12. — mother, may I. #2
“No, I’m sorry,” she said, sniffling before pulling the sunglasses resting at the top of her head down to cover her eyes.
“It’s been a long time, but it never feels that way.
Jesus, I couldn’t even be faithful to my own husband because of what that man did to me.
I couldn’t look at my babies without seeing him.
I started nude modeling just to have enough money to get the fuck out of his grasp. ”
“But you loved us. You loved me, you said.”
She didn’t reply.
Nico didn’t really need her to, either. He still remembered Salvatore’s comment about how Carina reacted when they found Nico nearly smothered to death in a closet.
Carina cried.
“I don’t blame you,” Nico told her quietly, wanting her to know. “You did what you needed to. You became who you needed to be. I get it.”
“No, you don’t,” she replied, her tone thick and words wet with tears he couldn’t see, “and fuck, I hope you never do, Nico.”
He could tell Carina had hit her limit for the conversation.
Another four graduates passed the stage. Carina steadied her breathing into long, slow inhales and exhales.
He glanced her way, more unsure and unsteady than ever. He made himself stay quiet, and stop asking questions, because she’d returned to the same long, slow breaths. Only now, her face had paled a bit.
“You okay?” he asked.
Carina shook her head. “No, I’m gonna go puke. Third time today.”
Nico made quick work of moving his ass out of the way. She even shoved her Birkin into his grasp before she darted up the aisle. Not two seconds later, someone else had clearly noticed something changed a couple of rows back.
Salvatore, glancing over his shoulder, waved two fingers at Nico. A silent call for him to come down. He did.
“What’s wrong?” Sal asked, eyeing the pup hiding at Nico’s front with both amusement and disbelief. “Where’s Carina?”
“Morning sickness.”
“It’s three in the afternoon.”
Nico didn’t know what the man wanted him to say. “Are you pregnant?”
Salvatore blinked. “No.”
“Right, well, I’m not, either. So, I’m not gonna comment on when or why she pukes. You know? Seems...not right.”
The man just rolled his eyes, but he stood from his chair after leaning over to whisper something to Sissy at his right. In the aisle next to Nico, he took the purse Carina had left behind.
“If I’m not back before they throw the caps—”
“I’ll let her know where you are,” Nico assured.
Salvatore nodded. “All right. I heard you and Frankie have plans later?”
“I thought she should celebrate in a way that makes her happy. You know, before she has to do it the way everyone else wants to.”
“Well, you know the rules in the meantime.”
“Yeah, about that.” Nico peered down at the graduates, seeking Frankie out while he said, “I packed my shit up at the guesthouse this morning. I have a place in Vauxhall. Big Mike’s signing over the deed next week.
I won’t be coming back at three like usual.
I just thought you should know. You did give me the okay to look for a place. One just happened to find me first.”
Salvatore chuckled. “And I suppose that’ll make it far easier for you to spend your entire nights in bed with my daughter now, instead of just the wee hours, won’t it?”
Nico turned back on the man, meeting his gaze blatantly and unashamed. “I’m sure you’ll be the first to know if, or when, she doesn’t want me to be in her bed, too.”
···
Frankie played with the red tassel on the graduation cap, observing the passing streets in silence as Nico navigated the Mercedes from behind the wheel.
“Do you think she’s gonna keep the baby?” she asked suddenly.
He knew exactly who she meant.
“I think it’s not our business, babe.”
She rubbed her lips together, shaking her head subtly but he didn’t miss the annoyance in the action either. Especially with how she kept staring out the window instead of at him, even when he reached over to grab her hand and weave their fingers together.
“Hey,” he murmured.
“My father said the same thing. It’s her choice. Her body, whatever.”
“You can just say you want her to have the baby,” Nico said, squeezing her fingers with his own. “You can voice that to me. It’s just me here. Say it, if that’s what you think and feel.”
“I don’t know what I feel or think.”
He seriously doubted that. “Frankie—”
“Shouldn’t I be jealous or something?” she interrupted, looking his way then.
He laughed. “Jealous, really? Over a fetus?”
“I’m being serious. I mean, I’ve been an only child my whole life. I’m eighteen, so what am I even going to do with a sibling that’s basically two decades younger than me, right? I don’t get why it matters to me at all.”
“You know what you’ll get to be?”
“What?”
He smiled. “The best fucking big sister a kid could have. The coolest sister ever. Imagine showing up to a soccer game with you. Or getting dropped off to school in the cars you drive. And you get to give them something you didn’t have.
Another person who gets it. You understand what it’s like to live in that house with those people, even if those people are doing better than they used to. ”
Not that her father and Carina were, but...it wasn’t the point.
“You get to be their person,” he added. “Maybe you had a person in a way. Your dad. Sissy. I’m telling you, it’s not the same. You can’t understand right now because the baby is not really here, and kinda, sorta there. When it’s real, you’ll start to get it, Frankie. I’m telling you.”
“Is that how you feel about your little sister?”
“You had to go right for the gut punch, huh?”
She just shrugged.
Nico kept his attention on the road, needing the distraction to talk about Carmen, given his feelings about her safety and place in the world had been shifted recently. “It’s not the same with me and her. Well, it is...but it also isn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because up until recently, it really felt like that little girl was the only person in my whole world who gave a shit about me. Who loved me regardless of the rest. Like she would care if I fell off the face of the planet.”
“Recently, huh?” Frankie whispered.
His gaze darted her way.
She stared back, teeth pulling at her bottom lip.
“Stop it,” he said, grinning, “you look at me like that, and it makes me want to—”
“What? Love me?”
Love her. Fuck her. Keep her.
All three, on repeat, each second of every day, for the rest of his life. He didn’t know how to how to cope with such intense emotions when they warred for attention, time, and space in his mind and body every time he had this girl within arms reach.
She couldn’t possibly know what she did to him. She couldn’t feel the same way he did. She was so much better and beautiful and everything that he just wasn’t. She didn’t even have to try.
Frankie couldn’t possibly—
“You’re hurting my hand,” she told him.
Instantly, Nico loosened the grip he hadn’t realized was too tight. “Sorry.”
“Where’d you go just then? Your eyes stayed straight ahead, but your face...”
He couldn’t bring himself to share his thoughts. Not when they were so insecure and sad, and fearful.
“Are you scared to love me?” she asked, reading him like an open book once again.
“No,” he lied.
“Well, I’m not scared to say I love—”
“Don’t do that,” Nico interjected, his gaze snapping to her in the next breath. “Don’t do that in a car while we’re driving down the road, and it’s been a great day. Don’t tell me that when everything feels good, and perfect and right.”
Frankie swallowed thicky, asking, “When should I say it?”
“When I need it,” he admitted, finally letting some of his fears bleed through. “When I really fucking need it, you’ll know. Okay?”
Saying nothing once again, she only nodded.
“Because that’s when I’ll know, Frankie. That’s when it’ll really feel like you mean it when you say it to me. Maybe that doesn’t make sense, I don’t know. It’s just how it is for me.”
“Have you ever been in love before?”
“Have you?” he shot back.
“No,” she said easily. “Now, you.”
“I thought I was. Once. I was fourteen, she was fifteen.”
Her teeth started abusing her lip again, and this time, her fingers squeezed his hard enough to make his knuckles creak. Nico didn’t say a word about either thing. She asked, after all.
“What happened?”
Nico laughed weakly. “She fucked my brother, in my bed.”
Now that grip of hers loosened immediately.
“Jesus Christ.”
“She was fifteen. He had no business doing—”
“That’s not what you felt at the time, though, was it?”
“No,” he replied honestly. “It tore me up. I had a bad spell for a couple years after. I never had another girlfriend. Just...people I fucked.”
That sounded so bad. He knew it did.
The girl next to him barely let a soul touch her. She put worth in herself that he’d never managed to find for himself. He knew it without her even needing to say as much.
He could tell the first time she laid next to him in bed, fully clothed and after she started shedding more pieces of clothing each time after.
He could tell she wanted more between them each time she crawled into his arms, her confidence in herself and him growing.
How she lost those silent insecurities easier each night.
He could tell.
Nobody made her feel safe enough before that she gave those pieces of herself to them. He was not the same. He couldn’t give her what she would freely give to him, if he just took it from her.
And she wanted him to. God, he wanted her, too.
“There you go again, somewhere else,” she said softly.
“Home sweet home,” Nico mumbled, using the arrival at their destination as an excuse to drop the conversation and hopefully a distraction. “This is it, babe.”
Frankie barely glanced at the two-storey colonial style home with a detached two-door garage that had been gifted to Nico from Big Mike as part of his payment for the Carcoli situation.
The quiet neighborhood flickered with life as a couple strolled down the street, lights overhead flooded the sidewalks, and a cat crossed the road two houses down.
“Look at me,” she demanded.
He did.