Page 90 of Made in Love and Blood

Usually, he was her hero.

A victor in every sense of the word.

Her dad.

Right then, he was just a man. And it kind of hurt.

“Pills?” she asked.

He tipped his head toward the door. “I don’t like to talk about it outside of the rooms of recovery, if I can help it. Are you coming, or not? Because either way, I really fucking need a meeting right now.”

“You’re not using, are you?”

Would she even know if he was?

“No, but I want to. More than I’ve ever wanted to in the last ten years since I stopped.”

“Because of Carina?”

“My addiction stems from my own inability to cope. My cowardness. Not anyone else.” His sadness bled through in his dimmed gaze and forming frown. “Because I hurt someone I love, again. Because it’s easier not to feel guilt by swallowing pills than it is to face it and make amends. Because if I tell her any of this, it also means opening a door I can’t close.”

Frankie nibbled at the inside of her lip before whispering, “You love Carina? Like, you’re in love with her?”

His hand remained on the church door, but he didn’t pull it open quite yet. “I think I always have. I just don’t know how to say it after so many years of telling her that I can’t. That I don’t. I know her and I are bad together sometimes, that we’ve done and said horrible things to one another, and yeah, we’re beyond toxic a lot of the time, but...”

“But?” she pressed.

Salvatore shrugged. “But nothing. I’ve spent a lot of years tacking things on to that statement because it was easier than letting myself feel how I did. Because I’d already loved someone else so much, and then she died, and I just...I wanted to die with her. But I had you. You can’t imagine the guilt and the grief it caused me, the heartache.”

“It shouldn’t hurt to love someone, Daddy.”

He smiled little. “Maybe it does when it also feels like letting go of something else. And maybe it does when you’re familiar with all there is to lose.”

•••

“I started to think you weren’t coming home,” came a familiar voice from down the hall.

Frankie glanced up from her phone, and the texts Nico had recently sent her, to see him waiting for her in front of her Greenwich Village penthouse doors. A duffle bag, two boxes, and a few bulging plastic bags sat at his feet. She laughed at the sight.

“Did you go shopping for my penthouse?”

He shrugged. “I had time, but not entirely. Sissy packed you a bag.”

He pointed at the duffle.

“She also wants you to come get Sassy for a bit,” he added. “I guess she’s distraught because she can’t figure out where you are or when you’re coming back.”

That morning, she would’ve said never. Now, she wasn’t so sure.

Walking down the hall to greet him with a soft kiss, she said against his lips, “I’ll go get her tonight.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Tonight?”

“I only have the Rolls. I want the Supra, too. I can drive with you tonight, stay until morning, and bring Sassy with me until the party.”

“You forgot something.”

“Did I?”