The Promise

Chapter Eight You Grew Up

I felt arms tighten on me and the haze of sleep lifted, slightly.

When it did, I felt a whole lot more, and that whole lot more consisted of my body pressed snug against the hard frame of Benny’s, the warmth of our cocoon of covers, and the safety both created.

It was a strange feeling.

But I liked it.

I tilted my head back, opening my eyes, and I saw Benny.

Half asleep, my belly still did a dip.

“Hey,” he whispered, his voice deep, easy, and gruff, and right on the heels of the last one, my belly did another dip.

“Hey,” I replied.

“How you feelin’?” he asked.

Groggily, I did a mental scan and found that either Benny’s bed with his body in it was a miracle elixir, or the lateness with which I took the pill meant it hadn’t worn off yet, because I felt awesome.

“Good,” I answered.

“Good,” he murmured, and I tensed when he lifted his head and buried his face in my neck.

The tenseness lasted a millisecond before I felt his lips at my neck and my body melted into his, even as my hands slid from his chest, one pushing under his body, which he shifted to accommodate me so I could wrap both my arms around him.

“Gonna get up.” His voice rumbled against my skin.

“I’m gonna snooze,” I replied.

“Mm.” The soft noise he made rolled along my neck, causing a shiver to glide down my spine and my hands to move along the intriguing ridges and flats of his back.

His mouth glided up my neck and I felt his tongue touch the hinge of my jaw.

I closed my eyes and dipped my hands lower, going under his tee and shifting up so I could feel those ridges and flats, skin against skin.

That was better, by a whole lot. His skin was warm and soft, the ridges and flats fascinating.

When my touch came unhindered, one of Benny’s hands slid to my ass and cupped it.

I pressed my lips together to suppress my own “mm.”

Even so, his mouth came to my ear and he whispered, “Like your touch, baby, but like it too much. This’s gotta end now.”

I felt disappointment slide through me as his hand gave my ass a squeeze before it drifted up to the hollow of my back and he lifted his head away from my ear. I opened my eyes and his caught mine.

“Doctor gives the go-ahead, we’re all over that,” he told me quietly. “He doesn’t, we’ll wait. Findin’ the wait’s worth it, so know when we get there, it’ll still be worth it.”

Still sleepy and slightly turned on, my hands encountering Benny’s skin for the first time, I didn’t have it in me not to blurt out, “You’re even awesome in the morning.”

He grinned, his eyes warm, sexy, and full of promise when he said, “I’m awesome all the time, babe.”

At his arrogance, I kept all the goodness of the last three minutes but still narrowed my eyes at him.

“Seriously?” I asked.

“Fuck yeah,” he answered, still grinning.

Before I could retort, he dipped his head, touched his mouth to mine, and pulled back.

“You snooze. I’m gonna hop in the shower. You’re not up, I’ll wake you when you gotta start getting ready.”

After delivering that, he gave me another mouth touch, let me go, and rolled out of bed.

But as he did all that, I thought there was no way I would be able to snooze with a naked Benny in the shower just a room away.

Still, I snuggled up under the covers. Cautiously curling my knees closer to my belly and still feeling no pain, I settled in, closed my eyes, and listened for the shower.

I felt a slow smile spread on my lips when it came.

The smile died when my mind moved to other thoughts.

I had not woken in a man’s arms in over seven years and the last man’s arms I woke in were Vinnie’s.

Vinnie, like Benny, was a cuddler, even in sleep. He liked contact. He showed affection whenever he could—awake, asleep, physically, verbally, even going so far as to let me know he was thinking of me when he was going about his day. I knew this when I’d come home to flowers. Or a little sweet nothing gift. Or even a card that had a hokey love message. Vinnie would write in the card, making fun of it, but we both knew he meant those words and that’s what made it sweet.

When he started to work for Sal, when he became whatever it was they were before they became a made man, those little gestures started dwindling. Not the physical affection. The verbal affection, the gifts, and the cards.

Apparently, a wise guy in training (and definitely those out of it) didn’t do sweet things for his woman. Apparently, a wise guy showed no weakness, even for his woman. Apparently, a wise guy considered doing thoughtful things for the woman he loved a weakness, when the woman he loved thought it was the opposite.

Knowing he had that in him, guessing why he took it away from me, the crack that had formed in our relationship when I tried to talk him out of approaching his father about franchising (and he didn’t listen)…

The crack that cut deeper each time he did something reckless that I tried to explain was just that (and he didn’t listen)…

The crack that split between us further when he took up with Sal…

It tore us apart.

I just wouldn’t admit to it or give up.

I knew that now, forced to come to terms with it in Vinnie’s brother’s bed.

And lying in that bed after having a hint of Benny Bianchi’s good morning for the first time, a hint that was sweet and sexy, a hint that I knew could only get bigger and better, the thing that hit me was that it wouldn’t matter whose bed I was in. I would think back to what I’d had and how it went bad. I would make the comparisons. Unless I continued to live my life as I was the seven years before I was shot, which I didn’t intend to do, I would find a man and as I adjusted to a new person in my life, those thoughts were bound to drift through my head. In order to get healthy mentally and get on with my life, I would eventually have to come to terms with it.

Vinnie was dead. I was alive. He made his choices, I talked to him (and yelled at him) until I was blue in the face to try to get him to make different ones.

He didn’t.

Now he was gone.

But I was not.

And now I was moving on and, in doing so, finding another man.

That man just happened to be his brother.

That was it. That was where life led me. If I let it and quit fighting it, it could be as simple as that.

For Benny, it was that simple.

And for Benny, I could find my way to making it that simple.

On that thought, my eyes drifted closed as the sounds of the shower came from the next room.

By the time the water went off, I was snoozing.

***

I sat next to Ben as he did the parallel parking thing in front of my apartment complex.

I did this pressing my lips together, and I was pressing my lips together because I was also watching Manny and a woman get out of a red Chevy Tahoe in front of us.

It was after my doctor’s appointment where the doc pronounced my improvement “gratifying” and reiterated what he’d told me in the hospital: that the stitches inside were “absorbable” and would dissolve on their own, and the “glue” on the outside was used for cosmetic purposes so my scarring would hopefully be minimal. He then ordered me to titrate the pain meds by only taking them if I really needed them and gave me the go-ahead for “slightly more strenuous activity and light exercise.”

I didn’t have the guts to ask if this included sexual intercourse because I was trying not to think of having sex with Benny.

I wanted it. That was without a doubt.

But I’d had one lover and that lover shared things with Benny, so he knew things about me. Therefore, if I let my mind go there, I’d probably freak out. So I didn’t let my mind go there.

Now we were at my apartment to get my Z and I had another obstacle to face, and that was Manny, the last member of the Bianchi family who spent the last seven years firmly in the camp of Not My Biggest Fan. Unlike Benny (who had reason, considering what I did when I threw myself at him) and Theresa (who I could get, her not wanting to have bad thoughts about her son), Manny wasn’t ugly about it. He’d just cut me out of his life.

I’d been tight with him—not like with Ben, but we were close—and like losing all the Bianchis, that hurt.

Carmella, their sister, didn’t do any of that. She was the second oldest and she’d started her grown-up life early, getting married and popping out kids. Doing this, and being a girl, she matured a lot quicker. She saw how things were with Vinnie Junior and she was the first one to phone him and tell him, if he cast his lot with Sal, she’d put up with him when she came home, but outside of that, he was dead to her.

Then he cast his lot with Sal and he was dead to her.

She never blamed me. She knew what it was. So I never lost her.

It wasn’t like we chatted on the phone daily. But, then again, we didn’t do that shit when Vinnie was alive. But she sent me Christmas and birthday cards, the occasional email update, and I did the same with her.

I knew by the sheepish, hesitant look on Manny’s face as he peered into Benny’s SUV, that he wasn’t looking forward to facing me.

It turned out not to be too hard to let any of the Bianchis off the hook. The thing was, it just kept bringing it back when I was already struggling to move on.

Benny parked and I managed to hop out on my own, even in a pair of high-heeled, platform pumps. I tugged my jacket tighter around me, seeing as we’d hit October, and just that morning, Indian summer said sayonara.

Benny met me on the sidewalk and took my hand in a firm grip as he moved us toward Manny and his woman.

I decided to get it over with quickly and called, “Hey,” on a big smile when we were ten feet away.

Manny blinked in surprise and I saw his woman’s head twitch.

This made me focus on her.

When I did, I noted she was pretty and petite, not a surprise with Manny. He liked them small but rounded, always did. She had dark hair that had a lot of curl, pretty blue eyes, and was wearing much the same as me in a way that told me it wasn’t her normal uniform—platform heels, jacket, sweater, and jeans.

I also saw she seemed tense and I liked that. Not because she was tense, but because she obviously knew what was going down and, equally obviously, was anxious for her man.

In other words, I had to let her off the hook too.

So when we got close, I tugged my hand from Benny’s, moved right in, and gave Manny a hug.

It took him a second, but then his arms closed around me loosely.

They felt good there and there it was. It was done. Standing in Manny’s arms, I was officially back in the fold of the Bianchi family.

This made my voice husky when I said in his ear, “Thanks for gettin’ my car from Hart’s.” Then I gave him a squeeze, leaned back, and gave him a big smile.

He stared at me a second, surprise in his dark eyes, before he said quietly, “No problem, Frankie. Glad I could do somethin’.”

I kept smiling at him as I pulled away and shoved a hand toward his woman. “Hey, I’m Frankie.”

“Uh, Sela,” she replied, taking my hand, her eyes darting between Manny and me. I knew she didn’t want to be rude by not looking at me, but she wanted to take the pulse of her guy.

Yes, I liked her.

To afford her that opportunity, I quickly said, “Nice to meet you,” aiming my smile her way. Then I gave her hand a squeeze, let it go, and looked up to Ben.

“Can we go up real quick so I can grab my laptop and some other shit?”

He was smiling down at me, his eyes warm and happy, his approval of how I’d handled that clear on his face, and his lips moved to say, “Anything you want, honey.”

I shot him a grin, then looked around the group. “We get this done, maybe we can all go to lunch.”

Manny grinned slowly at me. Sela stared at me and shifted closer to Manny.

Benny slid an arm around my shoulders and tucked me tight to his side, muttering, “Sounds like a plan.”

“Right, I’m hungry, let’s go,” I said, moving toward the building, wrapping an arm around Benny, and taking him with me.

I got two steps in before Manny rounded us at the back and stopped us by grabbing my hand.

I looked to him.

He spoke.

“I gotta say—”

“Don’t,” I whispered, curling my fingers tight around his. “Don’t. It’s over. Over for everybody. Just let it be over, Manny. Yeah?”

He held my gaze as his hand squeezed mine hard before he said, “Yeah, Frankie.”

I gave him another smile. He gave me one and let me go.

Benny moved me to the building.

I’d punched in the security code to open the door. We were in the lobby and he kept walking me to the elevators, but he did it dipping his head so he had my ear.

“You know you’re the shit, right?” he said there.

My chest warmed, my lips curled up, and I pulled my head back so he would lift his. When he did I caught his eyes. “Fuck yeah.”

He pulled me closer and did it laughing.

***

“Fuck it,” I muttered, leaning forward and putting my laptop on Benny’s coffee table.

I heaved myself out of his couch and moved through the house. Destination: garage, where Benny was working on my Z.

Obviously, we collected the Z. We also had a quick bite with Manny and Sela. Man, like his brother, didn’t waste the opportunity my quick forgiveness afforded him. He slid back into the Manny of old, teasing, giving me shit, making a lot of jokes, and generally acting like the annoying little brother you adored for reasons that made no sense, mostly because you adored him because he was annoying.

Sela thawed when she saw I wasn’t going to bust Manny’s chops, not even in a passive-aggressive way, and I was surprised to find she was sweet, kind of in the way Connie was sweet. Apparently, unlike his brother, Manny didn’t want a challenge. He wanted a woman to come there when she was told. Watching them together, I was glad he found what he wanted and a good one at that.

On my way to the garage, I ignored my jacket that I’d slung on the back of one of Benny’s kitchen table chairs. I was thinking I wouldn’t be out in the chill too long, thus I wouldn’t need one. So I walked out, down the stoop and the cement pathway, and I hit the garage. I opened the side door and heard the music, though I’d heard it before I even opened the door. Metallica’s “Wherever I May Roam.”

Another urge to smile hit me. There wasn’t a lot of music I didn’t like, but there was no denying I was a metal girl down to my soul. Ben was all about metal too. I knew this from high school. I’d liked it since then, and right at that moment, I liked the idea that if it happened for us, if this worked, there would probably not be a time when we’d fight about what was playing on the stereo.

I moved between his SUV and my Z, which was backed into the garage, and found him under the hood.

There were things a man could do that were normal things to him that he would have no idea would give a private happy flutter to girls like me.

Working under the hood of a car was one of them.

I controlled the flutter and called, “Hey.”

He lifted up from what he was doing and rested his forearms on the filthy blanket he had draped over the side of the car. His hands were greasy, he held some tool in one of them, he turned his eyes to me, and the flutter became harder to control.

“You need a jacket,” was his greeting.

“I’m not gonna be out here that long,” I shared.

“You need a jacket,” he repeated.

Suddenly, the flutter became a whole lot easier to control.

“Or I wasn’t gonna be out here that long. Since you obviously need to make a point Benny-style, I might be out here a year.”

His eyes smiled as his mouth muttered, “Benny-style.”

I amused him.

That made me happy and mildly ticked—a contradiction of emotions that I was finding Benny was skilled at evoking.

“I will point out you’re in a t-shirt,” I stated for reasons that were beyond me, since it was chilly and I didn’t need to start squabbling with Benny. That’d mean I’d be out there a lot longer than I expected, which would make him right about me needing a jacket.

“I’m a guy.”

At his words, I blinked, then stared, forgetting about getting to the point, mostly because he was annoying, and when he was, I had all the time in the world to squabble.

“A woman needs a jacket, but a guy is immune to cold?” I asked.

“No. My woman needs a jacket ’cause I don’t want her uncomfortable or to catch a cold. I don’t give a shit about other women. They can run around when it’s fifty degrees and do it naked for all I care. But you need a jacket.”

“There you go, making protective annoying again.”

His lips quirked. “Told you it was a gift.”

I lifted my brows. “Do you think if I threw down a challenge and the person who fails to get in the last word loses, we’d be out here an eternity?”

“Probably.”

“Let’s not do that,” I suggested.

“I’d be up for it, if you went in and put on a jacket.”

Now I wasn’t happy, I was just ticked.

That was why I tipped my head back to look at the garage door rolled up on the rail and cried, “Arrrr!”

“Babe,” he called.

I looked back to him.

“Let’s get to the part about why you’re out here,” he suggested.

I took in a deep breath and asked, “You need a drink or something?”

He grinned and answered, “Nope.”

I nodded. Offer to do something nice for him while he was doing something nice for me extended and declined. Now it was time to move on to why I was really out there.

“Your Wi-Fi password isn’t working.”

He looked perplexed for a second before he asked, “What?”

“Your Wi-Fi password isn’t working. I’m trying to get my laptop connected so I can check my email. The password you gave me to do that isn’t working.”

“You type it in right?”

“Seein’ as I typed it in forty-five thousand times, I’m guessin’ one of those times I got it right.”

“Forty-five thousand?” he asked, eyebrows going up right along with the tips of his lips. “I been out here for twenty minutes, babe. You must type fast.”

I rolled my eyes before rolling them back to him and saying, “Ben, if I can get on my email, I can sort some shit out, do some work, get back into the swing of things, feel like my life is back in my control. I can do that on my phone, but it’d be a whole lot easier on my laptop. It’d help out if you could scan your brain to let me know if you gave me the correct password.”

“Honestly, I have no clue,” he replied. “Only got Internet for the TVs and set that up at least a year ago. But the password I gave you is what I remember the password to the router bein’.”

Since his password was 13579000BB, although this would be hard to forget, and although I put in one less 0, two more 0s, and left out the 0s altogether, something was not right.

“Did you write it down somewhere?” I asked.

“Yep,” he answered.

“Where?”

“No clue about that either,” he said on a grin.

I looked down to my car, then back to him, beginning to feel the chill seep through my thin sweater. I needed to get this done before I shivered noticeably, giving Ben the opportunity to pounce right on that, something to be avoided.

“Okay, well, you’re already doin’ somethin’ for me so I’ll just ask when you’re done, you do somethin’ else for me and find wherever you wrote down that password?”

“Sure.”

“Thanks,” I muttered, making a move to leave.

“Babe?” he called, and I looked back at him.

“What?”

“Come here,” he ordered, still leaning into his arms on the side of my car.

“What, Ben?”

“Come here.”

“As you yourself pointed out, it’s cold. So just tell me…what?”

“Come here.”

I screwed up my eyes. “Seriously?”

He grinned.

“What, Ben?” I asked.

“Francesca, come…here.”

“Oh, all right,” I snapped and stomped around the car, stopping close. “What?” I asked shortly when I got there.

“Come here,” he repeated, having not moved anything but his neck in order to be able to look up at me.

“I am here, Ben,” I pointed out.

“No, baby, you aren’t. You’re there and the here I want before you go back into the house is for you to be here so you can give me your mouth.”

That caused a flutter along with a dip and my chest warming all at once.

But I was me so it was full of attitude when I leaned into him and pressed my mouth to his.

I intended only a lip brush, but without him even moving his hands, he kept me there by touching his tongue to my lips. Naturally, the promise of that was too much not to go after, so my lips opened and his tongue swept inside. I liked that so much my body reacted and I had to put my hand to his side to steady myself.

He released my mouth and said softly, “I’ll finish up here soon and find your password.”

“Thanks, honey,” I whispered, his kiss—the way he demanded it, the way he took it, leaning casually into my car but still managing to be all about me, something I thought was hot—causing all my attitude to leak out of me.

I was still close so I only saw his eyes smile. Therefore, it was likely he only saw mine smile too.

I lifted away and Ben turned back to my car.

I walked to the house thinking that I’d spent weeks freaking out about this, the idea of Ben and me. Torturing myself about it. Wanting it and finding every excuse not to give it to myself.

But having it—the ease of it, the naturalness of it, the excitement of it—now I was wondering why.

***

I stood in the hall of Benny’s house, watching him in the dining room and feeling him in the dining room.

It was the feel of him that had me rooted to the spot.

And the weird part of that was that the feel of him was calm, quiet.

Benny.

He’d come in from the garage forty-five minutes earlier, washed his hands, and went directly in search of wherever he wrote down the password.

This began the deep state of shock I was currently experiencing.

This was because it had been at least an hour after I’d gone out to the garage to ask for it. Yet he came back, remembered, and started looking right away without me even raising my eyebrows to give him a hint there was something I’d asked him to do and wanted him to do it.

Then he couldn’t find it.

It wasn’t anywhere in his “office,” not the desk, not in the mess of papers shoved what appeared to be randomly in an expanding file, not even in the piles that were definitely randomly piled against one wall.

He then went to the kitchen where he had not one but three drawers that were shoved full of junk that included bits of paper, stubs of bills, even envelopes that should have been thrown out.

It wasn’t there either.

Now he was sorting through the shit in the dining room to find it, so much of it that it might take a year to go through all of it.

I had offered to help, but he told me he remembered what it looked like and I probably wouldn’t be able to spot it, even if I had it in my hand.

And I was in a deep state of shock because Benny was a Bianchi. I’d known him for years and this was not him. This was not any of the Bianchis. Not even Theresa.

The reason why it wasn’t was because he was not pissed. He wasn’t even acting annoyed, frustrated, or the slightest bit impatient.

He’d been searching for a slip of paper with a bunch of digits written on it for forty-five minutes. A slip of paper he, personally, didn’t give a shit about. It was a slip of paper that would help me. He probably wouldn’t need to use it unless his router got screwed up which, if it hadn’t after a year and he used it only for his TV, it probably wouldn’t.

I expected him to give up, tell me to suck it up and use my phone or haul my ass to an Internet café. I even expected him to blow, taking the frustration of his seriously lacking filing system out on me.

He didn’t do either.

He just kept looking.

I could not process this.

I couldn’t because Vinnie Junior would have looked for fifteen minutes and given up. He’d be apologetic, but he’d move on and it would be me that would search for whatever was needed.

Vinnie Senior would tell Theresa to look for it, even if she didn’t know what she was looking for. But while she was looking, she’d keep asking him if this was it or that was it, which would force him to start looking. And then he’d finally blow his stack, not at anyone, but it would blow all the same, because he hadn’t put an important piece of information in a place he could find it.

And seven years ago, Ben was like his father.

Now he was not.

“Fuck, here it is.” I heard him mutter, and my focus went to him in the dining room.

He was moving to me with a piece of paper in his hand. He got to me, handed it to me, and immediately wrapped his hand around the side of my neck, bending in to kiss me as I stood completely motionless, still in shock.

He kissed the top of my head, let me go, and said as he moved to the stairs, “Check that, honey. I gotta get my shit sorted and get to the restaurant but wanna make sure you’re covered before I go.” I pivoted so I was standing facing the stairs. I saw him stop five up and look down at me. “If it’s still fucked up, I’ll go over to Tony’s. I can see his system on mine and he’ll probably be cool with you tappin’ into that.”

I felt my lips part.

Ben turned and jogged up the rest of the stairs.

I stared up the stairs, looked down at the paper in my hand, then back up the stairs.

He was late.

He looked for that piece of paper and he did it until he was late.

He also didn’t really have to look for it for me if neighbor Tony would let me use his Wi-Fi.

But he did it.

Patiently.

For me.

I didn’t know what to do with this and I knew why.

It wasn’t just Vinnie Junior. It wasn’t Vinnie Senior. It wasn’t about how Benny used to be.

It was my dad, who could be mellow but who could also have a short fuse. He never would have spent forty-five minutes looking for something, even if it was important, even if it was my dad who lost it.

If he couldn’t find it in five minutes, he’d shout, “You need it, find it your-fuckin’-self,” and stalk away.

And I knew this because, needless to say, in the way he lived his life, there were a lot of important things that were lost. He had kids and a lot of women who needed those important things, asked for them, he couldn’t find them, and he lost his mind because he lived his life the way he did and he didn’t want anything dragging on it.

Like keeping track of important things.

Like his women and kids.

Thinking on my dad and the way he used to be (and probably still was), Benny’s behavior was so difficult to process, I was standing where he left me when he came back down the stairs. Of course, it appeared he only changed from his grease-stained tee to a new one, which probably took him about two minutes, but still.

Seeing as I hadn’t moved, when Ben made it to me, his expression was set firm at concerned.

He lifted a hand, again curled it around the side of my neck, and he asked, “Babe, you okay?”

I looked right into his eyes and stated, “You searched forty-five minutes to find a password for me, makin’ yourself late, doin’ that shit for me.”

A new expression moved over his face and his fingers dug in lightly when he replied, “I see I scored with that, so it’s a hit to share that I did it so you can get on your laptop, but I also did it ’cause it’d suck the router went down or some shit, and I’d need it to get my TVs back online and didn’t know the password. So I also did it for me.”

He gave that to me straight-up honestly, not milking something he did for himself to score a point with me.

Yet another expression shifted over his features as he watched whatever expression shift over mine before he murmured, “See I scored with that too.”

“You grew up, Benny Bianchi,” I whispered, and that was when soft and sweet took over his expression, even as his hand at my neck pulled me closer.

“Way you made things easy on Manny today, more proof added to a pile you’ve been givin’ me that you did too, Frankie Concetti,” he whispered back.

“Yeah, but I like the way you did it.”

At that, he gave me surprised satisfaction before his eyes went dark in a way that made my heart race. His hand at my neck pulled me even closer, this time while his head bent to mine.

Then he kissed me. Not a sweep of the tongue, not a hot make out session where I ended up pressed to a wall. But it was deep, it was wet, it was long, and it was amazing.

He lifted his head and looked into my eyes. “Would kill to take that further, but I gotta get to work.”

Yes.

He grew up.

And I liked the way he did.

“You got someone comin’ to keep you company?” he asked.

“Yeah. My girl, Jamie.”

“Good. You two need dinner, call my cell. I’ll send one of the kids with a pie or some rigatoni casserole or whatever.”

The Bianchi rigatoni casserole. Second best to a Bianchi pizza pie, and there were some who (wrongly) would argue it was better.

Jamie needed some of that.

So did I.

“Thanks, Ben,” I whispered.

“Anytime, baby,” he whispered back.

It was me who went up to my toes to touch my mouth to his.

When I rocked back to my heels, he was grinning.

I returned it.

He took that in, his eyes dropping to my mouth to do it, before they came back to mine and he remarked, “I take it you didn’t test the password.”

I shook my head.

His hand swayed me slightly toward the living room when he ordered, “Get on that, honey. I gotta go, but if I gotta talk to Tony, I gotta go.”

“Right,” I murmured and broke from his hold to go to the living room.

The password written on the paper was one digit off the one Benny gave to me. It didn’t end in BB but in BAB, all of his initials. Benito Alessandro Bianchi.

And it worked.

***

I felt arms tighten around me and the haze of sleep lifted, slightly.

When it did, I felt a whole lot more, that being Benny’s body shifting into mine as he shifted mine to his.

I tilted my head back, opening my eyes, and through the dark I saw Benny.

Half asleep, my belly still did a dip.

“Go back to sleep, baby,” he whispered.

“The night good?” I muttered sleepily.

“The usual insane. Now it’s over. Go back to sleep.”

“Thanks for sending the casserole. Jamie loved it,” I told him, my voice fading.

“You need food anytime, I’ll feed you. Now go back to sleep, honey.”

I dipped my chin, pressed my face into his throat, and mumbled, “Okay, Benny.”

He gave me a squeeze.

I moved to drape an arm over his waist and I gave him one back.

Then I did as told and went back to sleep.