Page 221 of Made in Love and Blood

He kissed the top of her head. “You’re not hiding another one, right?”

“Hell no.”

Back in the nursery, Salvatore held his son for the first time gowned and gloved to keep weak immune systems safe. Nico read the baby stat placards on the incubator as the smaller of the two, the girl, made soft sounds in her bed without her brother.

Something like crying. She just couldn’t yet.

GALLO, the placards read, written in black Sharpie. The babies’ middle names had been written first, then their given ones. Except the boy had no middle name.

SJ, 5lbs, 1oz.

Darling, Dove, 3lbs, 1oz.

He was older—by one minute.

Frankie’s head found Nico’s body, and he pulled her against his chest, realizing then that she wore one of his hoodies. He had so many black ones, he probably didn’t even notice one missing. Between them, their son moved from the jostling.

“Can I come back home now?” she asked him softly.

“You didn’t ask Larkin?”

“I’m really sick of being told no.”

He laughed before leaning in to kiss those pouting lips of hers. Yeah, he bet that had been a hard thing for her.

“Yeah, you’re coming home now,” Nico promised, stroking her cheek with his thumb. “And then maybe I can finally sleep.”

Her eyes met his, searching. He let her find it. That hollow spot; scary and dark. She shone through it, his brightest light.

“Are you okay?” she asked him, the longer he stayed quiet.

Nico smiled. “Better.”

Love was not a good enough word to express how he felt for this woman. That’s what she’d become, after all, as she stepped into adulthood, womanhood, and motherhood all at the same time. He’d had a hand in helping along two of those, but she did all the hard work. He couldn’t begin to imagine who Frankie would be ten or twenty years down the line, and how amazing that would undoubtedly look, and he couldn’t wait to find out.

To still be hers while it happened? That was the real gift.

No, love wasn’t a good enough word. But it would have to do.

“I love you, babe.”

“I love you, too.”

Frankie pushed up on her tiptoes in white sneakers to kiss him hard and fast before spinning back around to watch her father calm the unsettled baby girl with a pinky finger. Dove held her daddy, and her daddy held her brother.

“I’m glad, you know.”

“About what?” he asked.

“That they’ll know a happier version of him. A better one.”

“He was happy with you, too.”

He felt her nod against him.

“Yeah,” she whispered, “he never let me see it, the truth, but that hurt him a lot, too.”

28. — epilogue...