15. — knowing when. #3
“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.
Seconds ticked by, but he held her stare. Could she see how fucked up he was? He wished she would. He decided to press his luck. To see how far he could push her.
“Do you even know why I’m here?” Nico demanded.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Here. In this house. Under your father’s say so.”
“No,” Frankie admitted.
“I drugged a guy, stripped him naked and tied him up, and then had him admit on livestream to raping freshmen girls. It was the President’s nephew.”
“Like...of the university?”
Nico laughed a hollow sound. “Of the country.”
She blinked once. Then, twice.
“Okay, so?”
“So?” he asked back sharply.
She didn’t even flinch. “Did you tell me that to scare me or something? Did you think that would make me somehow love you less? Who the hell do you think I am, Nico? More than that, I hope.”
The cat weaved in between their legs as Frankie pushed up to her tiptoes in white sneakers to kiss the spot under his ear. Her honeyed-vanilla scent cocooned him. Her lips stayed against his skin, soothing the electrified way his nerves crackled and snapped.
“Say it again,” he murmured to her.
He wished he had better impulse control. That he could stop himself from doing this to her. Maybe Giorgio had a point.
“Tell me you love me again,” Nico said, his throat aching.
“I love you.”
“Again.”
A sound, broken and sad, burst from Frankie. “You know I love you, stop it. You can’t just up and fucking go on me, Nico. Not now. Not after everything. You’re reacting right now, you’re not thinking.”
He pressed the side of his head against hers. She pushed right back. Her chest flattened against him the second he grabbed her, her relief exhaling into him as he kissed her temple three times in quick succession.
“Couldn’t hurt me if you tried,” she told him again through more sniffles and hiccups.
“I gotta calm down,” he admitted.
She nodded. “Okay. And what, you need to leave to do that?”
“Yeah.”
She looked up at him, not the least bit afraid. “So, where are we going?”
“You can’t.”
She fisted his jacket, throwing familiar words back at him. “Fight me.”
Given what he’d done earlier, she had real nerve to look him in the eye and say that. Except she knew the truth. Said so herself. He could never hurt her.