FOREWORD
Dear Reader,
We’re here. Book 12. The final book of the Untouchable series. I bet you thought we’d never get here. I said in the last book that finishing the final “cliffhanger” in the series was a heady experience, but finishing this one? This was amazing.
I won’t lie, there were tears. Not at the end, no, but at some key moments within the story itself. Some of them weren’t even the most “important” ones.
As I wrote this, one of the thoughts in my head all the way through was “this is my love letter” to Frankie and the guys. It’s also my love letter to all of you, the readers, who have been with them through their ups, their downs, their rules, their changes, their struggles with communication, their arguments, and even that horrible moment when two of them broke up for a time.
From the day she learned about her mother’s affair to that whopper of a Daddy lie to the moment she earned her emancipation to the final confrontation with Maddy just outside a public bathroom, Frankie and the guys have been there for each other. Car accidents. Illness. Mean girls. Long-distance relationships. New family. Grief. Love. Friends. More.
They’ve earned their happily ever after. It has always been my belief that a happily ever after is a work in progress. It’s not a final moment where you cross a t or dot an i. It’s all the little moments, the hurried meals, the quick text messages to say I love you, the times when you pick up the burden because they need you to those lazy days when you can just sit and breathe.
Happily ever after is never the end of the story. It’s the continuation, it’s the big moments and the small ones. It’s life. A life you live together. A life where you fight, you make-up, you cheer each other up, sometimes you just cry. You fail. You succeed. You get overwhelmed. Sometimes, you just need a hug.
I thought saying goodbye would be hard, but it’s hard to say goodbye to a life you know they are going to keep sharing, living, celebrating, and quite probably laughing their way through.
This series has been such a gift for me in so many ways. I am ready to move on to new characters, new challenges, and new moments—but never doubt for an instant that Frankie and the guys won’t always be right there in the back of my mind.
In honor of this being the final installment, I added four bonus scenes to the very end. These bonus scenes are flashbacks. In my reader group, when books hit review goals, I write bonus scenes. Sometimes they are alternate points of view. Sometimes they are scenes that take us back to the time before Rules and Roses. These four scenes are the details of when Frankie met each of the guys in her life.
Never hurts to throw a little nostalgia at the happily ever after, you know?
Just thank you. Don’t forget to check out the afterword, join my group, leave a review, and in general, just keep being awesome.
Normally, this is where I’d do the housekeeping notes, but this is the last book. If you haven’t read the first eleven, you should probably start there.
xoxo
Heather
CHAPTER ONE
I’M WALKING ON AIR
FRANKIE
“Hey, Frankie,” Jake called with a grin, his phone pointed right at me as we walked toward the plane. “What are we doing?”
As tempted as I was to flip him off, I just laughed. “About to jump out of a plane.”
“How are you feeling about that?” His eyes danced as he glanced at me over the top of his phone. I swore he was like a kid at Christmas. Had been since I said yes. I managed to shoot Jake a thumbs up and a laugh while I shook my head.
“Hi, everyone,” the man walking next to me said. Older than all of us by at least two decades, he’d also been our “jump” instructor. His grin was almost as engaging as Jake’s. “I’m Jake too,” he said almost tongue in cheek while holding up his own phone. It appeared that filming was going to be a thing. “Our girl here likes Jakes, apparently.”
“Hey now,” Jake called from ahead as he kept filming me. The guys were all in with sky diving, and apparently this was a big deal cause it was my first time. But I wasn’t the only virgin on this flight. “Watch the flirting.”
“Ignore him,” Jake, the instructor, said with a hand on my shoulder. He’d already gone over my rigging—twice—as had the guys. Then he’d shown me how to go over theirs with the same kind of thoroughness. “We’re going to get on this plane here.” He turned his own phone toward the plane where Coop, Archie, and Ian waited.
“Okay,” I said, trying to keep the nerves out of my voice. It was one thing to talk about this, to practice—when we were on the ground and something else entirely to get on a plane with the intention of jumping out of it.
“We’re going to go up two miles,” he said, aiming the phone back at us.
“Yay.” I summoned a smile and Jake cracked up. Coop whistled, then did a whoop whoop and I laughed. “We’re going to go up two miles,” I repeated Jake the Elder, Jake’s name for him, not mine.
“Then we’re gonna jump,” Jake the Elder continued.
“We’re going to jump out of a perfectly good plane,” I ad-libbed.
“We’re gonna fall for…” Jake the Elder trailed off, holding up one finger to me.
“One minute?”
“One mile,” he corrected. That was a long way to fall. I swore my stomach plummeted for me. “One mile,” he repeated. “If we fall for one minute, we’ve gone too far. That’s gonna be bad.”
I would not throw up.
I would not.
“We’ll fall for one mile,” he said, raising his hand. “Then we’re going to hang out.” I high-fived him, but I was pretty sure it lacked any real enthusiasm. “Sound good?”
“I can’t wait,” I told him, laughing, even as I blinked back tears. I wasn’t going to throw up. Excitement vibrated through my system.
“You’re going to be great,” he told me, lowering his phone. “We can still do it in tandem if you change your mind.”
“We talked about that,” I said, pushing a loose tendril of hair back. I’d braided all of it, but there were wisps still escaping. “AFF works for me.”
“Okay.” This time he offered his fist and we bumped them together. “Then let’s get everyone on and airborne.”
My Jake caught me in a loose hug and a quick kiss as Jake the Elder continued on. “You good?” The caution and worry in his eyes couldn’t hide his excitement.
“I’m awesome,” I informed him. “Or so you all keep telling me.” Still, my hands were trembling.
“You are awesome,” he murmured, gripping my hands between his. “The absolute fucking best, Baby Girl. You don’t have to do this.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Don’t even start. I know I’m freaking out—a little—but I’m also excited. The more you guys keep telling me I don’t have to, the more nervous I get. So, if you want to stay here on the ground, Benton, I’ll be the blonde—up there, free-falling.”
He laughed, dragging me in for a hard, firm kiss. “As if I’d let you go up there without me.”