I watched his face set to firm before he said, “Sauce cooks for-fuckin’-ever and is in no danger of burnin’. But I wouldn’t give a shit if it burned. You got somethin’ on your mind, you talk to me and I’ll listen, even if it takes five hours. I can make more sauce.”

God.

Benny.

“What I’m sayin’ is” —I kept at it, thinking it imperative he heed my warning— “I’m about drama. That’s me and you need to know that. I tried to talk myself out of comin’ here. I knew you’d be working and it wasn’t cool that I interrupted you. That lasted about thirty seconds. Something’s bugging me, I’ll suck you in just to rant about what’s buggin’ me, but mostly, I’ll lay it on you because I want you to fix it for me.”

“Right then, Frankie, maybe it’d be good if you get to the rantin’ part so I can get to the part where I fix it for you.”

God.

Benny.

“This isn’t going to be ranting, per se, just so you know,” I clarified. “This is just gonna be freaking. Ranting is bad, but in some cases, Frankie-style freaking is worse.”

“Babe,” he said slowly, his voice getting lower, his own warning. “Talk to me.”

“I just got off the phone with my new employer,” I declared.

His body tightened and his eyes focused intently on mine.

He knew what was freaking me.

“They’ve given me until tomorrow to give them a definitive start date.”

I watched his chest expand with the deep breath he pulled in, then he erased the short distance we had between us, getting in my space and doing it more by lifting his hands to curl them around either side of my neck.

He dipped his head so his face was closer to mine and he said quietly, “Okay, baby. This isn’t a surprise. We knew this was coming. They weren’t gonna wait forever. Now they’re done waiting.”

I nodded.

They certainly were. They weren’t assholes about it, but they’d gone through a hiring process and those cost some cake. I was supposed to be in my new office in Indianapolis on Monday. They knew I wouldn’t be there then, but no one could put up with an indefinite delay. I’d been understandably cagey about my new start date because I’d never been shot or known anyone who had (who survived it). I had no clue how long it would take for me to get back to good, or good enough, to start a new job after moving to a different state.

The doctor had given me guidance on that but did so with the warning that I hadn’t only sustained a GSW, which was extreme enough, but the circumstances around that were also extreme. So I not only needed time for my body to heal, I also needed to sort out my head.

Thus, the cageyness, because I knew that I didn’t only have all that to deal with, but also the Bianchis.

Now was now. I was getting around better, the pain was fading, and all was well with the Bianchis, primarily the most important one who was right then standing in my space, his hands on me.

It was well, as in it was awesome, and I could do minute by minute when I was experiencing awesome.

But when something big was encroaching on that awesome, I couldn’t deal.

“I’m like this,” I whispered after these thoughts coursed through my brain.

“What?” Ben asked.

“Sometimes I can’t deal,” I admitted. “I’ve been looking out for myself for a long time, a really long time, longer than losing Vinnie, and I’m good at it. But that doesn’t mean sometimes I can’t deal.”

“Frankie, honey, there are times when anyone can’t deal.”

This confused me because Benny was “anyone,” and from my experience of late (not to mention even before), I’d not known a time when he couldn’t deal.

So I asked, “When are the times you can’t deal?”

His mouth stayed closed but his jaw flexed.

I watched it, knew that meant he could always deal, and whispered, “Right.”

“Okay, how ’bout this?” he started. “When my brother pisses away his life and hurts the people I love most in the world, I can’t deal, as evidenced by the fact that I blamed that shit on a good woman and did it in an ugly way that lasted seven years.”

Oh, right. Well, there was that time Benny couldn’t deal.

“That was a doozy,” I murmured, and he grinned.

“Yeah. So there are times when anyone can’t deal.”

I nodded again, feeling slightly better.

Benny spoke again and I felt not-so-slightly worse.

“You give up the lease on your apartment?”

I again nodded.

“Got a place down in Indy?” he went on.

“The company was putting me up in an executive apartment for October, which is still part of my offer. But yes, I went down and scouted a place and my apartment will be open on November first. The movers are all sorted to come, get my stuff, and bring it down the first weekend in November. ”

“Right,” he muttered, his fingers digging lightly into my neck.

He didn’t like this.

I didn’t like this.

I just knew minute by minute wasn’t going to work.

“Ben,” I said, his name coming out shaky.

His face got a smidgen closer so that he was the only thing I could see.

“You gotta go, baby. You got a job. You got a contract with that lease. You got responsibilities. You gotta go.”

I pressed my lips together, feeling the sting in my eyes, the tightness gathering around my heart, because he was right and I didn’t know what that meant for us.

I tried us on and we fit. You tried something on that fit and felt great, you bought it. You did not put it back on the rack and move on.

“But Indianapolis isn’t the moon,” Benny continued. “It’s four hours away. We got phones. We got cars. We got somethin’ worth workin’ on, gettin’ past difficult shit, findin’ a way. You feel up to it, you give them a start date. I’ll take time off, follow you down so you have your car, and I’ll have what’s bound to be your fifteen suitcases in my SUV.”

That made me smile, but my smile, too, was shaky.

Benny carried on, “I’ll stay with you a couple of days, make sure you’re settled, arrange things to come down again when your furniture gets there, help you move in.”

I licked my lips and nodded, feeling the heaviness move out of me and lightness ease in because Benny was making it better.

He kept right on doing that. “You got a new job, a lot to get used to, but somethin’ else you gotta do in between me takin’ you down there and comin’ back is you comin’ up to see me.”

“Okay,” I said softly.

“When are you gonna start?” he asked.

“I, well, would prefer to feel closer to one hundred percent and I still have stuff to pack to get ready for the movers. So, not next week. The, uh, Monday after.”

“Right,” Ben said, sounding businesslike. “I’ll sort shit with Pop and Manny.”

I stared at him for a moment before I whispered, “You make all this sound easy.”

“That’s because this is important to me so I’m determined not to make it hard.”

At that, I fell forward so my forehead hit his chest.

When I did, his hands moved. One to wrap around the back of my neck, one slid up into my hair to cup the back of my head.

And into the top of my hair, he murmured, “See, back to minute by minute. Easy.”

Easy.

Right.

God, Benny.

“We’re startin’ out and I got a new job in Indy I cannot leave, a lease on an apartment that pins me there for at least a year anyway, and you’ve got all this.” I threw a hand out to indicate the kitchen, even though I didn’t move my forehead from his chest. “Which means you can never leave.”

“That’s not the next minute, Frankie,” he reminded me.

I jerked my head back so his was forced to snap his up and his hands were forced to move, and they did, coming to rest just under my jaw.

“We have to think about it, Benny,” I declared, my voice rising.

“Why?”

“Why?” I repeated but didn’t allow him to respond. “Because it’s out there, waiting to strike, and we should plan for when it does.”

“Why?” he asked again, and I felt my eyes get squinty.

“Because, just like this, even though we knew it was coming, it came and now we have to deal and we should plan on how we’re gonna deal.”

“Here’s the drama,” he muttered, lips moving like he was battling a grin.

Wrong thing to say.

And grinning?

Uh…no.

So no, the wax and wane of my freak out waxed. I snapped and shouted, “Benny!”

That was when his face changed, his eyes changed, the bearing of his body changed, everything changed, and I pulled in a breath and held it as he stated, “Honest to Christ, Frankie, you think I’d wait since high school to get my shot at makin’ you mine and then I’d let a four-hour drive and a fuckin’ year lease beat me?”

My breath came out in a whoosh, but this time it was Benny who didn’t let me answer.

“No. I won’t. Puttin’ this out there, Frankie, in the end, Connie was practically livin’ with me. That’s how I burned her. She thought she was in there. But I woke up to her knowin’ I’d come home to a house she cleaned, dinner in the oven, her breakin’ her back to make everything easy on me when that’s my job.”

This particular piece of beauty made me suck in a hissed breath.

But he didn’t quit talking.

“Was a time I didn’t think on shit like that. Back then, what I thought was, for some reason, she didn’t make me happy. Simple. She just didn’t make me happy so I ended it. But the time I didn’t think on shit leaked into the dirt of a forest three weeks ago, Frankie. So I thought on it, and havin’ you in my house, in my bed the last week, it was about me seein’ to your Z. Me makin’ sure you got the Wi-Fi to do your shit on your computer. Me listenin’ to you bitch when you come back from a walk with old lady Zambino. Doin’ it with a gleam in your eye, tellin’ me you’re bitchin’, but you loved every minute she walked with you and busted your chops. So it boils down to this: I don’t want easy, Frankie. I had my shot at that. I wanna work at gettin’ the sweet, enjoyin’ my time with the spicy along the way, ’cause the sweet’s a fuckuva lot sweeter when you gotta earn it.”