Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 154525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
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.
“And see, this is what you want,” he returned, his hands circling her arms and squeezing tight, “right? You wanted this with me—you wanted me, right?”
“You better say it back, Nico.”
He sneered. “Oh, don’t worry. I love you enough to kill the both of us, babe. I literally almost did.”
She yanked from his hold and raised her hand to hit him, because he’d said that so flippantly it felt like a fucking stab to her heart. But he caught the hand in mid-air, under the water, inches from the side of his face.
“Don’t you ever, ever, ever fucking hit me,” he hissed. A rage like she’d never seen shadowed his face, and twisting at his mouth as he spat his next words at her. “I’ve been getting hit my whole fucking life, and you will not be another person I try to love that hits me and then demands I give a fuck afterward. Do you hear me?”
The intensity in his stare stilled her.
She could only nod.
Nico let her hand go.
“Don’t joke,” she hiccupped through tears. “Don’t joke about it. Don’t say what happened like it’s nothing.”
“It’s not a joke. It’s proof why you should get as far away from me as you can. You think this was scary? Wait until the next time my brother tries to murder me—it’s been happening since before I can even remember. Maybe next time he’ll get it right, and all this shit between him and me can finally be over.”
He sounded like him again. Even if he was mean.
“Does Narcan linger for a while, or...?” she asked, shoulders jumping with her catching breaths. “Because it kinda feels like you just said all that to hurt me.”
He pushed the wet hair out of her face and swiped at the tears she couldn’t keep from falling. “Stop fucking crying. I’m not trying to hurt you. I’m trying to make you get it. This shit doesn’t ever end with me.”
“I want to. I don’t want to cry with you—about you. I’m supposed to be in love with you! And what are you trying to make me get?” she asked, throwing his words back in his face while he stared down at hers. “That people you love, who should have loved you, have hurt you so much you find ways to hurt yourself just so you don’t have to think about it? Isn’t that why we’re here?”
Now he hurt. His face said so.
“I’m still here,” Frankie semi-taunted him then. “I still love you. So, what now? What’s next?”
“Frankie—”
She tossed the next thing at him that she needed to get out before it ate her alive.
“What are you more mad about, Nico?” she asked, pushing his hands away from her. “That you can’t remember what you did with me or that you know exactly what we did just by looking at my face? Personally, I can’t decide.”
That broke his façade. She watched it crumble.
This time, she allowed his hands to find her. His fingers curled around her jaw while his palms cupped her throat. His bruising kiss trapped her between the tiled wall and his naked body. She didn’t hesitate to answer his kiss back with the same unbridled adoration and desperate need that he showered upon her.