Page 139 of Made in Love and Blood

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.