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good at being a pain in the ass,” I agreed in a quavering whisper.
    Leo’s smile warmed as he again reached up and pushed hair behind my ear. The smile faded, and his expression turned serious.
    “Stay in the truck, please,” he said quietly but with authority.
    Silently, I nodded. He closed the door and left me alone to go avenge my honor.
     

 
     
     
    Chapter Three
     
    Leo had come out of Rico’s house looking so angry that his body appeared to be steaming as snow fell on him. There was blood on one corner of his mouth, a bruise forming under his eye, and his right fist was red and bloody. He had found Rico in his bedroom with another girl already. He convinced the girl to step out so he could talk to Rico, but it apparently had not gone well. Leo was too furious to continue speaking about it during the ride back to my house. I insisted that he come inside so I could tend to his injuries.
    We walked into my house, unimpeded by my parents as I expected, and made our way downstairs to the finished basement. I snagged a t-shirt out of the dryer and changed out of my torn shirt before pulling Leo into the small bathroom.
    “You’re a mess,” I said, wiping blood away from his mouth with a cloth. He winced but didn’t pull away.
    The bathroom was so small that neither of us could move without brushing up against each other. We were close enough that I felt the vibration in his chest as he spoke.
    “I look better than Rico does right now,” he said.
    “You shouldn’t have gone in there,” I admonished as I rinsed the cloth under running water.
    “I had to go avenge your honor.” His small smile made my breath catch.
    I cleared my throat to hide it and said, “You didn’t have to do any such thing, Pesciano. I bet Rico will still have a lot to say.”
    I gingerly took his injured hand and held it under the water. He grimaced but held still.
    “Rico won’t be saying anything for a few weeks.”
    “Yeah, right.” I glanced up at Leo’s face with doubt. He was absolutely serious. “Oh, my god, what did you do?”
    “I punched his teeth out of his mouth,” he said so casually that he could have been speaking about schoolwork.
    I stared up at him, frozen. “You’re serious?”
    He looked back at me, his eyes roving over my face. “Yeah, I’m serious.”
    My mouth was open again. I looked away from his face and looked at the blood on his shirt. I didn’t know if it was his or Rico’s. His act of violence was unsettling, a bit thrilling, but very unsettling.
    “What if he calls the police?” I asked, looking at his face again. “What if they want to press charges? Leo, that was so stupid!”
    “Oh, sweetheart, I didn’t know you cared,” he said and put his uninjured hand to his heart as he smiled down at me.
    “Of course, I care.” I snapped and dropped his hand so that I could get the peroxide. “You could be in a lot of trouble for something you did for me that you shouldn’t have done. That was stupid. You shouldn’t have done it, especially for me.”
    I grabbed his hand and held it over the sink.
    “He’s not calling the cops. There’s enough drugs and alcohol in that house to—shit!” Leo shouted the expletive when I poured peroxide over his open wounds.
    “Hold still,” I commanded.
    “That shit burns!” Leo objected and started to pull his injured hand away.
    “You should have kept your little man-boy fists to yourself,” I snapped and roughly pulled his hand back over the sink. “Stop being a baby.”
    “He deserved losing a few teeth, and more,” Leo muttered and then hissed when I poured more peroxide over the broken skin along his knuckles. “I tried to just talk to him and he just kept spewing verbal fecal matter.”
    I paused and looked at Leo with wide eyes. A corner of his mouth twitched until the cocky grin the girls go crazy for appeared.
    “Did I shock you with my vocabulary?” he asked.
    “Yes, yes you did,” I admitted. I refocused on my task and