“What’s up?” I open my door and swing my legs around.

She crooks her finger for me to lean in and rests her hands on my knees, lifting her mouth to my ear. “Do you love Drake?”

“Whoa. That was random.” I pat her little hands and grab my things from the other seat. “And kind of unexpected.”

“Well, I saw him earlier, and he said you’re beautiful.”

“And I think you’ve been spending too much time with Nonna, little one.” I tap her nose and bump my door shut with my bum.

“Ooookaaay,” she replies. “But he seemed kind of sad when I asked him if he was coming to dinner. Nonna was buying all the dinner things and invited him, but he said no. Aren’t you friends anymore? Because Dad said he’s still friends with him.”

Thanks, Trent.

I open the front door. “Aria, things happen. We’re grownups, and while I love how much you care, Drake and I need to sort out our own problems. You can tell Dad that, too.”

“Okay.” She runs past. “Dad, Noelle said to mind your own business.”

“Apparently, ten-year-olds are excellent at twisting things,” I drawl, dropping into a chair and setting my laptop on my legs.

Alison raises her eyebrows. “Y’think?”

“Pfft.” I open the computer and flip my notebook to the last page. Ah—the one with my mindless doodles.

We’ll skip back a page.

“Noella!” Nonna shuffles into the room as I open my latest document.

“Si, Nonna?”

“You-a never speak Italiano. What-a do you-a want-a?”

“To work,” I tell her, motioning to my laptop.

“I see-a Drake. He say-a you-a have-a fight-a.”

Excellent. I didn’t realize my Italian grandmother was secretly the Spanish Inquisition. “It’s not a fight,” I protest, sighing. Why will no one listen to me? “I left to avoid a fight. I’m so tired of fightin’ over everythin’ all the damn time.”

Nonna rams her cane against the floor, making Silvio jump and his car flip off the track. “Noella!” she yells, her face steadily getting redder. “You walked out on a fight?” she asks in Italian.

“Si.”

“Perché?”

“Why? Because I’m fed up of fighting. I said that.”

“No.” She hits the cane against the floor again and lifts one wrinkled finger in my direction. “Idioto!”

“What?”

“Si, idioto!”

Oh, crap. She’s defaulting to Italian.

Everyone in the house should run right now and save themselves. It’s too late for me.

Her next sentence is in Italian, too. Fluent, ferocious, angry Italian. “You think you can walk out on a fight? No! You never walk out on a fight. You walk out, you don’t care,” she rambles, still pointing at me, her cheeks flushing red with their anger. “You’re a Bond! You never walk away!”

I slam my laptop shut. “Well, I do if I’m tired, Nonna! I don’t want a relationship where I fight all the time. I don’t want to be butting heads with my partner all the time. I want to come home and smile, not wonder what I’m gonna have to yell about tonight. I don’t want the relationship you and Nonno had!”

“We had-a the best-a one! We-a knew that-a, in-a the end, we’d-a be okay-a! Many fights-a, lots-a shouts. Noella, it was-a not always okay-a. Si.” Nonna pauses then reverts back to Italian. “It wasn’t okay a lot of the time, but we loved each other. We still do, and I haven’t seen him. You love enough to fight for everything. Then you don’t ever walk out on that fight.”

“I never said—”

“Giammai!” she insists. Never. “Love has-a nothing to-a do with-a it. It is-a your-a soul, Noella. Souls are-a stronger than-a love. Hearts, they-a break. Souls? No. Souls-a never break.”

Uncertainty runs rife through my veins, pumping its way through with my blood, and I look away from her. God, I wish she weren’t so passionate about everything, especially love. I wish her whole life didn’t revolve around love and everything that makes it.

No. I don’t.

I’m a liar.

If she weren’t a romantic, she wouldn’t be Nonna. If she didn’t fight for each of us to have our happiness, she wouldn’t be Nonna. And damn her annoying Italian ass. I love her for it.

“Nonna…” I say quietly.

“No. You-a want him, you-a go get-a him.”

I smile, but it’s lame. “I’m not you. I can’t fight every day for the rest of my life.”

“Ah.” Her eyes sparkle. “No. You-a, me?” She throws her head back and laughs. “You-a better. You-a Texan-Italiano. You have-a the sweetness of-a a Southern ragazza, and-a you have-a the fierce-a-ness, too, but you-a have an Italiano ragazza’s passion. You-a dangerous, Noella.” She waggles her eyebrows. “And-a Mamma didn’t raise-a no weak ragazza.”

“Oh, damn you!” I snap, grabbing my things. “You twisted old lady. I bet you’re lovin’ this, aren’t you? Cazzo! Fine!”

I storm past her, her cackling laughter only riling me more, and slam the front door behind me.

Damn her with her fucking stupid philosophies that make total sense.

She’s right.

My mama didn’t raise no weak girl.

She raised a sweet but fierce Southern girl with a good dose of Italian passion.

How is it that I can stand in front of a woman who fancies herself a threat to me and tell her what to do with herself, but I can’t go out and grab the thing she thinks she threatens?

Because I’m a fucking coward. That’s why.

He makes me weak. He makes me completely and utterly soft. He cuts through my hard outer shell until he’s found the softness inside, and he takes hold of that and he doesn’t let it go. He forces emotions I don’t want to feel and realities I don’t want to exist.

Drake Nash makes me a coward.

Of the very best kind.

I throw my laptop onto the backseat and put my foot down, going into reverse. I swing back onto the street faster than I’m allowed to, and I have to lift my foot as I turn off my parents’ street and the speed limit really slows.

He lives closer to my parents than he does to me.

I have no idea what I’m even thinking when I get out of my car again and storm through his open gates and up his drive.

I have no idea when I’m thinking when my fist raps on his door four times.

“Noelle,” he says as soon as he opens it.

I take him in—his unruly, dark hair, the shadows beneath his eyes from his lack of sleep, his tightly set jaw—and say, “We need to talk.”

His lips twitch. Just a little. “You stole my line.”

“Well, I never said I was completely original. Can we? Talk?”

He steps to the side and opens the door. “Sure.”

I have no idea what I’m going to say when I step over the threshold and enter his house.

He pushes the door shut behind me and undoes another button on his shirt. He’s still dressed from work, and I’d guess he’s barely been home thirty minutes. He brings his eyes to mine, one of his eyebrows lifting in question.

And I’m shaking. I can’t focus properly because all I can think of is that Nonna is so right and it would have been easier to fight with him. When I’m fighting with him, his eyes don’t look nearly as bright or penetrating or bone-shakingly powerful as they do right now. As the silence lingers, my breath hitching every other inhale, and my heart beating triple time, it’s harder and harder to force the words out.

“I’m not mad at you,” I manage eventually, swallowing hard and wrapping my arms around my stomach. “I want to be. I thought I was. But I’m not. I’m mad I didn’t know anything about your past. I’m pissed I never asked, but that’s my fault, not yours. I never wanted to know, so I didn’t. And she blindsided me. I didn’t run out because I was angry. I ran out because I didn’t want to be angry. I didn’t want to fight anymore, but then I get forced to dinner tonight, and unsurprisingly, Nonna tells me that, if I don’t fight, I don’t care, and God, I’m so confused about everything. You’re so open—well, except for about Jessica—and I’m not that. I didn’t even know that I did care until today.”