Page 40 of Made in Love and Blood

Nico chuckled. “A handful of these girls are also leaving him this year. Someday, there will be another you on that team, and she might even already be a freshman who just watched the person who inspired her to do it. Teamwork makes the dream work, or some shit like that. You’re gonna find that everybody on the team has their own reasons for wanting to win the tournament. And then there’s you.”

“Me,” she echoed.

“You,” Nico murmured softly back. “Already focused in. You love it. Shoot and score. They just gotta get you the ball. That’s the deal. They know the job, trust me.”

She seemed to take a moment to digest what he said, suppressing a smile and avoiding his stare by checking the ground around her car once more. “You know, you’re probably going to make me late for school this morning.”

“First day back?”

“Yeah, and it’s all crap for the last couple of weeks. For me anyway. Like I said, already basically done. Why are you up here, anyway?”

“Eight-thirty sharp. I just do what I’m told.”

Frankie huh’d under her breath, glancing over her shoulder up at the large windows into her father’s study. “Guess he’s got more than one guest today.”

Nico cocked an eyebrow in question.

She rolled her eyes. “Carina came. Her car is in the garage, which is where that bike needs to go if you’re staying longer than a few minutes.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know the rules.”

He put up the kickstand on the bike and started walking it to the garage. Salvatore had been quiet since he came out of the hospital, as far as calling on Nico went, anyway. He figured he shouldn’t make the man wait a second beyond what he asked when he finally did.

She followed carrying a full trash bag.

“So, what’s after?” he asked her.

Frankie shot him a look. “What do you mean?”

“High school.”

“Oh, I’m taking a year. One of three graduation gifts I asked for included my own penthouse in Manhattan. So, maybe an internship, or I start posting my photography stuff. I get time to figure that part out, which I wanted. After that...” Her words trailed off, and she looked up at the house again. “That’s complicated.”

“Uncomplicate it,” he replied.

Frankie used her fob to open one of the garage doors for him. “I thought I wanted to study relations. Maybe people. Maybe be a psychologist. Or something else entirely. People do things, and I want to understand why.”

“Why is that complicated?”

It kind of sounded...human.

“Do you know how many days a year I get to see my father?” she asked.

Nico cleared his throat. “I don’t, no.”

“A good year? Half and half. A normal one, though, please. A third, if that. From eleven to thirteen it really didn’t matter because he took me with him anyway, and Sissy minded me wherever we were.”

“But high school...”

She shrugged, sadness lowering her lashes. “I thought if I said I wanted to feel like a normal teenager for a few years, he’d want to see that happen. I only recently figured out he probably didn’t have a choice being gone so much. I mean I always knew it, I just—”

“Something showed it.”

“Yeah,” Frankie whispered.

He pushed his bike into the garage while she shut the door behind him. Walking the Ducati down to its spot beside his Mercedes and vintage Mustang, cars he still couldn’t drive, Nico left it behind to get back to something more important at hand.

“And let me guess,” he told Frankie who had just opened a trash can to toss the bag inside, “you’re also realizing that trying to figure out what it is you want to be and who you really are is also going to conflict with time spent with your father. Am I right?”