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“He’s a dark motherfucker, which is why I thought you’d get on well. I didn’t count on happy Colt making a grand reappearance.”
“A grand reappearance,” I mutter. “Ruby has made you smarter.”
He grins. “That was a phrase from her essay, actually. I guess it stuck.”
“Yeah, she’s been into history since she was a kid, right?” I say, thinking of what Lexi said.
Luca looks at me oddly. I’ve given myself away, maybe in my tone. “What do you know about that?”
I swallow. “It’s just… what I heard.”
“Don’t be so damn cryptic, Colt. Just say whatever you want to say.”
“I’d need you to promise you can’t tell Ruby.”
“You can’t ask me to promise to keep secrets from my wife.”
“Only until… I know it’s real, and I’m sure she feels the same.”
Luca’s eyes narrow. Then he guesses it. I see the moment, his eyes snapping wide, his lips twisting into a smirk and then a frown. “Lexi?” he says.
I nod.
“That’s why you’re so happy?”
I nod again.
Luca runs a hand through his hair, looking so much like Elio for a second. “You need to explain.”
“But I don’t want Ruby to?—”
“If Lexi’s happy, Ruby will be happy, Colt.”
“I think she’s happy,” I say. “This is all so new to her, and she doesn’t know about…”
“The woman before,” Luca says softly.
I grit my teeth, thinking about the photo, the note. Burning them would be the right thing, but it’s my only tie to the past like it ever meant anything anyway.
“It’s not about her,” I tell Luca gravely. “It’s about the kid.”
He runs his hands through his hair again. He knows what I mean. He doesn’t need me to say it. He knows all about that night, the flames, the end of it all.
“So she doesn’t know everything yet,” Luca goes on. “What has happened?”
“It started the night of… You remember the frat house?”
Luca’s expression turns dark for a second. Many people might think he’s some happy-go-lucky guy, and he is, most of the time. Yet that night, he was like a devil, beating the hell out of several men by himself, then doing what had to be done to the congressman’s son.
“I stopped her from going in there. Then, it was like she was a song stuck in my head. I couldn’t forget her. I tried.”
“But why?” Luca says. “If you knew…”
“Because I’m not like you,” I growl. “I didn’t grow up with a mother and father who gave a damn. I didn’t even see people who loved each other before I left home. It was just coldness. Keep your feelings to yourself, and then after, I had to be cold. I still thought I had to until she texted me. Until she changed me.”
“You sound like I did,” Luca mutters. “Maybe there’s just something special about the Fitzgerald sisters.”
“There’s something special about Lexi.”
“How does she feel?”
“The same,” I whisper, my voice husky, returning me to last night. “At least, I think so. It’s good between us. She lied in the beginning, but?—”
“About what?”
“You’re like an old, gossipy woman, Luca.”
He laughs, then feints a right hook to my stomach. I grin and move away. He knows I’m one of the rare people who could get away with making a joke like that to the Marino prince. “She said somebody was following her, but she made it up. She wanted to see me again. I would’ve stayed cold if it weren’t for that text.”
“Elio, me, and now you. All our lives changed with a text.”
“My life hasn’t changed yet,” I say.
“Don’t kid yourself. It sounds like you’re ready to commit to me.”
“After a few days?”
“I knew after a few minutes,” Luca says fiercely. “It was at the gym. Lexi was there with Ruby, but I only had eyes for Ruby. She pulled me out of my darkness, too.”
“I don’t want Ruby to know until Lexi’s ready. I can’t do that for her.”
“I get that.” Luca nods, letting out a breath. “I won’t lie to Ruby, but if she doesn’t ask me about this, I won’t tell her unless I’ve got a reason to. I know she’ll understand. She’ll want me to respect her sister, and I know you, Colt. You’re a good man. I don’t need to worry about you doing right by my sister-in-law.”
“I’ll never let anybody hurt her,” I tell him fiercely. “Trying to hurt her, or even hurting her before we met, even fucking thinking about hurting her, would be the worst mistake a person could ever make.”
Luca looks at me darkly. He understands what I’m saying. As a man capable of extreme, efficient violence, he knows what it would entail. “I don’t doubt it,” he says.
CHAPTER 25
Lexi
I wake to my cell phone ringing, pulling myself sluggishly from a dream. I was back at the edge of the water with Colt, his manhood in my hand, pumping, then watching him get hard again.
