Accardi (Genevieve and Matteo) by Allison Franklin novel Chapter 150

**You Were My Favorite Hurt, And My Hardest Goodbye by Ava Knight**
**Chapter 150**

For what felt like an eternity, he simply gazed at her, his chest rising and falling in a rhythm that was anything but steady, his jaw clenched tightly as if holding back a storm. Then, with a gentle movement, Nico leaned in closer, their foreheads touching softly, an electric connection sparking between them. His voice, though tender and almost reverential, carried the faintest hint of a smile—one that was cocky yet laced with the unmistakable ache of vulnerability.

“I’m your Huckleberry.”

Those words struck her like a bolt of lightning, splitting her wide open in a way she hadn’t anticipated. A laugh, raw and choked, caught in her throat—wet, fragmented, but undeniably real. It bubbled out despite her best efforts to contain it, mingling with the sobs that she could no longer suppress. She squeezed her eyes shut, allowing the tears to flow freely, and whispered back to him, her voice a fragile thread but unwavering:

“Damn right you are.”

The machines around them hummed steadily, a rhythmic backdrop to the silence that enveloped them. Enzo’s even breaths provided a grounding presence, anchoring the moment in a way that felt sacred. Lola tightened her grip on Nico’s hand, as if she could meld herself to him in that fleeting instant, binding their souls together.

For the first time in her life, feeling shattered yet stitched together, aching in every conceivable way, she allowed herself to embrace the truth. She was, at long last, loved.

Nico

Good God. He actually said it.

The words hung in the air, palpable and charged, like a loaded gun with the safety off, and for the very first time, he had no desire to retract them. No more swallowing his feelings, no more burying the truth—just an unfiltered confession.

He had loved her longer than he could admit, perhaps from the very moment she had playfully smacked him with a towel in Enzo’s kitchen, teasingly dubbing him a “golden retriever in human form.” He had laughed it off then, as was his habit—covering up the cracks in his heart with a carefree grin, pretending that everything rolled off his back like water off a duck. But that moment had stuck with him. She truly saw him. Not the soldier, not Enzo’s ever-reliable right-hand man, not the guy everyone assumed had it all figured out. Just Nico.

And that realization terrified him to his core.

Because allowing her to see the real him meant she had the power to hurt him. After San Diego—after that night he had walked her down the pier, her arm looped through his, after she had kissed his cheek and laughed as if he was more than enough—he understood that he was already irreparably damaged.

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