Chapter 3
“W hen did you get those done?”
“Huh?” I spin around in the ocean, my body slowly acclimating to its frigid temperature. Today is yet another hot but cloudy day. Maybe if there was sun, the water wouldn’t be so damn cold. Luca made me run again this morning and my legs have never been so sore.
“These,” Luca says, turning me back around and grazing his fingers over the tattoos I have on either side of my spine.
“Oh. I got them on my eighteenth birthday. I’d wanted them for ages, but my father made me wait until I was legal.” I practically roll my eyes at that, considering my father has plenty of tattoos and most of them were not done legally.
“Your back looks like a cello.”
I snicker at the way he says that and then shiver against his cool, wet touch. “The parts of a cello, at least the body of it, resemble a human body in a lot of ways.”
“Explain that to me.”
I pivot to face him because if he keeps touching me like this, pretty soon I won’t be able to talk.
Ridiculously pathetic, I know, but I seriously cannot find it in me to care.
“This is the body.” I wave my hand over myself from my shoulders down to my hips.
His eyes follow, getting stuck on my breasts in my bikini and then my tiny bottoms. “This is the waist.” My hands sweep along the dip between my ribs and hip.
“And these are the f-holes.” I angle my body and point to my tattoo.
He blusters out a laugh. “The f-hole? You had something called an f-hole tattooed on your skin?”
I grin cheekily up at him, giving him a wink. “Two of them. And yup, I sure did. I didn’t give them that name. That’s just what they are.”
“And do you like it when someone touches your f-holes?”
I suck in a shaky breath. “You’re the first one to touch them.”
Something dark and delicious passes over his features, making my heart explode in my chest with nervous anticipation. And judging by his expression, he didn’t miss my meaning. His eyes are on mine before they dip, watching himself as he continues to paint me with water.
“I like them. Your tattoos, that is.” His voice is tight, hoarse, the sound making my nipples harden more than the freezing water is.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Piercing green eyes penetrate mine, making my stomach lurch.
“You ever think about getting one?” I ask, wading away from his touch, deeper into the water.
Fighting the cold and the waves as they crash against my skin, making me rock on the balls of my feet to meet them.
Anything to escape this rising tension between us.
Each time we’re together, it only grows.
A perpetual buzz. A beat. An unspoken pulsing intensity that’s building and building, flirting with the line that both excites and terrifies me.
“I’ve thought about it but never did it. I went with Kaplan to get a couple of his, but I could never think of anything I wanted inked on me.”
“You could always get ‘kiss this’ tattooed on your ass.”
“Only if I end up in prison.”
I giggle, running my fingers through the water. “I think that might not send the message you want.”
His arms wrap around me from behind, his bare chest against my back, and I force myself to stay where I am, to stare out at the expanse of ocean in front of us. And not turn around.
“You worried what’ll happen to me if I drop the soap?”
“Unless that’s your thing and I’ve been reading you wrong all this time.”
His lips meet the crook between my neck and shoulder. “Definitely haven’t been reading me wrong.”
* * *
“The stars at night are big and bright.” Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap. “Deep in the heart of Texas.”
I laugh at Luca’s off-key singing, the tall grass that lines the outskirts of the Fritz property tickling my bare arms and legs. It’s been an unusually warm June for Martha’s Vineyard, hot, hot days leading into hot nights.
And for the last seven days and nights, I’ve done nothing but spend time with Luca.
Running. Swimming in the ocean. Biking into town.
Hiking to the lighthouse. Sharing fucking ice cream and eating breakfast only to linger over dinners.
He reads medical journals while listening to me play.
It’s the strangest relationship I’ve ever had.
Not that I have a ton to compare it to, but still. Weird.
I can’t read him. I just know he likes being with me. Otherwise, he wouldn’t continue to seek me out the way he has been. Touching me in innocent ways that feel not so innocent whenever he can. And then touching me in not so innocent ways that confuse me when he doesn’t follow them up with more.
It has to be more than boredom. His family left the morning we went for our first run, so it’s been just us. Together. A lot. But it’s more than that. I know it is.
Especially when his fingers twirl strands of my hair the way they are.
“When do you leave for London, Little Bird?” he asks after falling quiet, both of us lost in the gorgeous starry night.
“Middle of August. When do you go back to Minnesota?”
He grunts. “As soon as I can.”
I know that’s a difficult question for him to be asked and to answer. He’s worried he’ll never be able to go back, and I know he’s in pain some of the time. I catch him wincing on occasion, but I also know his pain runs deeper. Surgery is his life, he told me, and if his shoulder never fully heals…
“You’ll like London. It’s a cool city.”
“I’ve been. Twice before with your family.”
“Oh.” He chuckles. “How is it that I sometimes forget who you are? I’ve known you your whole life and that’s how this feels, like I’ve known you forever, and yet not. Like I’m also just meeting you.” He laughs again, the sound lighter than before. “I’m likely not making any sense.”
I shift in the grass, my head rolling up so I can catch part of his profile. “I know what you mean. It does feel that way. Probably because both are true. We’ve known each other my whole life and yet we’re just now getting to know each other.”
“Exactly. It’s easy and comfortable and yet it’s also…”He trails off and I don’t press it.
Being with him already does insane, wild things to my heart.
I want to freeze time. That’s how perfect all of this feels.
I’m like a freaking teenage Taylor Swift song.
All angsty, with uncontrollable girly emotions and shit.
One day I’ll write a song about this and play my emotions, but today is not that day.
“Do you like Minnesota?”
“I honestly don’t know. I don’t see much of it. When I’m not in the hospital, I’m either sleeping, eating, or doing laundry.”
“Or dating.”
His hand stills in my hair. “Or that. I do that a lot there.”
A beehive of ugly green monster bees swarms through me. “You must miss it.”
“Not even a little,” he quickly replies.
“I have a reputation and I’ve earned it.
I know I have. I’m a playboy—though I fucking hate that term—a manwhore, a slut.
I liked sleeping around, but it’s gotten boring.
One woman bleeds into the next and they’re all the same.
All of them. I’ll ask them what they want to do when we go out and they throw things back at me like go to a sports bar or a hockey game or an expensive restaurant where they know we’ll be seen and likely photographed.
Or worse, they’ll say I don’t care, whatever you want to do. ”
“I’m not following,” I admit.
“These women… they say and do whatever they think will make me happy. Will make me like them. Or get them their Fritz fifteen minutes of fame. They laugh at my jokes whether they’re funny or not and never tell me anything real.
Only what they think I want to hear. I have no real conversations with them, Raven.
It’s a boring date with a boring woman, typically followed by boring sex. ”
“Have you tried a real relationship?”
“No. I mean, not since college. I had a girl in college I dated for a bit. In med school, we lost Reese, and I did whatever I had to do for Landon and Stella after that. I was always with them or in class and didn’t think much about women other than the occasional, random hookup.
Losing Reese was like losing a piece of all of us.
Then I started my residency, and I just didn’t want to get distracted or bogged down or disappoint anyone. ”
“But now you seem to have outgrown your bachelor, playboy life?”
“Yeah,” he murmurs, his voice losing some of its strength.
“I think I have. Being with you is so different. You’re nothing like those women.
You’re real and honest and talk back to me and make me laugh and smile and think and keep me on my toes and you’re fucking gorgeous, Raven.
You seriously are. Until experiencing all of this, it’s not something I realized I…
something I realized I want . Something I was missing .
Hanging out with you has been eye-opening, almost. You don’t give a shit about the fact that I’m Luca Fritz or a neurosurgeon or a stupid billionaire.
But I’m a mess. Lost in my head and feeling trapped in a body that might never do what I want it to do again.
I need surgery, Raven. I fucking miss it so goddamn much I can hardly take a breath or get through the day. ”
My eyes are the size of dinner plates as I stare up at the night sky. My heart, oh Lord help me, it feels like I’m going to have a heart attack right here in the grass. Can you die from happiness? From a feeling?
I suck in a deep breath and hold it steady in my lungs.
Just do it. Just freaking do it, Raven.
On an exhale, I sit up, throwing caution to the wind. I press his bent knees down into the grass and stare down at him. I’m trembling so bad right now I’m positive he can feel the ground vibrating beneath him.
“What are you doing?” he rasps.
I shake my head, unable to answer him with words because if I speak, I’ll lose my nerve. Sucking in another deep breath, I straddle his hips, sitting just above the spot I want to be sitting on most, but trying not to make this, well, about me.
He doesn’t say anything, just stares up at me, one arm behind his head, his other grasping onto my thigh like he’s not sure what to do with me in this new position.
We’re bathed in darkness. The only light shining down on us is coming from the huge full moon and the stars.
It’s not much, but it’s certainly enough for me to see his face.
Grasping the hem of his shirt, I tug on it, making my desire clear.
Wordlessly, he lifts it up and over his head, dropping it into the grass where my body just was. I love his chest and abs. I could stare at them all day and never grow tired. So sexy and muscular without being bulky. Fucking perfect.
But that’s not why I did this.
He’s shaking beneath me. So unsure of my intentions and next move, but he’s not stopping me. Not even a little.
Pitching forward, my fingers graze the red puckered skin of his scar on his left shoulder and his grip on my thigh tightens. This is the first time I’m touching him like this, and the sensation of touching Luca isn’t lost on me. But again…
“Tell me what happened. Tell me about that night.”