Chapter Thirteen
Luca
Nonna loved Ben and Max. She was also very impressed by the little details Max could remember about my past. Like when we were sitting on the couch in the den, waiting for takeout—because we collectively refused her offer to cook dinner for the wolves—and Max asked, “Was it really you who told Luca he should join the church choir when he was little?”
She beamed at him. “Yes! My husband, may he rest in peace, loved older music. Well, older now, I suppose. Things like the Rat Pack and such.”
“Movie music, too,” I interjected. “Nonno had a lot of old soundtracks.”
“Yes, they’re still in his study upstairs.” She smiled a bit sadly. “Luca was only three years old when he started to sing along to Sinatra and many others.”
“I also liked to sing along to Marilyn Monroe,” I pointed out dryly, making everyone laugh.
“Yes, you did. It was very cute.” She beamed.
“But by the time he was ten, I knew that he had something special in that voice of his. So I told him to join the church choir.” She held her hand out like she always did at this point of the story and added, “Now, we weren’t very religious as a family.
Especially after my husband passed, but we still went every time Luca was singing. ”
“How did you feel about Luca getting into rock music?” Ben asked.
He and Max were sitting on the love seat, while Nonna and I were on the bigger couch.
She was holding my hand, and I knew it was because she’d missed me.
Not just in the last six months or so, but way before that, too.
I felt bad about it, but as though she knew where my mind had gone mid-conversation, she looked at me and cupped my cheek for a moment, then answered Ben’s question.
“Oh, I was fine with it. My daughter didn’t like any of it, really, and I had to intervene a lot especially after his Nonno passed. He was the head of the house—”
I snorted. “You keep telling yourself that, woman.”
She nudged me with her elbow. “Shush, you.”
Max and Ben looked delighted, and it all made my insides warm and fluttery.
“Either way,” she continued. “He would make sure Luca got his musical education. He could be a stern man, but he cared about the grandkids.”
I squeezed her hand. “If any of us got really into something and showed talent, somehow there’d be money for whatever costs there were if our parents couldn’t afford it. Like Mikey’s hockey stuff or Lindsay’s horse riding.”
“I kept our children in line in other ways.” She chuckled and shook her head, then got serious. “Sadly I couldn’t get your mother’s mind to change on this one thing.”
I sighed. “Half of it is Dad. You know his parents were very old fashioned.”
“I know. It’s just that as a mother, you wish the best for your children and grandchildren, but you can’t help some things and that is very hard to accept.”
The food arrived then, and we moved to the actual dining room so the three of them had space to spread out the massive amounts of Italian food we’d ordered.
Now that I’d gotten used to being a vampire and how my hunger for blood worked, I’d somehow gotten less sensitive to the scent of human foods. I could even enjoy the scent a little now, especially if it was something I’d liked before.
As I watched them eat and chat, I was glad to know my mother well enough to be certain that she wasn’t going to crash this party.
Because there was no way Nonna hadn’t told her when we were arriving.
Nonna would’ve been celebrating and, knowing her, probably rubbing it in a little, the fact that I was visiting her and not my own parents.
After the painful call with my mother, I’d finally accepted what I’d known even before I was turned: my mother wasn’t going to be part of my life if I chose to live as another species instead of succumbing to the illness that had tried its damnedest to take me out.
If I’d died, my parents would’ve celebrated my life as an esteemed musician—something they had never quite liked me being—and given interviews, probably written a memoir or something just to cash in somewhere down the line.
I didn’t hate them. They’d been good parents in a lot of ways. They just had never understood the one child they had, and that was tragic for all of us.
I’d zoned out, so the silence made me jerk back into the present. “Huh?” I looked at the people who were the closest to my heart. Only Rian was missing.
“We were just talking about how happy we are that you’re still around,” Ben said, smiling at me with the corners of his eyes crinkling in an attractive way.
I ducked my head and felt slight warming of my cheeks—a testament of how well-fed I was now.
I cleared my throat. “Nonna, you should come visit us at the pack house at some point. Maybe in the summer?”
She looked thoughtful for a moment, then delighted. “Oh, all that nature! Yes. I think I’d like that.”
I had enough cousins to know that some of them and their kids would probably make her schedule pretty tight for the summer break, but maybe a long weekend would be doable.
We spent most of the early evening with her, just chatting, having more coffee, and playing some board games. She showed off the house and made me uncomfortable with the praise she gave me for making sure it stayed in good condition even with her small income.
Then, as we were about to leave, my cell rang and I smiled. “Sorry, it’s Marissa, let me take this.”
I walked back to the kitchen to talk with her without grandma hearing. Max and Ben wouldn’t listen in, they had better manners, not that it really mattered. I’d tell them everything anyway.
“Hey, you,” I said as I leaned my butt on the edge of the counter.
“Hey. So, I ended up having a few hours free tonight after all. Do you want to meet at the hotel bar and not drink?”
I laughed. “Of course. We’re just leaving Nonna’s now. Give me an hour or so?”
“I’ll answer emails if I get there before you. See you in a bit!” Her voice was so damn familiar, and it hit me that I hadn’t seen her since we parted ways when I escaped the chaos after Will’s death.
I went back to the others, where Nonna was hugging the stuffing out of my men.
They both were a bit flustered at the maternal affection, and I put my jacket on while they talked about staying in touch. They’d exchanged numbers, and I felt like there was some plotting that would lead to, but I couldn’t have been more excited.
“Okay. We should go.” The car was there. I pulled Nonna into a hug and squeezed her. “I love you, and I’ll see you in the summer, okay?”
“Yes. And we will video call. And I will send care packages for your pack.”
I knew better than to tell her not to do that. She was the queen of care packages. “Sounds good.”
“You did good with these two, tesoro,” she said, patting my cheek.
“Oh, I know.” I grinned and kissed her cheek.
We left the house and got into the car. I looked at the guys and they both seemed pleased but also a bit stunned.
Chuckling, I said, “I’m not going to even ask what these expressions are about.” I gestured at their faces.
Ben shook his head and grinned. “She’s great. We’re not….”
“Used to this sort of thing. But she’s awesome,” Max concluded.
“She is,” I agreed, smiling at them. “And she’s right. I did good.”
Max blushed and Ben kissed my cheek.
“So did we,” Ben murmured.
“Hey, so Marissa has time to meet after all, so I’ll go chat with her at the hotel bar for a while,” I said casually. “I’m sure you two can figure out how to entertain each other while I’m there.”
Max let out a choked little sound, then coughed.
Ben chuckled under his breath and shook his head. “I’m sure we can.”
Iwent to the bar where I spotted Marissa at a quiet corner table, tapping away on her phone. As soon as she saw me, she beamed and got to her feet.
We exchanged a long, tight hug, then sat down.
“It’s so good to see you,” she choked out through tears that she was furiously dabbing away with a napkin. “You look so healthy!”
“Yes, turns out vampirism does that to a person,” I deadpanned.
She kicked my ankle under the table, something she’d done numerous times in the past when I was being a brat.
Something about that familiar gesture did it to my tear ducts, which promptly opened and then we sobbed together for a while. I was glad we were in a tucked away spot so others didn’t get a view into our moment.
“Okay, enough of that,” she finally said after a while and dug out a little mirror from her purse to check her makeup that was still pretty much intact.
“Someone needs to give your mascara manufacturer a prize,” I teased, even though I was glad I hadn’t worn eyeliner today.
“Oh shush.” She snapped the mirror closed and put it back, then looked at me. “I got a call from Thorne yesterday right after the press thing.”
I grinned. “Surprise.”
She snorted softly. “Yeah. He wasn’t best pleased with you, but they never would’ve been.”
“How’re the others?” I asked. She was in closer contact with Mila and Q than me, even though I’d had some text exchanges with them both, and a three-way call when I’d told them about the presser.
“They’re good. Stable. Figuring shit out.” She reached to take my hand and squeezed my fingers. It was funny that her body temperature matched mine now. She’d always felt cooler before. “But you look outright radiant.”
I ducked my head and scratched the back of my neck. “I guess being healthy and having a stable pack around me has helped.”
She smiled. “And being madly in love.”
Chuckling, I nodded. “That, too.”
“How are they?”
I took my phone out and showed her a selfie of the three of us on a bed the other morning. We were all shirtless, sleep rumpled, but smiling and looking deliriously happy.
“Oh, no words needed,” she said approvingly. “Gorgeous wolves.”
We chatted for a while longer about the band and the pack, then she asked the question I’d been sort of dreading.
“What do you think about music? Making it again?”
I sighed. “I don’t know. It feels….” I was quiet for a while, staring into the middle distance. “I destroyed Dolly.”
She gasped. She hadn’t known that. “Oh gods, Luca.”
I snorted self-deprecatingly. “I did all the stupid things anyone would’ve expected, right? Destroyed my favorite guitar and shaved my head.”
She frowned and took my hand again. “First of all, you were allowed to let the emotions out. You were heading downhill in so many ways. None of what happened was fair.” She squeezed tightly until I looked at her.
“But secondly, and I hate to say this because nothing is going to bring Will back and I feel shitty even saying this, but maybe it was time for you guys to stop. I wish it wasn’t like this, of course, but you were all burned out. ”
She wasn’t wrong there. I’d realized that during my talks with Rian over the past six months.
“I know. On some level I think the cancer was my body’s way of saying enough is enough.”
She hummed. “Might be. I know stress does a lot of weird things to human bodies and you were on the road or in the studio for years without ever really taking a substantial break.”
We’d been on the label’s hamster wheel since we were eighteen. That was almost eight years. It was a long time to not just stop and take an extended break, and by extended I meant more than a couple of weeks we’d gotten a few times during those years.
“So, I don’t know about music right now.” I also didn’t have a guitar.
Her face went through a journey. Sort of a wince or a cringe as she pulled her hand back.
“What?” I asked. I’d never known her to not speak her mind.
“Rian told me you’ve been humming a lot more lately.”
I went still. It was as if my brain screeched to a halt. I had?
“He wasn’t snitching on you or anything. We just message sometimes randomly. We kind of became friends during everything that was going on last year.”
“No… I… that’s not it.” I frowned, trying to understand how I could’ve been humming when I didn’t realize it myself. “Max and Ben haven’t said anything.”
She tilted her head, thinking hard. “Would they have? If they thought you didn’t want to address it?”
She was right. “No. They wouldn’t.”
“All I’m saying is this, as your friend, not as your former handler and current manager.” She grinned a little. “Don’t close yourself off in any way. Music might feel too painful right now, but if melodies are coming to you, eventually write something down just to see if it feels good again.”
“Okay. I promise to try. I’ll tell the guys to remind me if I hesitate.” Because sometimes I might need a push.
We chatted for a while longer, and then I checked the time. Somehow we’d been talking for two hours.
“I need to call my regular donor for a bite,” she said as we started to get ready to leave.
I smirked. “And I’m gonna go see if my men have any energy left for me.”
She made a face. “Now that is unfair. I can’t find one person to keep and you have two.”
“Well, you can’t have one of mine and you’ll find yours eventually.” She was great. I was sure her person would come along eventually.
“From your mouth to the universe’s ears or something like that,” she murmured as we hugged.
We promised to keep in touch, and I headed upstairs to my wolves.
They were very well sated when I got there but insisted on taking care of me in all the ways, too. For hours. I did not complain one bit.