24. Luc
24
LUC
GUNKLES
“ O h my god!” Jess melts into Kane’s lap. “You guys hid all of this from the rest of us! What the hell, Luc!”
“Well… Kari wasn’t wrong about the dead-Luca-when-Marc-finds-out thing.” I look down at a sweet, sleeping Billy and grin. “So I was in her face. Making a scene and working to force her hand. But I knew I had to be discreet, too. I wasn’t ready to spill my shit to Marcus before I even had Kari on side.”
“Did she kiss you then and there?” Jess wraps her arm around Kane’s neck and smooshes her cheek to his. “Was that where things turned around for you?”
I snort and remember back to that day. The sunburn I went home with. The stomachache I walked around with for days after. And then I remember her hand in my face, her knuckles bruising my skin. “I’m not saying she punched me,” I chuckle. “But I am saying she pressed her fist to my cheek and pushed me back.”
Kane snorts. “She decked you, bro.”
“More like…” I bring my free hand up and touch my cheek, right where she did that one time. “Shoved me. Forcefully. She didn’t kiss me. And she sure as shit didn’t fall into my arms and declare her love.”
“You bombed out,” Kane sniggers. “You gotta get slicker than that. Declaring your love was the wrong move. Instead, you trick her into bed. Once they figure that out, it’s all over. ”
I look at my sister, cuddled into his chest, and sneer. “Gross.”
“Tried and true,” he taunts. “Tried. And. True.”
“Stop talking now.” Jess plants her elbow into his stomach until he lets out a muffled grunt. Then she looks at me expectantly. “She left you at the lake, longing for her to love you back?”
“That was the problem. She did love me. And that inability to turn it off is what hurt her.”
J ess, Laine, and Britt are at Alex’s place tonight. Making a mess. Making noise. They let him cook for them, because they long ago perfected that princess energy, and he’s nothing if not a simp for the girls.
He sourced an air conditioner for their apartment about twenty-three seconds after he found out they wanted one. Then he and Oz sweated their way through installing the machine and securing the apartment so the girls would still be safe and the window, lockable.
But while he and the girls are busy watching the Titanic —extended edition—and eating enough ice cream to make them all fat, I get myself across town.
Because apparently Kari forfeited dinner in favor of date night with Blake .
Because he’s in town now, ready to set up his life and hopefully—if he can manage it—work out of the same hospital Kari does.
Too bad for him, he doesn’t know X, and X isn’t inclined to open doors for some dude whose nickname is Ten .
I pull up outside the girls’ apartment, the lights inside switched on and the blinds closed. Though the summer is still clinging to our side of the world, which means the sun is still up.
But Kari’s apartment is closed up, which means the air conditioner is on and the inside will be blissfully cool.
Fuck knows who the girls think will pay their electricity bill.
But that’s a problem for next month.
I kick the stand down on my bike and lean the machine to the side until it’s steady, then bringing my leg across the tattered leather seat, I stand tall on the hard packed dirt and turn to study the apartment that smells of flowers already. Perfume. Cookies .
Shacking four girly women up in one building and expecting them not to girl all over the place is like filling a room with shit and not expecting it to stink.
It’s impossible.
But I can’t find a single slice of my soul that minds the perfumes and flowers and the all-encompassing fragrance that hits a man in the face, even all the way back on the street.
I like how it smells.
Dropping my hands into my pockets, and with them, my keys, I lower my head and start toward the concrete stairs at the front. A beat-up Camry sits in the driveway. A car I haven’t seen except one other time in my life, parked on the street in front of a packed Thai restaurant.
I didn’t know then that Blake owned it. But now, the evidence is clear.
Worse, he’s here, and Marc’s certainty that he’s as straight as a pretzel quivers in the back of my mind. What if Blake is actually into women? What if he’s actually into Kari? And what if, right now, they’re up there doing what couples actually do when they have time alone after a few days apart?
My palms slick with sweat, and the closer I come to the front door, the harder my heart pounds with hesitation. Could I see her with him again and not lose my mind? Will my memory be branded with a new trauma and my soul, shredded just a little more?
My phone vibrates in my back pocket. A call demanding my attention. A chance, possibly, for me to turn around and walk away before I make things worse. The universe may be offering me this out before I kill a man and destroy the future I want so badly with Kari.
But I ignore the olive branch offered.
I cast aside the mercies the universe might be trying to shove in my way. And instead, I clamp my lips shut and stomp up the front stairs to the door Kari hides behind.
Maybe he’s there. And maybe they’re fucking around. My heavy footsteps, at least, will alert them to put some clothes on.
It’s the least I can ask for.
“What the—” Kari’s voice dances on the gentle breeze. Her question beats out even the drone of the air conditioner that spits boiling air from a motor working triple time to cool an apartment. I don’t even have to knock once I arrive at the top of the stairs because my steps are as loud as a fist banging on the door, and because they are, Kari shoves her blinds aside and stares out the window .
She searches for only a second. A single, tiny beat of my heart. Then her eyes lock on to mine and narrow.
“Luca! Go away.”
“Let me in, Bear.” She’s dressed. She’s decent. And she’s still pissed. I can work with that . “I want to come in and hang out.”
“You are clearly delusional!” She glances over her shoulder, reacting when a deep male voice questions my presence. Gay, straight or something else, the dude would surely know who the fuck I am. No way he’s sleeping over in an apartment with Kari, Britt, and the twins, and they haven’t mentioned me. “If you don’t leave,” she brings her focus back, “I’m gonna call the cops!”
“Do it.” I come to a stop by the door and rest on my heels. “X is cooking dinner for the twins right now. Bet he’d love to take your call.”
“I’ll call the station, stupid! X is not on duty, which means I’ll get one of the others. Bet they’d love to arrest you.”
“So make the call.” I lift my shoulders and shrug, smiling when her eyes narrow to dangerous slits. “Libby’s on duty, I think. She and I have always been pals.” Ish . Mostly, I think, she tolerates me, and when I’m riding my bike across town, she gives my un-helmeted head a beady stare. “Call the cops, Bear. Or open the door and let me in. I wanna talk.”
“I’m not letting you in! I have guests right now!”
“Your guest is Blake, and I assure you, he won’t mind that I’m here.”
“You’re incredibly rude!” she snarls. “I get an hour alone. One hour! Before the girls are back and this apartment is overflowing with estrogen again. I have no desire to spend that hour with anyone except my boyfriend.”
Alright. Fine. Now you’ve done it.
I bring my hands out of my pockets and jangle the keys connected to a keyring I’ve had since my first bike. I spy the shiny, newest addition and look past it to Kari. “I can let myself in, Bear. Or you can open the door. Don’t make me be that guy.” I peek over my shoulder at the street and pray no one overhears this shit. “Don’t make me let myself in.”
“How the hell did you get keys?” She pushes away from the window, tossing the blinds back in place so they hit the glass with a hollow clatter. Then she stomps her ass across the apartment and yanks the front door open. Thank the good lord because the air conditioner motor is practically melting the skin from my bones. Shooting her hand forward, palm side up, she sneers. “Give me every single key you have to my apartment.”
“No thanks.” But I stalk forward, forcing her to get handsy if she wants to stop me. I slip through the gap between her supple body and the doorframe, then I step into air-conditioned bliss, stopping in the middle of the living room and coming eye to eye with a dude way taller than me.
It’s not that I’m small. I stand at a few inches over six feet, and my broad shoulders mean I weigh in at a healthy hundred and ninety ish pounds. But Blake is large. The dude is closing in on seven feet, with long, spindly arms and legs. He, too, would weigh in under two hundred pounds. He’s just leaner than your average monster.
“Luc Lenaghan.” His voice is deep, gritty, almost like he smokes a pack a day and chews glass for dessert. Of all the men, on the entire planet, he’s not the type I would expect Kari to aim for when she’s dating. But he offers his hand, and for that, I suppose, I can respect him. “Blake.”
“You’ve heard of me.” I ignore Kari and step closer until our hands clap together in a slow, firm shake. “She tell you she’s gonna marry me someday?”
Kari gasps by the door, slamming it shut in anger. “Luc!”
“She told me you broke her heart.” He squeezes me, risking my career and my limb, when he tightens his grip and refuses to let go. “She said you did some pretty gnarly shit, and so, if I happen to be holding a shotgun when I see you…”
“She’d be sad if I died.” I pull my hand free of his grip, wiping my palm on the leg of my jeans. Then I grin. Because he’s protective of her. Like a brother is of his baby sister. He’s not banging her. “I’ve made it a mission, actually, Blake, to win her back now that she’s in town again. It’d be a lie if I said you being here wasn’t a wrench in my plans.”
“Perhaps that’s why I’m here, then.” He sets his hands on his hips and studies me. “Maybe she doesn’t want to be won back.”
“She’s still really mad at me.” I peek over my shoulder and find a seething Kari, practically billowing steam from her ears. Then I bring my focus back to Blake. “ Really mad. Because she’s a proud woman, and I’m an asshole who messed up. But,” I interject when Kari scoffs. It’s not a friendly scoff. But rather, one that precedes a steak knife in my back. “I was just a boy back then. Older than her, certainly, but with minimal life experience. I was doing the best I could with the tools I’d been given. I?—”
“You sent me away!” Kari sneers. “Cruelly.”
“You were a child!” Fuck it. I turn my back on Blake and duke it out with the one who needs to hear it most. “You need to stop with the victim mentality and take a little responsibility for yourself, Bear! Yes, I sent you away. But had I not, then I would have been consenting to a grown ass man dating a girl who was, just a month or two prior, a child.”
“I was eighteen!”
“And before that, you were seventeen. And before that, sixteen, fifteen, and stretching all the way back to six. Whine all you want, but the fact that I knew you when you were seven, and kissing you when you were three minutes past eighteen, screams grooming to me.”
“Grooming?” Her nose wrinkles with anger. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Maybe I know the truth. And maybe you knew the situation differently. But if you’d stayed and we were together, all anyone in this town would have seen was a grown man and a girl who was once young and vulnerable.”
“You’re insane!”
“I was being sensible. I was saving you from the choices you were making. I was saving me from having a shotgun shoved up my asshole. And I was saving us both from the teenage bullshit relationships go through.” I stalk toward her, staring down into her moist eyes. “I was not gonna spend a year with you, Bear, then have us fizzle out because the spark had worn off and suddenly, you’re wondering if maybe you chose wrong.”
“You continue to think you get to make the choices for us both!” She presses her palms to my chest and shoves me back. Except, I’m heavier than her, so it’s she who moves. “Dammit, Luc! You don’t get to plan my life out and expect me to be your little puppet, moving where and when you tell me to move.”
“Seems I do. Because you were so fucking focused on the now of everything, you never once stopped to think about the later .”
“There is no later! There’s nothing. Because you sent me away and life moved on.”
“Kari—”
“This wasn’t something that happened last month. Or even last year. It’s not like we had a huge fight a week ago, and now you’re here in my home, begging for another chance. This is all ancient history!”
My heart splinters in my chest, aching and bleeding.
“It’s been six years,” she groans. “An entire quarter of my life. I’ve changed since then.”
“Kari—”
“You’ve changed,” she whimpers. “Our lives have changed. It’s like you thought everything could be paused and I would go away for a few years. Age up a little. And when I reached a certain number of birthdays that would please you, then you could un -pause and we’d continue on. But that’s not how life goes. You don’t get to mess with people like that.”
“Give me a chance! Meet me, now, as an adult. Spend time with me. I dare you to do that and still deny loving me.”
“I do love you.” Her eyes spill over, fat, heartbreaking tears dribbling onto her cheeks and down to the edge of her jaw. “That’s the problem, Luc. But that doesn’t mean you get a free pass to break me, time and time again. I already gave you my heart, but you didn’t take care of it.”
“I was doing the best I could,” I groan. “But saving you from yourself, and caring for your heart, were two separate missions. Sometimes, they required opposite actions.”
“And now I’m dating someone else.” She gestures toward Blake, who just… hovers. Listens. Watches. “Six years, Luc. And he hasn’t made me cry once.”
Six years , I internally sigh. And I continue to make her cry .
“Are you dating him because you love him?”
“Am I…” Her eyes glisten with pain. “What?”
“Are you in love with him? Or is he safe? Is he protective and harmless and kind, and now you’re clinging to him the same way you clung to a soft, pink blanket that first day you walked into my life?”
Her jaw quivers. “Stop it.”
“Answer my fucking question!” But I step to the left so I can see him, too. “Are you dating Kari because you’re a man attracted to women, and you genuinely see a future with her? Or is she a cute little lamb you like to protect? She’s so fucking sweet, so friendly and undemanding, considering she’s in love with me, anyway, that she becomes the perfect side piece for you to keep around. She’s witty and silly, so it’s not like it’s hard to spend time with her. And she’s so beautiful, any man would be thrilled to have her around.”
“Luc!”
I stare into Blake’s eyes and already know the truth. “If you think I don’t already know the answer, then you’re kidding yourself.” I look back at Kari. “He can be your second best friend for the rest of your life, Bear. Bring him to our home for dinner every single Sunday night. He can be the godfather to our child and the fun uncle. I don’t even mind. I’m not in competition with him, and I won’t cast him aside because I want to call you mine.” I grab her jaw and hold her still when she tries to turn away. “But he will always only ever be your second best friend. Because I’m first. I refuse to accept anything less. ”
“You refuse to listen to me when I tell you I’m not interested.”
“Babe…” I stare into her dancing, devastated eyes, and shake my head. “You admit you still love me. That’s not not interested. ”
“It’s a trauma bond. It’s PTSD. It’s not affection.”
“Liar.” I lean closer, guilt stabbing at my heart when her lungs stumble and her breath comes out on choppy exhales. But I don’t kiss her. I don’t even rest my forehead on hers like I did last time I saw her. “I’m gonna make it right, Bear. Because you have my heart and I have yours. We’re both a little bruised and battered right now. We’re both hurting. But I swear, I’ll make it right.”
“I’d rather you just stopped. Give me mercy and leave me alone.”
“I can’t.” I press my cheek to hers and just… hug. Sort of. I close my eyes and breathe her in. “I can’t let you go. So I’m gonna convince you to be brave instead.”
“I’m gonna keep arguing with you.”
I choke out a small, soft laugh. “I like it when you argue. It’s way better than seeing you hurt.” Slowly, I pull back. “Will you invite me to stay for dinner? I don’t even mind if Blake is our third.”
She shakes her head, her cheeks warming and her eyes dancing. “I’m not inviting you to dinner with me and my boyfriend.”
“It was worth a shot.” Turning, I meet his stare and offer my hand once more. “It was nice to officially meet you, bro. Thanks for being her friend these last few years. I appreciate that she was able to find someone who made her feel safe.”
“And you just…” he takes my hand, less squeezy this time, “assume we haven’t had a wild, heated love affair these last few years?”
“If you had, you’d have picked my ass up and tossed me onto the street ten minutes ago. Additionally, I don’t think heterosexual men call it a heated love affair unironically.” I release his hand and smirk. “You’re gonna be a great uncle to my kids someday.”
“You just…” He puffs his cheeks wide. “You leapfrog all the way to the finish line, and she’s still back near the start, stalled out and hoping for an ambo evac.”
“Good thing I know how to get me an ambulance, huh?” I clap his shoulder and turn to a silent, boiling Kari. “He’s cool. We can keep him around. I don’t mind.”
“You’re an ass. Dismissive and rude.”
“Dismissive? I just invited him to dinner every Sunday for the rest of our lives! Do you want me to name our son after him, too?”