Chapter 14
A ll day I’ve been out of sorts. Lost in thoughts of last night.
Wishing I had done just about a million things differently for about the millionth time in the last four years.
But her panties stay in my pocket, even now.
And yeah, I’m sick enough that I jerked off with them over my face last night and again this morning.
I even licked them a time or twenty too.
Because no amount of jerking off will sate this hunger.
Will quiet this beating rage.
I want to talk, tell her absolutely everything, and yet every time I’m near her, my baser instincts kick in and I’m reduced to a horny teenager who can’t control the blood flow to his dick. I’ve always been like that with her. A man incapable of learning limits or restraint.
It’s how I know she’s the one.
Because I want to fuck her from dusk till dawn and then spend the day in bed with her talking, only to repeat it all over again.
“Are you secretly a sea monster?” Layla calls out to me as I’m walking past the library at my parents’ compound, pulling me out of my thoughts.
An amused smile quirks up my lips as I peek my head into the room, finding her and my niece Stella sprawled out on the floor, about a dozen books between them.
“Is this a legit question?”
Her feet scissor back and forth in the air.
“The guy I quasi like in a totally casual way, so if you mention it to Oliver or Amelia, I’ll cut you up into such tiny pieces they’ll never be able to find you texted me last night that there is a movie called Luca.
It’s about a sea monster who lives in Italy.
I happen to know you own a home on the Italian coast.”
“Oliver owns half of it too.”
The blond wisp who is getting bigger by the day, waves me away. “He doesn’t have the right name and I’ve seen him swim in our pool. Not a sea monster.”
I step into the room, resting my shoulder against the doorframe and folding my arms across my chest. “If I’m a sea monster, does that make Landon one, too, since he’s my twin?”
Layla glances over her shoulder at her BFF Stella. “Is your father a sea monster?”
Stella rolls her eyes. “Are we actually doing this as a serious conversation?”
Layla thinks on this for about ten seconds and then completely switches gears the way teenagers are apt to do.
She rolls onto her back and butterflies her arms behind her head, staring up at the ceiling.
“Whatever. When I grow up, I want to be Raven Fairchild. I mean, how cool is her name? She’s named after her hair color and a bird?
And for real, she’s totally awesome at cello.
I mean, if I can be half as bomb at surgery as she is at cello, I’m like set for life. ”
My pulse quickens. “How do you know Raven?”
“She was here earlier, hanging out with Aunt Rina, Amelia, and Grandma,” Stella replies.
“Yeah. What she said. Octavia had her play for us too. I’m obsessed.”
That makes two of us, kid.
“Totally,” Stella agrees as she thumbs through pages of what is likely a first edition book without reading it. “She used to play for me when she’d babysit for me. Dad told me once that a particular lullaby she’d play me was one of the only things that would put me to sleep.”
“Maybe I should have her make me a playlist. I can’t fall asleep to save my life. How come she’s so close with your aunt and grandma if she works for your family?”
“She’s sorta my… cousin by extension, I guess?
Like you.” Stella shrugs, then tilts her head at Layla.
“You’re living with my uncle Oliver because your sister is fake engaged to him, but now it’s kind of real since they’re in love, so that makes you like my cousin, right?
Raven is sort of the same since her dad works for my grandparents and is like a brother to my grandpa.
She used to babysit me a lot when I was little before she left for college or whatever you call music conservatories.
Anyway, I have a lot of extended family who isn’t actually my family at all. ”
“Your life is complicated. Being Stella Fritz is no joke. How cool would it be if I was an awesome surgeon one day like your grandpa and we’re cousins? For real cousins.”
“You know, Layla, I’m a pretty awesome surgeon too. I operate on brains, on both adults and children. It doesn’t get much cooler than that.”
Layla snorts. “But your name is Luca .” She scrunches her nose.
“How uncool of a name is that? And Raven is like so pretty. I think I want to be her or Grace when I grow up since Grace is an OB-GYN and a surgeon. Maybe Amelia too because she’s pretty awesomesauce.
Even if she is my sister.” She points at me.
“But if you tell her I said that, again with the cutting you up into tiny pieces.”
I can’t help my smile as I watch and listen to these two. Rina was never like this when she was a teenager. Then again, she had five older brothers to try and keep up with. She didn’t have a Layla the way Stella does.
“I want to be a chef and run my own restaurant, serving food I grow, so I’m not sure I want to be anyone but myself.”
“Well said, Stella Bella.”
“That’s such a grown-up response.” Stella rolls her eyes at me. “I already know it’s awesome to love who I am, Uncle Luca.”
All I can do is shake my head, folding my arms over my chest, but then I pause. “Wait. Why is my name uncool?”
“Hello, ten minutes ago.” Layla scoffs, picking up one of the books and swirling her finger along the filigree etched into the leather binding. “And it’s because no one is named Luca .”
“You just told me there is a movie with a character named Luca.”
“He’s Italian.”
I’m at a loss.
“If you weren’t hot and a Fritz, no one would think you’re cool.”
“Ouch.” I clutch my chest. “You wound me. I’m insanely cool.”
Layla starts cracking up, giving me a look that says gotcha, and I think the kid was messing with me. This entire time. Devious little thing that she is, I should have known better.
“Ewww!” Stella makes a gagging sound as she pretends to throw up all over thousands of dollars’ worth of rare books. “You think my uncle Luca is hot? Gross! That’s like saying you think my dad is hot.”
“Your dad is hot.”
Stella shrieks, covering her ears and flailing on the floor as Layla laughs manically.
Before this can get out of hand, I interrupt. “Where are your people?”
“In the solarium, I think,” Stella informs me, still pretending to throw up in disgust. “That’s where they were when Raven played for us, and Grandma mentioned something about cocktails out there.”
My insides jump. “Is Raven still here?”
“She went back to the staff house right before you got here.”
But she is here. On the property. And it’s… I check my watch and grin. “It’s only a little after five.”
“So?” Layla questions with the snarky tone of a teenager.
Right. Stella and Layla don’t care that it’s only a little after five. But I do because we won’t be eating until at least six. “I’ll see you ladies at dinner.”
With purpose in my stride, I sneak through the main house, avoiding the solarium and the sound of voices I hear coming from that part of the house.
“Why do you look like a cat burglar sneaking through the house?”
“Shit!” I jump ten feet in the air, knocking into a sculpture of a naked woman that I quickly fumble with—and catch, thank God!
—because if this crashes to the floor, two things will happen.
One, my mother will freaking kill me. Two, I’ll miss my chance to sneak out and see Raven before dinner.
“Goddamn it.” I set the sculpture back in its place, by her tits might I add, and then glare at the smirking blonde before me.
“Gracie Lou Freebush, you scared the Jesus out of me.”
Grace, my brother Oliver’s lifelong best friend and now… well, I guess Carter’s baby mama, only grins wider, holding what is likely a ginger ale in her hand. “I can see that. And I can’t decide if I should stop you or not. Raven is a friend, you know.”
“You didn’t see me. How about that?”
“Hmmm… what do I get out of it?”
“I’ll stop calling you Gracie Lou Freebush?”
“You won’t.”
She’s right. I won’t. “I won’t offer to birth your child the way everyone else is.”
“Like I’d let you anyway.”
“I’ll send you a secret supply of gummy worms without telling Carter.”
A sparkle hits her blue eyes. The woman loves anything gummy, and being pregnant, Carter is having her cut out junk. “Now you’re talking. Fine. Go and win her back. I can see you’re a man on a mission. But be good to her, Luca.”
“I plan to be very good to her.” I bounce my eyebrows suggestively.
“Stop being the playboy.” She points a stern, motherly finger at me. “This is my only warning. As a woman who has been jilted in love, don’t do this with her unless you mean it.”
I walk over to my adorable one-day-to-be sister-in-law and kiss her cheek. “Promise. My playboy days are long over despite what the media says about me.”
“I know that and you’re lucky I do. I know that.
I never saw you and I’ll distract the masses with disgusting pregnancy stuff.
Good luck. I’m betting she kicks you in the nuts and sends you packing.
” Grace starts laughing at her own horrible musings as she walks back in the direction of the solarium at the back of the house.
What happened between Raven and me is not a secret.
My entire family knows as well as her dad because I told him.
He flew me back to Minnesota after he returned from dropping Raven off in London, and he and I talked the entire flight.
Oddly, he didn’t blame me the way everyone else did and I think it’s likely because either he never wanted his daughter to end up with me or he understood and appreciated what I was up to when I ended it with her. He never would say.
He didn’t kill me, so I took that as a win.