“I haven’t even given you this one yet,” Vi snapped.

I pressed my lips together in order to hold my tongue, a tongue that wanted to advise Cal that teasing his seven-months-pregnant fiancée was probably not the way to go.

Cal totally ignored her and stated, “It’s not, then the next one after that will be.”

Vi’s eyes got huge.

“I want all sisters,” Keira declared unwisely at this juncture. “My friend Heather has two brothers and their rooms smell. Like…crazy.”

“Joe needs a boy so he’s not totally outnumbered,” Kate chimed in.

“He’s got me,” Keira told her sister.

“You aren’t a boy,” Kate pointed out.

“So?” Keira returned, and not letting her sister get another word in, she carried on, “With this one bein’ a girl, that means Mom will have to pop out, like…three more for Joe not to be outnumbered.”

“Works for me,” Cal muttered before shoving seafood risotto in his mouth.

“Joe!” Vi practically yelled.

Cal looked to his woman and swallowed before saying, “Well, it does.”

“Can we please end this discussion of Violet, otherwise known as the one-woman baby-making factory?”

Cal gave her a look that eloquently said that baby making required two, which fortunately the girls missed since they were giggling at what their mother had said.

But it was then I felt something coming from my side. I looked there to see Ben leaned back, arms resting casually on the arms of his chair, his eyes on his cousin, his face holding another expression I wished I had a camera to capture for eternity.

He was happy for Cal. Openly. He was happy that after the nightmare Cal had lived that forced him to live half a life, it ended with this: a beautiful, kind woman, pregnant with his child, opposite him at the end of the table; two gorgeous girls, who acted like Cal hadn’t been sitting there for eight months but he’d been doing it for eight years, and they liked it; a lovely home; a fabulous meal on the table.

Happiness.

Goodness.

Everywhere.

I reached out a hand and curled it around Ben’s thigh and he aimed that look at me.

I leaned toward him and he read my lean. This meant he met me halfway and touched his mouth to mine.

When we pulled away and turned back to our plates, Keira, who’d obviously witnessed the PDA, asked Cal, “It’s been months. Can I make my move on Jasper Layne now?”

Cal leveled his eyes on his girl and said, “No.”

“Joe!” she cried.

“No,” he repeated.

“He’s only had one girlfriend the last three months,” Keira informed Cal, sharing plainly how into this Jasper Layne she was and, thus, how closely she paid attention.

“Yeah? He still with her?” Cal asked.

“Um…no,” Keira muttered.

“And how long was he with her?” Cal pushed.

“About a week,” Kate put in, and Keira cut her eyes at Kate, giving her the look any little sister gave her big sister for ratting her out.

“Then, no,” Joe said firmly.

Keira slumped in her seat.

“Keira?” I called, and her eyes came to me. “Good things come to those who wait.”

After I said that, Ben slid an arm along the back of my chair. Keira watched this, eyes darting between Ben, me, and his arm on the back of my chair. The devastation lifted and she smiled. Then she resumed eating.

It was then that I caught a glimpse of Cal looking at Benny with much the same look as Ben had been giving him earlier. Not as open, not as out there, but the contentment in his eyes was easy to read.

This meant what he read in Ben was that Benny was happy.

And the reason he was was because of me.

When I saw that, I felt a warmth spreading, starting from my belly.

I looked back down at my plate of the phenomenal risotto that Vi made, which Cal had told us would be the “best shit we ever tasted.”

He was wrong. Benny’s pies were better.

Still, it was amazing.

So I resumed eating.

***

“This sucks,” I whispered late afternoon the next day.

“Yep,” Ben whispered back.

“My turn next,” I reminded him.

“Yep,” Ben agreed.

“I’ll get on that immediately.”

“Good, baby,” Ben replied. “Now kiss me.”

I looked into his eyes before I rolled up on my toes and kissed him.

Ben kissed me back.

Then I had to let him go so he could get in his SUV. As he was doing that, starting up and pulling out, I made my way back to the sidewalk in front of my apartment.

I stood there and waved as he pulled away.

And I kept standing there, though not waving, until I couldn’t see his truck anymore.

Only then did I repeat in a whisper, “This sucks,” and walked into my empty apartment.

***

The next day, I swiftly made my way to my office, got there, closed the door behind me, sat behind my desk, and snatched up my cell.

I found him easily. He was all over my Recents.

I hit Go and put the phone to my ear.

“Cara,” Ben answered.

“Guess what?” I asked.

“Tell me,” he ordered.

“Well, I have a bunch of travel coming up the next three weeks. But after that, I just talked with my boss, and he said he couldn’t see why I could occasionally work from my place in Brownsburg but couldn’t work from your house in Chicago.”

“No shit?” Ben asked.

“No shit,” I answered.

“Excellent, baby,” he said, deep, easy, and happy.

I clicked on my computer, bringing up my schedule, talking into the phone, “Looks like…” I paused, doing a scan. “I could drive up Friday night after I get back from Atlanta, just under three weeks from today. And I can stay…” I clicked, scanned, and told him, “at least until the next Thursday. I have a meeting in the office on Friday, but I can ask if they can conference call me in. That’ll give us a whole week.” When I finished, my voice had pitched higher with excitement.

“When do you get back from Atlanta?” Ben asked.

“Flight lands at 7:45.”

“At night?”

“Yep.”

“Drive up on Saturday,” Ben commanded.

I sat back in my chair and blinked. “Why?”

“You land at 7:45, you aren’t on the road until well after eight at least, and you’re a woman alone on the road at night until late.”

“I can hack it.”

“Bet you can, but you aren’t.”

“Benny.”

“Frankie,” he said low and in a tone I’d never heard from him.

Hearing it then, I stared unseeing out the window that made up the wall of my office and listened closely as Ben kept going.

“You give me attitude over shit like this, I’m not gonna think it’s your normal cute. I’m gonna find it frustrating. Because straight up, this means somethin’ to me. You can take care of yourself, but there are assholes out there who, wouldn’t matter how good you were at it, they’d be better at doin’ the shit they do. You gotta stop to hit a bathroom. You get a flat tire. Whatever. You’re vulnerable, even though you think you got your shit tight. The freaks come out at night, Frankie, and no freak is gonna get to my baby. I wanna see you as soon as I can see you, but I’d rather it not be after I’ve worried for hours that you’ll get to me in one piece. So come in the morning, yeah?”

After he quit speaking, I sat frozen in my seat.

Night after night, hell, day after day, growing up from age twelve to when I got the hell out, I could be anywhere with anyone doing anything and neither of my parents cared. My sisters didn’t care. My brother didn’t care.

As for me, I was the big sis, got in my siblings’ faces and kept track of them. I knew where they were all the time, and sometimes, I even went out to check they weren’t lying to me (they often lied to me, which meant, when I’d find them, I had to go bat-shit crazy in front of their friends—so they quit lying to me).

But no one worried about where I was. No one worried about how I got there. No one worried about me getting there safe.

I loved him for it, but Vinnie knew I could handle myself. He knew the kind of woman I was and the one I was aiming at being. He could be macho and protective, but mostly, he let me be me. He didn’t even try it, probably because he didn’t want me to go bat-shit crazy.

Benny didn’t care if I went bat-shit crazy.

Benny wanted me to be safe and get to him healthy. Benny cared where I was, where I was going, and how I got there.

Right then, experiencing that for the first time in my thirty-four years of life, my throat felt scratchy and my eyes felt prickly, and I had to put everything into keeping it together so I wouldn’t start crying at work.

“Frankie,” Ben said softly when I didn’t say anything. “Don’t be pissed, baby.”

“Hush, Benny,” I whispered, my voice croaky. “I’m figuring out one of my ‘I don’t knows.’”

He grew silent.

I closed my eyes and pulled in a deep breath.

After giving me time, Ben prompted, “You gonna share that with me?”

I opened my eyes. “Yeah, honey, but I’m at work and things are kind of crazy. Huge schedule and I’m everywhere the next three weeks. And it’s one of those things that I wanna share with you when I have you with me. But I will say it’s good, you bein’ the first person in my life who gives a shit that I get where I’m goin’ and do it safe.”

He grew silent again, but this time, the silence was loaded. Loaded with warmth. Loaded with goodness. All of this beating into me after pinging off cell phone towers over hundreds of miles.

When his silence lasted, I called, “Benny?”