Page 167 of Made in Love and Blood

“Is your father still hammering you about her?”

“Every single week, never fails.”

Nico hated those dinners, and somehow, managed to get through them each time. Marco made it a lot harder, but Carmen and Vanna usually sat at the table with them, too. He enjoyed the way Marco picked and then got pissy when Nico didn’t take the bait.

Even their father noticed it last time.

That was Marco’s problem. If his big brother wasn’t at his level, he might as well just stay somewhere beneath the rest of Nico’s more immediate concerns. Like Frankie.

“What the hell?” he asked himself at the sight on the other side of the field.

Carina followed his stare, trying to find what he thought so strange. “Anyway, he wanted you to tell Giorgio at your next dinner that you asked Frankie to his Christmas party as a date, to give him something to focus on coming up,” she murmured under her breath.

He heard that. Even took it in to remember.

But...

Frankie had his attention, now. Nico stood from the seat as his girl stopped her jog for the ball she’d left behind just to dart off the field. A hand clapped over her mouth, and she barely made it to the bucket where the players had been throwing dirty towels.

Where she vomited.

“Frankie, hey!” Nico shouted.

She didn’t respond. Others on the field noticed, though. As they went to help, he looked down to find Carina watching the scene curiously.

“That’s definitely not a resurgence of her anxiety,” she muttered.

“What?”

Carina barely glanced up at him before she too stood and watched as Frankie stood up straight and waved off the concern of the girls crowding her. Someone offered her a water bottle while someone else took the bucket away. She bounced back relatively fast, swishing water in her mouth and spitting it past the field line before heading onto the turf again.

“She’s not losing weight or anything,” Nico said, “and that’s the first time I’ve seen her get sick since...”

He trailed off, thinking about it.

“The time I told her dad about,” he finished.

Carina stilled, but for her fingers that suddenly drummed nervously against the white leather of her Birkin. “But you’ve been busy. You said so.”

“Yeah, and?”

“So, how busy?”

“I’m up before she is and back in the evening. Same as usual.”

She made a soft noise. Those fingers drummed again.

He stared harder at her. “Is there a reason why you’re grilling me right now?”

Her gaze darted around their feet, in searching of something. Carina wasted no time the moment she found the objects in question. Frankie’s practice duffle bag and her mother’s beloved Birkin. She only took that out in public when Nico could watch it.

“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded as she opened the duffle first.

Carina didn’t grace him with an explanation as her hands dug through the change of clothes, and an extra pair of practice clothes, which he’d thought were a little tight compared to her high school soccer uniform, but the damn things were practically all spandex with NYU’s branding.

Tossing the shoes out of the bag, Carina dug deeper. It didn’t seem to matter, because ten seconds later she moved onto Frankie’s bag, not having found anything in the duffle. Something that sounded a lot like a pill bottle rattled at the same time Carina froze, staring down at whatever she found in the bag.

He looked to the field. At Frankie, now coming their way.