His focus got weirdly acute and his voice got weirdly cautious when he asked, “When’s the last time you Frankie-style freaked like that?”

“I do it all the time,” I told him. “You know that.”

“No, babe. When’s the last time you Frankie-style freaked, doin’ it and hurting people?”

I shut my mouth and thought about it.

“When, Frankie?” he pushed.

I opened my mouth. “I…I guess I don’t know.”

“Was there ever a time?” he asked.

Was there?

I thought about that too.

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“Why’d you say that, then?”

Why did I?

Oh my God.

I stared into his eyes and whispered, “I don’t know.”

“Yeah,” he whispered back.

“You’re the only family I ever had, Benny,” I said, still whispering. “The only good one. The only real one. I lost you once. All of you. I just…panicked. And it was panic, honey. I wasn’t freaking. I was freaking and I was freaked.”

“Saw that,” he told me. “Even f**kin’ felt it.”

“Oh God,” I breathed. “I’m so sorry.”

“I am too, but not sorry about seein’ it or feelin’ it. Sorry that you wouldn’t even try to get a handle on it so I could see if I could get you through it.”

To that, I said nothing.

Benny did.

“That comes up again, Frankie, need you to plant it somewhere where it’ll grow, where you can get to it so you can find your way to gettin’ a handle on it, at least so I can see to you.”

“What if I can’t do that?” I asked hesitantly.

“I don’t know, cara. That’s why you gotta do what you gotta do to plant that deep.”

I decided to visualize, meditate, get crystals and talismans—whatever I had to do to plant that deep so I didn’t f**k us up again. Not to mention so I didn’t feel that panic again because it was not fun. And last, so I didn’t make Benny feel it.

His thumb gliding over my lips took me out of my thoughts, and I focused on him again just as he said gently, “You know, you’re not your ma.”

I closed my eyes.

“Babe, even before you hooked up with Vinnie, it was like you weren’t part of that family,” he continued. “Everyone said it.”

I opened my eyes.

“Enzo Junior’s the shit because the man is funny,” Ben told me. “He can hold his drink. He’s got a sixth sense when it comes to locating fine tail. And he’d drop everything if you needed him to have your back. But I know one of the things he’d drop is his woman, even if she was in the middle of her own shit, doin’ that so he could take his brother’s back. He’s a player. He’s in his late twenties and still says stupid shit when he sees a fat girl, which makes him a dick. And he’s the best of that crew you call family.”

“There’s Dino,” I told him.

“Dino’s an anomaly, proof that you weren’t switched at the hospital ’cause he shares your blood and he’s a good guy. But he’s a good guy because he got outta the mess you were bounced around in growin’ up. You’re you because of a miracle.”

His words made my breath catch as I stared into his eyes. “You think that?”

“Fuck yeah,” he replied. “Word is, Nat’s back with Davey, and she’s since hooked up with two other guys who are not Davey, he just doesn’t know about them yet. She’s also lost her job and found another since we last saw her, and the word about that is, she’s dancing.”

Oh f**k. That wasn’t good. That meant Nat, money, a lot of men, and not very many clothes.

Poor Davey.

“Cat has dropped off the face of the earth, which could mean anything,” Ben carried on. “Your ma, I don’t know and I don’t care. And in the time I was with you after you got out of the hospital, and our time earlier on this couch catchin’ up, you didn’t say a word about your dad and he lives fifteen f**kin’ minutes away. You f**ked me over and sent me cookies. You make meetings on time and think about how to make an employee respect you. Your outfit today, babe…sexy, way too f**kin’ sexy…but admittedly, it was also don’t-fuck-with-me business. Sounds of it, you live in an upscale apartment building. You travel for your work in a way that they put you up in fancy hotels. Your future includes raises, promotions, the possibility of gettin’ a dog—but only the kind I want—and findin’ some way to do all that and circle back to a life with me. You are not them. You are nothin’ like them. You grew up f**ked and you still grew up smart, strong, capable, funny, and loving. So yeah. Fuck yeah. That’s a miracle.”

That was all too much, too beautiful, I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t even believe it.

I certainly couldn’t comment on it.

But my voice was husky when I asked, “What kind of dog do you want?”

He gave me that play, but he did it with his eyes gentling, along with his voice, showing me he knew I needed to make it when he said, “Kid friendly.”

Kid friendly.

God, he was killing me.

“A pug?” I asked, and the gentle look vanished.

“No f**kin’ way.”

“They’re cute, sweet, snorty, and friendly.”

“Any dog that is even partially a permanent fixture in my life has to be at least five times bigger than a cat, and when I say that, I mean a big cat.”

“That’s the only rule?”

“That, and it has to be a Labrador, a golden retriever, a German shepherd, a boxer, or a bulldog.”

My heart thumped with joy in my chest as my lips said, “Oh my God, Benny, we need a bulldog named Churchill.”

I got the gentle look back and it came directly on the heels of the word “we,” but I couldn’t wallow in it because he stated, “We are not namin’ a bulldog Churchill. We get a bulldog, he’s named Gus.”

I screwed up my face. “That’s a boring name.”

He ignored that. “Lab, Charlie. Golden, Honey. Shepherd, Attila. Boxer, Bruno.”

Jeez, he had it all figured out.

“Those are all boring names, Benny,” I decreed, though Attila was kind of cool.

“You pick the dog, I pick the name,” he offered.

I shook my head. “No, you pick the dog, I pick the name.”