I knew what he meant.

“I’m thinkin’ I need to get off my feet,” I answered because all that hugging felt great, but at the same time, it didn’t feel real great against my wound.

Then Cal, Vinnie Junior’s best friend in the world, did something weird.

He let me go but did it leaving a hand in the small of my back whereupon he gently, immediately, and firmly pushed me direct to Benny as he said low, “She’s gotta take a load off.”

That was when Benny claimed me, arm around my waist, turning me to the living room and moving us in, saying, “Let’s get settled.”

Company followed, but I couldn’t see how they did because Benny deposited me in the corner of the couch and instantly bent in, one hand to the seat beside me, one hand to the armrest, his face an inch away.

“You need a pill?” he asked.

“No, I’m gonna tough it out. It might get better when I’m not bawlin’.”

His head went back a bit, his eyes moved over my face, and he said, “Right. You need somethin’, you tell Pop or Ma.”

I nodded.

“Now, I gotta go to the store and get a fuckin’ casserole dish.”

I felt my lips quirk before I nodded again.

He watched my lips quirk before he looked back into my eyes, grinned, and winked.

Then he was gone.

But his grin and wink remained and I found I didn’t have to tough out the pain.

A grin and wink from Benny Bianchi was the best medicine a girl could have.

***

“School is awesome, the best part about it being Jasper Layne.”

It was after lasagna, which Theresa served at Benny’s dining room table after spending nearly the entire time the lasagna cooked in his dining room, shifting what looked like three years of discarded junk mail from the top of the table and attacking the old-fashioned, definitely hand-me-down eight-seater with Pledge.

We were in the living room. Vi, obviously not knowing she should leave Theresa alone, was in the kitchen with Benny’s mother, helping her do the dishes.

I was back on the couch, sitting up again but not in the corner. Benny was in the corner and I was tucked to his side, his arm around me. Kate was down the sofa from us. Vinnie Senior was in Ben’s recliner. Cal was in an armchair. Keira was on the floor and she was the one who was talking.

I was surreptitiously watching Cal, who was not surreptitiously watching Benny and me tucked into the side of the couch. He had a small smile playing at his mouth, the warm light of humor in his eyes, but with both of these, he also had a knowing look on his face.

And I did not get that. He and Vinnie Junior were the same age, close as brothers. He’d tried to talk Vinnie out of working with Sal but was one of the few who intended to take Vinnie as he came. That was how tight they were. He didn’t like that Vinnie was on Sal’s crew, but he didn’t intend to lose him because of it.

So the way Benny was holding me, which was not with brotherly affection, I would have thought would anger Cal, or at the very least perturb him.

It obviously didn’t.

He obviously liked it.

Which was strange.

Stranger, Vinnie Senior had no reaction to it either.

This was making me uncomfortable, and with all that was going on in my head, not to mention having company, I didn’t have the time to sort out why.

“Jasper Layne is hot, no doubt about that, but he’s also a dawg.”

That came from Kate, and the instant it did, Cal stopped grinning knowingly at Benny’s foot, which he’d tangled with mine in an intimate way that felt nice but I knew I should not allow (though I did, bent on earning my first-class ticket straight to hell), and his attention cut to Kate.

“He is not,” Keira snapped.

“Total player,” Kate declared.

“He is not!” Keira’s voice was rising.

“Keirry, he’s had three girlfriends already and we’ve been in school, like, a month,” Kate told her.

I quit surreptitiously watching and started openly watching, and also openly grinning (huge), as a dark, protective, dad look moved over Cal’s face.

He loved Violet. I knew that when he pulled out all the stops and made a miracle happen when he found us in the middle of nowhere in a forest and took a man’s life to save hers.

He also loved her girls.

And I loved that.

“So, he’s lookin’ for the right one,” Keira shot back.

“He’s lookin’ for somethin’,” Kate muttered.

“No Jasper Layne,” Cal decreed, and I watched Keira jerk her gaze to Cal.

“Joe!” she cried.

“No Jasper Layne,” he repeated.

I felt Benny give me a squeeze and I looked at him to see him smiling big at his cousin.

My attention went back to the scene when Keira exclaimed, “He’s cute!”

“He’s off-limits,” Cal proclaimed.

“Joe!” she repeated loudly.

Cal scowled at her. Then I stopped grinning at him and started staring at him when I saw it begin.

I couldn’t believe it might happen.

Then it happened.

He caved.

“How old is he?” Cal asked.

“He’s a sophomore,” Keira answered—Keira, incidentally, being a freshman.

“You wait until you’re older, he’s older, then we’ll see.”

I watched Keira study her “Joe.” Then I watched her face get soft and her eyes light. It was then I knew she knew she had the big, rough man who was Joe Callahan wrapped around her finger.

That had to be why she said much calmer and definitely sweeter, “Okay, Joe.”

“You do know this is hilarious,” Benny put in at that point.

“Shut it,” Cal growled.

Ben chuckled, I giggled, and Vinnie Senior laughed outright.

Cal’s face took on another dark look, this one annoyed, so I quit giggling and looked at Keira. “Sometimes, those are the best ones,” I shared my womanly wisdom.

“What are the best ones?” she asked me.

“The wild ones. You let them get it out of their system and you get them when they’re tame. That can be the best,” I told her, and Benny’s arm got tight, but this time it didn’t loosen.

“Tame doesn’t sound fun,” Keira noted. Cal sighed audibly and I smiled, but only so I wouldn’t laugh.

Cal had his hands full with this one and I thought that was hilarious.

“It’s not tame tame, it’s the good kind of tame,” I explained. She looked confused, so I went on. “I’m just sayin’, listen to Cal. You might not get it ’cause you’re young, but you’ll learn. And he’s tryin’ to make sure when you learn, it isn’t the hard way.”

“Right,” Keira whispered, eyeing me, eyeing Cal, and sucking my womanly wisdom in like a sponge.

“So,” Kate said, and I looked to her. “It’s like Joe bein’ the Lone Wolf, and Mawdy and us gettin’ in there, and he’s still hot and cool, but he’s got us.”

“Something like that,” I replied, smiling back at her.

“The Lone Wolf?” Benny asked.

“Shut it,” Cal growled.

I giggled again.

“What are we talking about?” Theresa asked, and I looked over the back of the couch to see her and Violet joining us.

“Something we’re not talkin’ about anymore,” Cal answered.

I gave Vi a big smile as Kate exited the couch to go sit on the floor with her sister so Theresa could sit in the corner. Violet scrunched next to me.

The minute she did, she grabbed my hand and held on.

I rested our hands on my thigh and held on tighter.

“I made cannoli and Benny bought enough donuts for an army. Anyone in the mood for something sweet?” Theresa asked.

“Me!” Keira cried.

“Totally!” Kate exclaimed, already getting back to her feet.

Theresa, barely just sitting down, got back up. “Let’s go make coffee and get something sweet.”

“I could use some coffee and somethin’ sweet,” Vinnie Senior muttered, hefting himself out of the recliner and following them.

“Ben, a word,” Cal said.

I felt Benny tense against me. I looked at him to see he was giving a hard look to his cousin. Then he looked to me and that look softened.

“Be back, cara,” he said quietly.

“Right,” I replied.

He carefully shifted from beside me and got to his feet.

The men left and I looked to Vi.

“Do you know what that’s about?” I asked.

Violet was looking over the couch, watching the men depart, but at my question, her eyes came to me. “Joe obviously has something on his mind. Unfortunately, he hasn’t shared with me what it is.”

I looked over the couch and saw that whatever it was took them out to the front stoop. In other words, where no one could listen in.

I turned my gaze back to Violet. “Is everything cool?”

She nodded. “Police found the carnage Hart left in his lake house. He shot you. Both Joe and Benny’s guns were registered. The cops were in the know we’d been kidnapped, and they knew all about Hart and his obsession with me. So, to end, they didn’t press charges against Joe for blowin’ a hole in his head. And, obviously you know, the same with Benny for shooting him in the stomach.”

I knew all that. Sal had explained it to me in the hospital.

So I clarified, “No, what I mean is, you, the girls, the drama.” I leaned closer. “They’re beautiful, Vi,” I said softly. “So sweet. Amazing. But they seem—”

She gave my hand a squeeze. “They lost their dad, their uncle, and almost me and Joe to Daniel Hart. They latch on to family, having lost all that. Joe and I are keepin’ an eye on it, but I reckon it’s better they latch on to love rather than acting out.”

“You’d be right about that,” I replied.

She tipped her head to the side as she lifted her eyebrows up. “You and Benny?”

“Long story,” I muttered, and she grinned.

“You two look good together.”

I caught her eyes direct. “I looked good together with his brother too.”

She held my gaze for long seconds before she asked cautiously, “Do you like him?”

“He’s the commissioner of the local Little League.”

Her lips twitched and she murmured, “You like him.”

“He’s also my dead boyfriend’s brother,” I noted for the fucking gazillionth time in three days.

She assessed my face and remarked, “I’m sensing you don’t wanna talk about this.”

“Since Ben made it clear what he was thinking about this, it’s pretty much the only thing I think about, we talk about, and I talk about with other people. So yeah, I could use a break.”

Violet nodded. “Right. So you ever need to talk it through with someone who’ll just listen, or you ever need to talk anything through with someone who’ll just listen, or you ever just want to shoot the breeze, you call me. Okay?”

That was so nice, I grinned at her, declaring, “I just knew you were the shit.”

She grinned back and replied, “I knew you were the shit when you jimmied up that window so we could escape.”

I shrugged. “Figured Hart was shooting people in the other room, it was time for us to take a stroll.”

She started giggling and through it said, “You were so right.”

I started giggling too and we did this for a while until we both sobered, our eyes glued to each other’s, our hands clutching tight.

“You’re up, talking, you look gorgeous, but are you sleeping? Dealing? Healing?” Vi asked in a whisper.

“One good thing about Benny throwing down with me is that I haven’t really had a chance to have a proper freak out about that whole thing with Hart. But we’re here, he’s not, so it all worked out in the end.”

“Yeah,” she agreed.

“You?” I asked.

“I have Joe,” she answered, and I smiled. She had Cal. Cal had her. And obviously, that was all she needed.

“You’re good for him,” I told her.

“He’s good for me,” she told me.

Excellent response.

“He loves your girls,” I told her.

“They adore him,” she told me.

Another excellent response.

“Thanks for making him happy,” I whispered.

“That, honey, is not a hardship,” she whispered back.

We smiled at each other again. Then, being women and thus, prone to do crazy shit for no reason whatsoever, we burst out laughing.

***

Hours later, when everyone was gone, I walked out of the bathroom in another one of Gina’s sexy-cute nightgowns to see Benny with bare feet, in his t-shirt and jeans, stretched out on the bed.

His eyes came to me, dropped to my body, and he muttered, “Jesus.”

That made me feel awesome and irked me at the same time.