Page 140 of Made in Love and Blood

“I’m still mad,” she whispered into the falling water.

He only nodded.

“And scared.”

He kissed a path along the ridge of her shoulder.

“We’re never doing that again,” she added.

That earned her a soft laugh from him.

“You’re never gonna do it again, either.”

“Yeah, no, I won’t,” he agreed quietly. “I promise.”

“I don’t need your promise. I need you, Nico.”

“Could’ve been you,” he murmured against her skin.

“Except you wouldn’t even split it. Called me a fucking lightweight, you asshole.”

“Good thing, huh?”

Fuck.

He had a point.

“Don’t sound so fucking happy about an overdose, Nico. Fuck.”

He spun her around, and those green eyes of his darkened as they landed on her. Her back hit the shower wall while he crowded her.

“Fucking right I’m happy that wasn’t you in bed, dying.”

“Oh, so it was so good for it to be me watching you die?”

Did he not get that?

They stared one another down, both trembling under a stream of steady, warm water that did nothing to soothe what raged between them. Naked and toe to toe, it felt like more hate filling up space between them than it did love.

“I love you, and that would’ve killed me, too,” she eventually said, trying to get him to understand.

“And see, this is what you want,” he returned, his hands circling her arms and squeezing tight, “right? You wanted this with me—you wanted me, right?”

“You better say it back, Nico.”

He sneered. “Oh, don’t worry. I love you enough to kill the both of us, babe. I literally almost did.”

She yanked from his hold and raised her hand to hit him, because he’d said that so flippantly it felt like a fucking stab to her heart. But he caught the hand in mid-air, under the water, inches from the side of his face.

“Don’t you ever, ever, ever fucking hit me,” he hissed. A rage like she’d never seen shadowed his face, and twisting at his mouth as he spat his next words at her. “I’ve been getting hit my whole fucking life, and you will not be another person I try to love that hits me and then demands I give a fuck afterward. Do you hear me?”

The intensity in his stare stilled her.

She could only nod.

Nico let her hand go.

“Don’t joke,” she hiccupped through tears. “Don’t joke about it. Don’t say what happened like it’s nothing.”