Page 55 of Made in Love and Blood

“I wasn’t going to assume.”

Salvatore laughed darkly. “This is your house, too, as you once screamed at me from the front steps while the neighbors practically took pictures, so you don’t need me to give you permission. Something else you’ve repeatedly told me throughout the course of this marriage whenever you felt the need.”

She ignored everything he said. “Wasn’t the deal that I stayed in the city until grad—”

Her words cut off as a drawer opened noisily.

“I fucking knew it,” she hissed.

“What are you bitching about?”

“And you put them with my keys, you bastard! Let me guess, not even thinking.”

Salvatore regretted his choice to bring Carina back to the estate, and he intended to tell her as much as he headed out of the bathroom. She met him in the doorway with the items in question held high in the air between them. The sight of the keys made him instantly remember where he had put them earlier when they got back from the game, like everything else in his pockets. Including the orange prescription bottle for his Tylenol with codeine.

“What the fuck is this?” she demanded, rattling the mostly empty bottle and the dangling keys. “I knew you were using again. I could tell just by the way I had to look at you in the office that morning for you to get hard.”

She glared, daring him to deny it.

“Carina, a dead man would’ve been hard looking at you that morning. Did you even look at the fucking bottle, or do you just want a reason to scream at me again? Because if all you want is to yell and fuck, let’s get it over with. That’s the best kind with you anyway. We both know we’re not gonna look at one another for at least two more weeks once it’s said and done, but I do not have the energy to fight you about something that doesn’t matter.”

Her lower lip quivered. “Fuck you.”

Salvatore stepped forward, ready to apologize. Carina moved back accordingly.

“Seriously, read the bottle,” Sal urged. “It’s codeine, at a reasonable dose. Over the counter shit was not doing it for these headaches, Carina. I needed to be able to get up and focus on what I had going on lately. I’m almost out of the bottle, and I’m not refilling it.”

Like he had been there for some of her worst years, she too had witnessed things that Salvatore would rather not speak about. To anyone. A pile of shame grew between the two of them, each adding to it over the years. The first time they ever fucked, he’d been high.

So had she. Just not on the same things.

For a time, he couldn’t fuck her sober. That brought him more guilt for entirely different reasons.

“It’s just codeine,” he repeated. “I don’t even get a buzz. Sick, mostly. If I don’t eat something.”

Her laugh came out broken. “Yeah, that’s what ten years of sobriety will do for you. Weak.”

He smirked. “Please notice how I didn’t ask you for your years of sobriety, but you can just name mine right off the top of your head, darling.”

She eyed him, then, through lowered lashes and a semi-pout on her painted lips. “Stop doing that. I know what you’re doing.”

“Are you here or not here?”

“Here.”

Her tongue peeked out to wet the matte, nude liquid lipstick she loved so much. A staple in her everyday routine. Like many other things. No, the two of them had never been properly in love, or rather, they didn’t say it. Lovers, on the other hand...and besides, everything that counted or mattered about Carina, he knew. He just didn’t always like it.

To be fair, neither did she.

“Here with me?” he asked, making her be clear.

Carina nodded quickly.

“Okay, then darling, or babe, it is, all right?”

“Got it,” she whispered.

“How many days?”