Chapter 15

Luca

“I t’s just sex. Just Sex. I’m not in love. I’m not in love. I am not in love.”

“Excellent. Now one more time with feeling.”

“It’s just sex. I am not in love … ‘cept maybe I am a bit.”

“Ughh,” I swore I could have heard Anabela’s groan across oceans, without the aid of a phone. “Luca, only a few weeks ago you were desperately in love with that bitch, Clara. Remember her? The one you were about to marry before she scuttled off with your teammate. The one whose sluttiness sent you into a depressive tailspin that almost cost you your career?”

“Oh. Yeah.” I scratched my chin. “Thanks for reminding me. You’re right. None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for Clara. I should send her a present. Maybe a miniature donkey. She always wanted one of them.”

A long pause filled with heavy, angry-sounding breathing followed. “For fuck’s sake, Luca. You are not in love with a nameless Australian you’ve tongue fucked twice, and you are not sending a miniature horse to Clara.”

“Donkey.”

“What?”

“I was thinking of sending her a miniature donkey. Not a horse.”

Another pause. “Oh my god, it doesn’t matter. The point is you are not in love with this Australian and you were not in love with Bitchface.”

“Clara,” I again corrected. “And even though I am over her and am now in love with Miss Hart, you still shouldn’t talk about her like that. What we shared was special.” No reply came. No breathing either. “Ana. You still there, Ana?” I pulled the phone from my ear and stared at the screen. Yep. She’d hung up on me.

Probably deserved that.

Letting the phone slip from my hand, I rolled onto my belly, the residual sweat from my earlier workout squelching against the mat.

Nate had been kind enough to let me use his home gym. It was a bit light in the weight department, but it would do until I returned home. Which was supposed to be in just two weeks but became three thanks to my non-stop begging of Ted and Ash. The night I’d spent with Princess at the bar, watching her charm the pants of customers, her sexy fingers as she taught me some signs, her mouth as she laughed at my cornball jokes, had me working on four.

Coach Brown was more than happy to extend my leave once I’d emailed him the rehab training program that Tori, the team’s physical therapist, had me following, not to mention the diet from hell our team nutritionist created. Strict macros, Pilates, and my new addiction to beach cricket with the guys weren’t the only things that convinced him. He could hear the change in my tone, the lightness of my spirit. Equally, I could hear the relief in his, especially when he ended the call with, “Good to have you back, kid. You had me worried.”

Though I didn’t want to admit it, I’d had me worried too.

Hmm.

Maybe that was why Ana was so upset with me about Clara. I had lost the plot after she tore my heart out.

Hmm.

Suddenly, I was tired. Thinking too much often did that. What I needed was a boost. A dopamine boost. And I knew the perfect place to find it … if I could convince her to see me again … and find a ride.

As a sign that my luck was beginning to turn, a deep voice appeared from nowhere. “Luca, dude. Evie, Teddy, Ash, and I are taking the kidlets into town to get waffles. Wanna come?”

I sure do.

Byron Bay, the former hippie haven turned Hollywood hideout, was busy as always as all nine of us squashed into three tables that Evie pushed together. The flustered waiters tried to say no. They lost.

“Fuck, you’re sexy when you get all riled up, Eves.” Nate swooned, sucking on his wife’s neck for all to see.

“Stop fuck—I mean, stop swearing in front of the babies, Nate … but thanks.” Their cuddles continued, as did Teddy and Asher’s, who were all over each other, too. Even the big twins left me hanging, each of them was fussing over the little twins in their pram.

I was the ninth wheel … till I was the eleventh. The squealing of yet another table across the laminate floor signaled the arrival of Scarlett and Finn sans kids. Another perfect couple. Great.

Watching on as love bloomed around me and picturing myself here one day with Jasmine Poppy Hart was inevitable. I would be hand-feeding her waffles covered in berries and syrup. They might even have a light dusting of confectioner’s sugar that would leave a cute little mustache on her perfect cupid’s bow that I could clean up with kisses. Our raven-haired babes, fitted out with Islander’s caps on their little heads and their baby skates on their tiny feet, would be balanced on her lap. The image was so powerful, so real, the reason why they would be wearing skates at the beach seemed irrelevant.

“Luca are you crying?” snorted Evie.

“What? No. Of course not. What would I be crying about?” I replied in the manliest way possible while drying my eyes with my palms. At least their ensuing laughter stopped the love fests long to enough order.

“Guys,” giggled Teddy, mirth swimming in his eyes, “Did you hear about Luca and his mysterious Sydney girl? The one he had a three—” He stopped and looked at the big twins, who waved before returning to their coloring. “The one he had special three people cuddles with and is now obsessed with. Well, despite the fact she stood him up on their planned second cuddle time during the football weekend, he stalked her good and proper. He failed to find her but did find her friend who he forced into his evil scheme of seduction.”

“Yeah. None of that is accurate.” I insisted, knowing none of the people listening with mouths agape cared for my opinion.

“Well, guess what?” Ted continued, “The friend, possibly fearful for her own safety, squealed like a piggy and revealed that the mystery girl … Is. From. Byron.”

Scarlett gave her best ear-splitting pig impersonation, while Nate dropped his wife’s hands to slap his against the table. “Noooo.”

“Ah-huh. Yup, it’s true. They met up at her work and shag—” Another look to the twins. “Cuddled on her father’s desk. He almost caught them. Then Luca was forced to pretend he had a fern kink to impress him.”

Fully invested in story time with Teddy time, Nate and Scarlett gasped again, but Evie caught on to one particular point. “Wait. Did you say her dad had ferns?”

I nodded and was about to dive into my overnight research on the medicinal qualities of maidenhair ferns when, suddenly, all the air was knocked out of my lungs. Before my very eyes, a vision, an angel in a skimpy white crop top, and the devil’s black bicycle shorts appeared before me. Her dark locks, twisted into an ass-skimming braid, trailed behind her like a veil. Her lips, ruby red.

“Holy shit,” Teddy yelled as he jumped to his feet, sending his chair smashing into the ground. “Look at his face. It’s her. Luca, that’s Jasmine, isn’t it?”

I could only nod because the racket my most unsubtle friend created had caught her attention. Through a sea of people devouring their eggs, pancakes, and waffles, our eyes met. Heat crackled between us as the lips I couldn’t stop thinking about curled into a sexy smirk, turning my bones to jello and my dick to stone. For a perfect moment in time, it was just me and her.

“What the fucking fuck? That’s not Jasmine. That’s that skank, Polly.”

“Gidge, No.” Drawing my eyes from Jasmine, no, Polly, was Nate, diving to his right, and wrapping his long arms around his tiny wife’s waist, pinning her to her seat. Finn then completed the takedown, piling on top of him to bring her under some semblance of control.

“Polly?” I felt the words leave my lips but couldn’t comprehend their meaning. “My girl, is your Polly?”

“She’s not my Polly,” Evie barked as she wriggled and scratched, “and if you’ve got any brains in that pretty head of yours, she won’t be yours either.”

The short-on-facts tale, but graphic illustrations Teddy had so enthusiastically and unnecessarily drawn mid-flight played in my mind like a late-night horror marathon. And not just because of the graphic nudity of his depictions. Polly had slept with Evie’s high school boyfriend the same day they broke up. Then, years later wielding cruel, demeaning taunts, she tried to do the same thing with Nate. After a childhood spent watching a master manipulate and carve chaos through my mother’s life, I had no tolerance for liars. Hated cheaters.

Teddy’s version of events had to be wrong. That couldn’t be my princess. Couldn’t be the girl who captured my imagination. But then I remembered Anabela’s words: ‘You’re not in love with an Australian you’ve tongue fucked twice.’

When Clara left me at the altar, she made me believe I was a trusting, self-destructive fool who’d spent a year and a half chasing shadows at midnight.

Polly had confirmed it.

Christ. I’d thought of myself falling in love but until seconds ago, I didn’t know her name. I didn’t know her at all.

It was too much to process too quickly and when I was finally able to raise my eyes she was gone.

“That chick’s got more front than Myer. I can’t believe she’s back … and that she would come to Glutton. She knows it’s Evie’s favorite breakfast place.”

As with most things Australians said, I had no clue what that meant, but what I did know was that Finn was pissed. From what I’d seen of him thus far, Finn Austen was a mild—albeit sexy—beast of a man who wouldn’t harm a fly. But his protective side was on show as he drove me, Teddy, and Asher home, while Scarlett did the same for Evie, Nate, and the babies. Apparently, it was the safest option. All genuinely feared if Finn drove his sister her would say something stupid, but also knew if left alone, Evie may abscond and hunt Polly down. This way, Nate could restrain Evie in the back seat and Scarlett could provide words of wisdom. Or know when to shut up.

For the twenty minutes we had been on the road, Finn had been giving us American visitors the full—stick-figure sex poses free—rundown.

Neighbors their whole lives, Nate had been in love with Evie for the majority of that time, and though she would never admit it, Evie was much the same. When Polly realized how deep the two’s feelings ran, she did everything to break them apart. She even went as far as sleeping naked next to a drunken Nate, knowing that Evie would discover them.

“Why would she go to those lengths, though?” I asked, poking my head between the two front seats as we turned off the highway and bumped our way down the long dirt drive that led to the Myers’ property. “She’s a beautiful girl who could get any guy she wanted.”

“That’s not the point, mate,” Finn said, releasing his grip on the wheel to tap his temple. “You’re not thinking bunny boiler enough. Any guy was too easy and involved too little emotional torture. She wanted to inflict pain. She wanted to cause trouble. She didn’t want any guy. She wanted Evie’s.”