Page 123 of Made in Love and Blood

“Why are you leaving? Where are you going?”

“Because I have to. Because I can’t look at my father again and not tell him exactly what everyone knows he is. Because I can’t control myself around you even when I know it’s not good for you, either. Because your father told me to, Frankie. That’s why.”

She dragged in a wet, shaky breath. More tears fell down her cheeks. “And so that’s it, you’re just leaving?”

“Tell me what I should do!” he yelled.

“Ask me to go with you!” she shouted back. “Mean it when you say you fucking love me!”

A slap would’ve felt better.

Nico dragged a hand down his face, shaking his head in disbelief. “You’ll never get it, Frankie. My father isn’t going to let me be free, not really. I’ll never be a made man for him, because I can’t now, knowing...but I’ll pay for that, too. We all do.”

She said nothing. It pissed him off.

“And there you are,” he almost taunted her, gesturing his arms open to her, “you want to be right there, fucked alongside me.”

“I want to be with you,” Frankie returned, hiccupping. She inched closer, and he let her. Just to torture himself further. Her fingertips found his sore lip, and she frowned at what she found. “Carina said Marco didn’t even hit you.”

“Carina saw?” he asked.

Frankie sighed, but shakily. “Yeah. A lot of people did, apparently.”

Well, that, he knew.

“Who did that to you?”

“Giorgio,” he answered.

The pity in her eyes stabbed at him.

“Don’t do that, Frankie. Don’t look at me that way.”

“How should I fucking look at you, huh? Please, tell me?” she begged him, those tears coming in streams that dripped from her jaw now. “I fucking love you. I love you and I don’t even recognize the sound of your voice right now, Nico. I don’t understand why but I want to. That’s scary, but I’m still here, looking at you. Who cares how I’m doing it?”

His eyes shut, jaw trembling.

“Frankie—”

“I don’t know where you’re going, but wherever it is, I’ll be going with you.”

Nico inhaled until his chest burned. “Exactly. You don’t even know where I’m going, and this isn’t a debate I want to have with you.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Your father won’t let you.”

“Let me?” She outright scoffed. “I am so beyond this shit now. And I have eight hundred million reasons why I can do whatever I want. Those were his words.”

He opened his eyes back up, but he couldn’t bear to look at her and see pity again. Not understanding what she’d just said at all and silently begging his heart to stop racing in the meantime, he tried to placate Frankie. “I just need a couple of days.”

“Okay, so you take a couple of days with me.”

“Frankie, please.”

“I love you, and you’re not going anywhere without me. Look at me, Nico,” she demanded. “In my eyes, really look at me. Like you do every other time we’re in front of one another. Why can’t you look at me?”

He did.