Neither was his sister or her husband, apparently.
Life had a funny way of working, though. He’d learned that especially in the past months as his life seemed to ground to a halt yet it was impossible to ignore the way everyone else kept going on around him. The thing about Luca ...
Well, he was drawn to life.
Always had been.
It was why he lived fast, chased impossible things, and felt most alive next to a woman who the rest of the world said didn’t exist. All of those things gave him a sense of life—of realness. He couldn’t hide away and wallow in a pit of his own misery and hell when life kept drawing him back out into the daylight and fresh air.
Life like his family.
“Thanks again,” Roz said on the back deck where she stood with Luca. “I know it was late notice and—”
“It’s fine,” he was quick to interject, though he didn’t take his eyes off little Cross. His godson kicked the soccer ball from their side of the property to the middle never breaking stride or stumbling over his feet. It was a new thing he seemed to like—Luca had volunteered to coach a team, if needed. “No place I’d rather be.”
The lie came out easy.
There were arms he would rather be wrapped in. A smile he would love to see teasing him again. Blue eyes—cerulean clear—that he could still see when he closed his own haunted his every peaceful moment.
“They haven’t found her, have they?” Roz asked. “Still nothing?”
She had stopped asking after a couple of weeks. He was surprised she even asked now, really. When none of their contacts could find Penny after the declaration of a claimed bounty ... he had started to think that was the point. They didn’t want even her body found.
“Nothing,” he murmured.
And not for a lack of trying.
Except leads ran cold and politics and policies kept them from doing things above board which only made shit harder when they didn’t even know where to begin. A part of him wanted to bring her home—even a piece of her—for his own selfish reasons.
He would never tell his sister that, though. He would never say he kept looking even when he truly believed there was nothing to look for because he needed to have a part of her with him. He didn’t keep looking because Roz wanted closure. He did it for himself.
“But it’s not over,” he added.
More for her benefit than his.
Roz nodded, turning back for the house. Luca pivoted with her if only to make sure she didn’t trip on the damn lip of the back door’s threshold. It wouldn’t be the first time that happened, but he didn’t want to risk her doing it while she was pregnant, too.
“Okay, well, I better get Naz out of the shower, or we’re going to be late for—”
“Penny!”
Luca swung back around at his nephew’s sudden shout. It took him a second to find the form that stumbled out of the treeline at the rear of the property. In his distraction with the conversation, he had missed the fact that Cross had kicked the ball to the other side of the back lawn almost to the trees.
Of course, the boy saw her first.
Luca didn’t wonder if it was Penny—even the messy, ratty black hair would have made someone else pause as far away as he stood. But he didn’t. Every part of him had thought she was dead up until that moment. He’d denied it outwardly to anyone else that asked until he just stopped saying anything at all.
And yet, right then ...
Every part of him knew she was alive.
It was her.
“Oh, my God,” his sister breathed.
Luca didn’t even take the stairs. The running start helped to launch him over the railing of the deck. He hit the ground already running. Roz’s footsteps beat against the wood of the deck’s stairs when he was already halfway across the backyard.
Unfortunately, he also got to watch as Penny’s knees hit the grass, and the red splotch in the front of the loose gown she wore spread wider. Little Cross was already in front of her, his words carrying back in the breeze to Luca’s spot.
“You came back,” he told her.
Penny’s laughter was weak, but real. “Of course, I did.”
“Because you never wanted to leave.”
“Ever.”
“Why are you bleeding?” Cross asked next, his voice pitching higher.
Luca was almost to them, so he was quick to shout, “Go get your father, buddy! Go tell him we need help!”
His nephew didn’t question him. Luca was able to catch Penny as she was falling to the side. Instead of meeting the ground, her shoulder and back tucked along his legs as he wrapped his arms around her. He had a lot of questions, but none of them wanted to come out when tired blue eyes blinked upward and met his.
Instead, he kissed her.
Leaning down, while his sister found the ground beside them and a little boy shouted for his father, he found something beautiful against the lips of his greatest treasure. His impossible wish. He felt her mouth curve against his, and the chapped texture of her lips moved with his. It was only when her damp, dirty hands found the sides of his face that Luca pulled back a bit.
There was too much blood.
He was trying to figure out why.
Then, her trembling fingers ghosted over his smiling lips—because despite the worry and sadness in his heart at seeing her in such a state—he couldn’t help the happiness swelling in his heart, either. For the first time, Luca truly understood what it meant to be overjoyed.
And it was overwhelming.
“What are you doing?” he asked her.
And where the fuck was Naz with help?
Like his sister could read his mind, Roz whispered to Luca, “Cross just got inside—Naz will only be a few more minutes.”
“We need a clean towel—something,” Luca muttered. “Me and Naz can get her in the house but—”
“I’ll run in and find something.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“I’ll be right back, Penny,” Roz told the woman shivering in Luca’s arms.
“I’m fine,” Penny said in a breath that rattled on the exhale, “just tired.”
But that wasn’t good, either. And the bloody gash on her chest was now more visible as she laid in his arms on the damp grass. He was grateful for the privacy of his best friend’s yard and regretted every single thought he’d had earlier about wishing he could be anywhere else.
“I am fine,” she promised. “I haven’t slept in fifty-two hours and—”
“Your chest is bleeding.”
“I shouldn’t have taken the trails. A root caught me when I slipped. That’s all.”
God.
He could laugh.
Her flippant, yet breathless, assurances were crazy. Yet, she made them like she expected no fight from him.
“What are you doing?” he asked her.
She was still touching his lips, the black strands of her faded box-dyed hair sticking to the pale skin of her face and throat. Not once had she looked away from him.
“Anything,” she replied softly. “I want to do everything I couldn’t before.”
He would let her. Hell, he’d be right there doing whatever she wanted with her.
“I kept my promise,” Penny said. “To everyone, Luca. Even you.”