17. — ODs and ironies. #2
“No, I’m serious. His man did the legwork overnight, so he made a call to me, and I made a few calls myself.
Your cousin didn’t take long to step up with the needed info.
And let me say, you’re lucky he did, Nico.
She would not have known what do for you, and by the time hotel staff got in here, it would’ve been too late.
Is that what you want to tell her father? ”
Nico’s jaw snapped shut audibly.
“Didn’t think so,” Carmine murmured. “You know better than to party like that with someone who isn’t even at your level. And by the looks of it, you’ve not been at that level for a while, either. I heard you were doing better, so what the hell, kid?”
“Why were there bad drugs in Neon?” Nico asked right back.
“You’re deflecting instead of accepting. You’re right, the supply in the city is tainted, but that doesn’t absolve you of responsibility here. Are you listening now?”
“Are you going to tell him?” Nico asked.
Frankie cared to hear that answer, too.
“Should I?” Carmine asked back.
Frankie hugged her middle with one arm and rubbed at her cheek. She wanted a shower, something to drink, and food. She only wanted fun, to get Nico out of his head and back to normal, not all of this, too.
“Should I tell Salvatore Gallo that you took his daughter to an illegal club, allowed her to use drugs—”
“I asked to do it, too,” Frankie spoke up.
Carmine sighed, barely glancing her way. “He still—”
“I asked to go somewhere like that. I asked to do things with him that he liked to do here. I wanted to do all those things with him. We are equally responsible.”
“Frankie,” Nico murmured to her, pleading with his eyes for her to stop.
She wouldn’t.
“I can’t say I’m gonna do it again,” she admitted, “but I’m a legal adult, and so what I do in my own private time, is none of my father’s business.”
Carmine blinked, standing a little straighter. “Is that so?”
“Yeah, it is.”
“Frankie,” Nico repeated.
She ignored him altogether. “Thank you for the message. I’ll call my father when I’m ready.”
Carmine glanced back at Nico just as the nurse bent over his side to remove the IV from his arm.
“Frankly, the man doesn’t want to speak to me again unless it’s to confirm to him that I’ve laid eyes upon you both and have passed along his messages.
Anything else is not required. His words not mine.
You’re both lucky. I’ve got a good mind to... ”
He didn’t finish the threat.
Frankie didn’t even care. “Are you done?”
“Babe,” Nico urged quietly, “stop.”
“No,” she told Nico firmly, “I won’t. Thank you,” she added to Carmine, needing this to be over with. “Thank you for coming at the right time, and looking out for us, but that’s enough now. You can go.”
“When I’m finished,” Carmine replied blithely.
“Excuse—”
He turned on Nico, interrupting her altogether as he said, “Your message—you’re to have dinner with your father at his home on Monday. You know what time he likes to eat, so be there. Salvatore will see you when he sees you, otherwise. Understood?”
Nico nodded once, jaw tight. “Yep. Got it.”
“Good. And now I’m done,” the man told Frankie as he headed for the door.
“And you’re welcome for the new room. That’s covered, but only until Sunday evening.
Don’t be here Monday morning, or my men will personally escort you onto a private plane.
I promise, that will not be enjoyable for either of you.
Enjoy your last night, and tomorrow’s a new day.
A better day. I suggest you both use it wisely. ”
The nurse took her leave shortly after Carmine. The woman hadn’t even asked their names, or any details about the situation when she showed up to do her job.
The silence in the room grew between them like nothing Frankie had ever known.
She didn’t know what to say to him, and every breath she took hurt until each one came faster, harder, and felt like she wasn’t getting enough air at all.
The panic attack took over as her tears spilled and she started throwing thing after thing within her reach at Nico.
He took every single one. The pillows from the bed and the small bowl of candies left by the staff. The notebook and pen on the nightstand. His bag. Her shoes.
She threw things she didn’t even look at—just grabbed.
Nico didn’t say a thing. He didn’t move an inch.
“I’m so sorry,” he told her when she’d finally threw herself out and just sat on the floor and cried. “I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
“You almost died, Nico!”
“I shouldn’t have brought you here. I shouldn’t have taken you to—”
“I wanted to do all of that, too!”
Her scream shut him up.
She hated how it made her feel to do it.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled through hiccups and aching breaths. “I didn’t mean to yell, I’m just—”
“Scared.”
“Yeah.”
“Worried?”
She stared at him through her tears. “You think?”
“Pissed,” he whispered, then.
She didn’t want to say that to him.
He’d feel worse.
Frankie participated, too.
“It’s okay,” he told her then, “I’m fucking mad at me, too, babe.”
“You almost died,” she sobbed again.
He didn’t say anything that time. His head fell back to the couch while he stared up at the ceiling overhead.
He couldn’t hide the tears that tracked lines down his face.
Those got her moving again, and she found her way to his feet, curling against his legs until his hands found her hair when her head rested in his lap.
He stroked her hair.
She tried to wipe the tears away, but they kept coming, too.
“It’s gonna feel like that for a while,” he muttered. “The molly makes it worse.”
“What?” she asked.
“The serotonin crash. When you sober up from shit like molly, it drains your body of all the serotonin, and you gotta build it back up. Everything feels so much worse than it really is. It’s not as bad as it seems, it just feels—”
“You almost died.”
“I know,” he muttered, “but you’ll feel better after you eat, and sleep and—”
“Shut up, Nico.”
He did. For a whole minute.
“Get the phone so I can call down for food, you’ve got to eat. You need to. Hate me while you do it, but you’re gonna fucking eat.”
Stupid boy.
She didn’t hate him at all. Not even a little bit. That was the whole damn point.
···
Nico found her a couple of hours later in the shower, after she forced herself to eat a cheeseburger and plate of fries that tasted like cardboard.
The food looked good, she just couldn’t taste it.
The only thing that made a dent happened to be the two bottles of chilled water she chugged down one after another.
He said that was normal sometimes, too.
She wanted him not to speak.
Even when he slipped in behind her in the shower, his lips finding the back of her neck while his arms hugged her middle. She wanted him silent.
“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.