The Promise (The 'Burg #5)(73)

Ben didn’t take baths. No way. I didn’t know this as fact from experience, just as I knew it as fact.

Double basin. Two medicine cabinets. Room between the sinks so you’d never get crowded. Full, well-made cabinets underneath. Plenty of space for makeup, toiletries, first aid supplies, ibuprofen—whatever you needed, but far more space than a man would need.

Shelves built into the wall so you could display nice towels, if you wanted. Or put bathroom-style knickknacks, if that was your thing.

It wasn’t Benny’s thing. Towels that could use replacing were shoved in with only a passing try at folding them. Nothing else.

He’d put in that bathroom for the woman he would find to put into that house.

And he’d put in that bathroom with a mind to the buyers who would eventually take that house off his hands when the rest of the bedrooms were filled with babies.

Benny Bianchi didn’t do minute by minute.

Benny Bianchi had it all planned.

I came unstuck and, in a panic, moved out of the shower when I heard Benny say in the bedroom, “Had a word. Ma’s…Frankie?”

I said nothing. I dumped the bottles in the suitcase and they made a thud.

“Babe, she’s gone and she won’t…”

The words were closer and I knew why. I also knew why he trailed off.

Because he was in the doorway.

“Frankie, what the f**k?”

“I gotta go,” I mumbled, bending double, ass in the air, fingers curling around the edge of my suitcase to drag it out of the room.

I felt hands curl around my h*ps and I snapped upright, whirling and tripping when I took two steps back.

My eyes hit Ben’s face and it was no less expressive than always. Concern. Confusion.

“Careful, baby,” he said softly.

“I gotta go,” I replied.

“Something happened,” he noted, his voice still soft. Soft, deep, and easy.

Killing me.

“I gotta go.”

“What happened, honey?”

“I gotta go.”

“What happened, Frankie?”

Everything I was holding together for the last nine days, the last seven years, the last thirty-four, came flying apart. I leaned in and shrieked, “I gotta go, Benny!”

He flinched at my tone but didn’t move, and his voice was no less soft when he said, “Talk to me, tesorina.”

“I can’t do this,” I declared.

“Why?” he asked carefully.

“I don’t wanna lose you.”

More confusion slid through his features. He glanced back into the bedroom, eyes aimed at his bed, then he looked to me.

“How does what we were doin’ translate to you losin’ me?”

I ignored that question and started babbling. “I lost you. I lost Vinnie and I did something stupid and I lost you. I can’t lose you again. Not you. Not Theresa. Not Vinnie Senior. Not Manny. I can’t do this because I can’t lose you.”

“Honey, we’re not goin’ anywhere.”

“You could,” I returned.

“We’re not,” he shot back.

“You could, though,” I snapped. “This could go bad.” I lifted a hand and jerked it back and forth with agitation, indicating him and me. “This could go bad and I’d lose you all again.”

“It’s not gonna go bad, Frankie.”

“Promise?”

It wasn’t a plea.

It was a dare.

And Benny was too good. Too honest. Too decent. Too awesome to make a promise he couldn’t keep.

But he was also too Benny, so he was gentle and cautious when he replied slowly, “I can’t tell the future, baby.”

I shook my head in short frantic shakes. “No. You can’t. I can’t either. And I can’t take the risk. I got shot and that was good. It was good, Benny,” I repeated when his face grew dark. “It brought all of you back to me. And I know what you want. It burns, it kills, because I like what you want. I want to give it to you. I want to have it for me. But I can’t risk losing more. We have to go back to the way we were before. You can’t promise me this won’t go bad, but you can promise me we can keep that kind of good.”

“The way we were before?” he asked.

“You, me, friends, family.”

I felt it slice clean into my heart, the new look on his face when he whispered, “You wanna be friends?”

But I didn’t delay in whispering back, this time definitely a plea, “Please give me that, Benny.”

He studied me for a moment, his expression beyond unhappy, and I let him, my chest rising and falling rapidly, my bleeding heart still finding a way to beat hard.

Then he said, “There’s somethin’ not right here, Frankie, and we gotta get to the bottom of that.”

He was right.

And that was not happening.

“Benny—” I started, but he cut me off.

“If you can’t do that yourself, you gotta let me in there so I can dig whatever is eatin’ at you out of you, baby.”

“I’m falling in love with you.”

Everything went still.

Silent and still.

Benny. Me. The air around us.

Dead still.