the space between us.

“What. Happened?”

“Nothing.” She shifted her stance. “I handled it.”

“Handled it?” I repeated. “What the fuck is ‘it’?”

“Stop. Cursing.”

I felt the muscles roll back and forth in my jaw as I stared down at Frankie.

“So help me, if you don’t tell me—”

“You’ll what?” she interrupted. “Write a horrible song about me? Too late, you’ve already bloody done that.”

I felt as if I had been punched in the gut because I knew instantly what song she was referring to.

“Don’t even deny it,” she continued. “I know it’s about me.”

“You’re talking about ‘Cherry Bomb’?”

“Yes.” Frankie sneered. “Real classy, Risk.”

I lifted my arm and ran my hand through my hair.

“Why’re you bringing it up now and not the night when I came by to apologise to you? We’ve been cool since then.”

“Because I didn’t listen to it until today. It was on the radio.”

That surprised the hell out of me.

“That record was on our last album, it came out two years ago.”

“Oh.” Frankie held up her hands in mock defeat. “Am I supposed to not be pissed because I’ve only just heard it?”

“No.” I held her gaze. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s bollocks and you know it,” I snapped. “You wrote that to be hateful and cruel!”

She was upset. She was shouting at me and she looked meaner than a bee-stung dog, but I could see the hurt in her green eyes. She was sad . . . my song made her sad. If there was one record I regretted writing, cutting and releasing it was ‘Cherry Bomb’. Christ, any time I thought about it, it left a bitter taste in my mouth.

“I didn’t write it to be cruel and hateful,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm and collected. “I didn’t, Frankie.”

“Bullshit,” she practically growled. “I listened to every word, you evil bastard. Fuck you! We’re not gonna be friends or anything of the sort. Get the fuck out of my life and stay the fuck away from me, you arsehole!”

In all the years that I had spent remembering Frankie, I forgot how mad she could get once she got going.

“Frankie, listen—”

“No!” she shouted. “No, Risk. D’you know what it feels like to have a song like that written about you? A song millions of people have listened to?”

She was right, millions of people had listened to it, I just didn’t understand how she hadn’t listened to it. Frankie was the original Sinner. Back in the day, she had been in the studio for each record we laid on our EP, and most of the records on our first album that were finished ahead of time, too. She heard our music over and over and she always did so with a smile on her gorgeous face. On one hand I was glad she hadn’t heard ‘Cherry Bomb’ up until now, but on the other, it rattled my very soul to think there was a record of mine that she didn’t hear.

I spoke to her through my records; if she didn’t listen to them . . . how would she ever hear me?

“Why didn’t you listen to it before today?”

Her eyes flashed with an emotion I couldn’t decipher.

“Because I knew it was about me,” she suddenly said. “‘Cherry Bomb’. Even a dumb small-town girl like me could figure it out. We had broken up; I was scared to hear what you had to say about me.”

Hearing her explanation made the weight that had settled on my chest lift instantly. She listened to my records, to my words . . . she just couldn’t listen to ‘Cherry Bomb’ until now, and I couldn’t blame her.

“I was right to feel that way. Wasn’t I, rock star?”

“Yes,” I answered. “You were, but if you let me explain—”

“No. Get out.”

“Listen. To. Me.” I raised my voice. “I wrote it when I felt angry and upset and was fucking missing you!”

“Missing me?” she repeated with harsh laughter. “I wonder which part of me you missed. Oh, I think I know. How do the lyrics go? ‘My cherry bomb’s hips keep me awake at night, she’s got an ass that’d make a holy man cry. Big enough for me to take a bite,’ and those are the nicest lyrics in the fucking song! You went on to objectify me to nothing more than a body that you missed fucking.”

“Frankie—”

“I don’t