AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My stomach rumbles and I feel red spread across my cheeks.
“When was the last time you ate? Besides the garbage twinkies you eat?” Luca asks, perching himself on an elbow.
“Hey! I’ll have you know they offer some kind of nutrition. However, I’m feeling generous and will make you a fair deal. I’ll give them up when you take up seafood again.”
His expression twists and I throw my head back and laugh. That’s when I notice Luca watching me, all seriousness and like he’s about to take on an army. “What is it?” I ask.
He seems unsure of himself. It’s the first time I’ve seen that expression on him. “I was just thinking I’d never heard you genuinely laugh before. You should try it more often.”
An unsettling tension runs between us. Too close. Too familiar. Too vulnerable. Parts of me are slipping through a crack when he was only ever meant to see that mask I’ve carefully built over the years.
“I could say the same to you.”
He kicks up a slow arrogant smile and I’m grateful for the way it shifts the unease sitting in my chest. “Or perhaps we were meant to be two miserable bastards together. Now come on.” He scoops me up close to his chest. I’m wearing nothing but one of his dress shirts that reaches to my knees.
“What are we doing?” I ask.
“Feeding you of course.” He says casually as he confidently strides towards the kitchen and places me on one of the island bar stools.
When I look at the clock it’s three in the morning. “At this hour?”
He shifts through the oversized kitchen and it looks like he’s discovering things in his own pantry. “Have you ever actually used this kitchen before or are all of your meals made for you?”
Luca casually shrugs as he finds flour. “I’ve cooked here once or twice. I’ll meet you halfway with your sweet tooth.”
I watch him incredulously as he pulls out certain ingredients. There’s something novel about watching a man of this size and power shuffling around the kitchen. My gaze roams down his wide shoulders and lands on his ass. This man.
“Stop staring at my ass, Ara, or we’re never going to get through cooking this.”
Biting my bottom lip is the only way I can keep the smile in. Once Luca’s placed the ingredients on the bench and starts throwing them in together, I take a guess. “Pancakes?”
“Correct,” he confirms as he starts mixing the batter.
I’m squinting at him so hard in disbelief and waiting for the real Luca to come out or the magician to appear. However, he’s deadly serious.
“How did you learn how to make pancakes?” I ask, incredulously.
He shrugs, nonchalant. “I remember making them with my mother the first time when I was six. Apparently, it was the same recipe her mother taught her. I never forgot.”
My heart falters. I want to ask him so many questions, but I know the moment I do he’ll shut it down. Because we’re still the very same people who have the potential to ruin one another. The one thing I can’t hate Luca for is the connection we share in both grieving our mothers.
I wonder had she not died if Luca would be any different. If my mother hadn’t died, I am certain I’d be different. Perhaps that was just an excuse for my sly and cunning personality. Maybe I would’ve always been this person with or without her influence.
“Tell me about your mother,” I say quietly because I’m not entirely sure he’ll reply.
His blue gaze crashes with mine. I think he’s about to shut me down, but I’m surprised by the brutal honesty that follows while he still goes about his domesticated task.
“There’s not much to say really. She was the opposite to my father. Kind and generous but could be just as ruthless especially when it came to her family. But I’d never seen her handle a weapon. She didn’t have need for that when our father acted as the shield. The only thing he couldn’t protect her from was terminal cancer.”
It hurts to see how matter of fact he is about it. As if he wasn’t personally affected by it as a child. “She got the diagnosis a year after Dario was born and no matter what we tried, her condition became worse and she passed away after two years.”
“The only ones who cried at her funeral were her sister and Dario. I stood by my father, trying to impress him by how cold I could be as well. Because although I feared my father at times when I was a child, I saw how others respected him.”
A lump lodges in my throat at the memory of my own mother’s funeral. My father hadn’t cried either and I remember him being furious when I clung to her coffin, fearful to truly let her go. Luca’s able to talk about the loss so clinically, with no emotional attachment. As if reading my mind he adds.
“The truth was the house was never the same without her. Our father shaped us however he pleased. And that was into a weapon.”
It’s so dysfunctional that I want to give him a hug but there’s no pain in his voice, no physical reaction to his loss. It almost felt inhumane how detached he was from the situation. I remind myself that we were raised in very different worlds.
