The Promise (The 'Burg, #5)

by Kristen Ashley

“You’re crazy-brave, babe,” he said quietly. “You proved that a week and a half ago. You’re crazy-beautiful and I ’spect you been that way all your life. You’re crazy-funny. You’re crazy-sweet. But you’re just plain crazy if you think you can do what you did for this family, be the way you were with me that night before they took Cal and Vi, and think I’m lettin’ you move to fuckin’ Indianapolis without us havin’ a conversation. You know what this is. That’s why you’re freakin’ and hidin’. I know what this is. That’s why I’m not lettin’ this shit go.” His fingers squeezed and he got even closer. “We’re talkin’. You don’t like that, I don’t give a fuck. Seven years I been fuckin’ up. Right now, that shit ends.”

okay Benny

When I was done, Asheeka got right back in there. “You’re holdin’ a grudge.” I looked back at her in the mirror. “Uh…yeah.” She shook her head. “Only God can judge him and his family for the way they treated you. Here, on earth, the right thing to do is forgive. Harder to forget and that’ll mess with you, honey. That’s your cross to bear and that’s the whole thing about forgiveness. They gave you that cross and it’s you who has to bear it at the same time findin’ a way to forgive. That’s the reason forgiveness is divine. ’Cause someone wrongs us, we live with that wrong right alongside them, but it’s us who has to find the strength to let them off the hook. If they work for it, ask for it, only you have the power to offer it to them so their soul can be less heavy. And the right thing to do is use that power.”

...

“Bring the remote with my cake,” I ordered. “Back to spicy,” he muttered, still smiling. He liked spicy. If I was playing it smart, I wouldn’t give him spicy. But I was Francesca Angelica Concetti. That just wasn’t in me.

.

He had something to say. So he said it. “I wanna kiss you.” Her body tensed, and not the bad way. The fucking good one. But she said nothing. “You got until Monday,” he informed her. She drew her lower lip between her teeth, and fuck, he wanted to kiss her even more.

Yes Please!

“You’re a good girl, Frankie Concetti,” she declared. I felt tears sting my eyes. “Good girls earn good things.” She let my jaw go, her eyes going beyond me toward Benny’s house, then coming back to me. “Let yourself have good things.” “It’s not right,” I told her quietly. “Know one thing on God’s beautiful earth, and that is,” she leaned into me, “love is never wrong.”

.

Another promise. Feeling that, it hit me that I found myself—me, Francesca Concetti, having lived thirty-four years with not a lot of great, fleeting moments of happiness, and never much to look forward to—standing in the kitchen of a pizzeria in the curve of the arm of a handsome, good, decent man, living a life full of promise. The promise of Benny.

💜

I opened my eyes and looked at the lake. “Well, I’m saying it now. I love you, Benny Bianchi. Even when you aren’t with me, I wake up knowing how much I love you and I go to sleep knowing the same thing.”

💜💜

“Benny Bianchi, do you think in a million years I’d do anything to jeopardize the promise of you?” I snapped. I got silence from Benny for a moment before he asked quietly, “The promise of me?” “Yes,” I hissed. “The promise of you.” “Babe, I’m yours. How am I a promise?” he asked, tone now cautious, and my belly did a dip at the “I’m yours” business. But still. “Every day is a new promise, Ben,” I told him sharply. “Every night I go to sleep knowin’ it’s a promise, every day I wake knowin’ in some way it’s gonna be fulfilled. And repeat. For…hopefully…ever.”

💜😍