“Is that a shapeshifting cat?” I ask. “Or a cursed former lover?
And then I realize how far gone I am if I believed for a minute that either of those things could be real.
“Somebody’s been reading too many books.” Henri grins at me as the door slams shut behind my bickering relatives.
Her color’s coming back, but that little divot in her throat where her pulse is fluttering is still operating at warp speed.
“You told off my family for me.”
“I know. I’ve never done that before. For anyone’s family. I don’t get it. Families love me, but yours…yours doesn’t. Not at all.”
“Nonna likes you. And my mother would, but she’s highly suspicious.”
“I saw your mom and dad fighting at the game last night,” she whispers.
My shoulders bunch, and I force myself to let them loose. “They do that on occasion.”
“Are you okay?”
She peers up at me, and fuck.
There is something real about this.
Something clogs my throat, and I can’t get it to go away. “You flew all the way here to ask if I’m okay.”
“That’s what friends do, right?”
This is fine. It is.
I won’t propose, so I won’t be one more guy to break her heart. I’ll pretend like this is fake for another month—or more, if we can get to the playoffs and keep going—and then when we hit the off-season, I’ll thank her and give her whatever she needs to be on her way.
Hell.
I might even try actually dating.
It’s been unexpectedly nice having someone I can tell the weird shit.
But I’m having a hard time reconciling the word dating with the image of anyone other than Henri.
She ducks her face into her cat. “I overstepped, didn’t I? Sorry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come. You can handle this. Of course you’re not going to have a massive meltdown and need me to hold your hand and give you a pep talk so you can get back in the game today, and you didn’t need me to tell off your mom and grandma for bickering, and you don’t need me to stand guard to tell your father what I think of him and his ugly absent butt either, if I were to happen to run into him in the lobby, which I didn’t, no matter what you might hear otherwise. You’ve got this. You’re strong. You’ve been doing this all your life.”
I stare at her while she drifts into silence and continues to hide her face in her cat. Her hair’s a crazy mop of curls again, but it’s not making the devil horns thanks to whatever Mackenzie’s dads had their stylist do to her short cut, and she looks so vulnerable hunched over like that.
Like maybe she needs me to need her.
Like maybe Nonna’s curse is working.
And if it’s working, is it working because this is right, or is it working because Nonna’s a witch and this isn’t as real as it feels?
Witches.
Devils.
Shapeshifting cats.
“Oh, shit. It’s your release day. I sent flowers. You’re not there to get them.”
She jerks her head up. “You sent me flowers?”
Heat floods my face. “I heard it’s a thing you’re supposed to do.”
“You sent me flowers.” Either she has something in her eye, or sending flowers was the exact wrong thing and it’s making her cry.
Hello, panic mode.
“You sent me flowers,” she whispers again, and then she flings herself at me, wrapping her arms around my neck and peppering my cheeks with kisses. “Luca! That’s the sweetest—thing—anyone’s ever—done—for me.”
I grab her and hold her back, because that can’t be right.
It can’t.
“Your fiancés never sent you flowers on your release days?”
“Winston Randolph was super busy with the family business, and Kyle and Lyle were both, well, not that into my career, and Barry had this calendar blindness thing where he didn’t know Sundays from Thursdays, and by the time I met Jerry, I’d accepted that I only date men who aren’t…the type.”
It’s a good thing I wouldn’t recognize four of her five previous fiancés, because my baseball bat and I would probably have something to say to them, and then my career would be over.
Also, Winston Randolph? Is that his first and last name, or his actual full first name that he goes by every day?
And where does Henri find guys like this?
And what does it mean about me that she found me next?
I shake my head. “What about your parents? Don’t they send release day stuff?”
She winces.
“Or your sister?”
“Writing books is hardly saving the world, and Elsa saves the world every—”
I need to quit silencing her with kisses, but right now, I can’t help myself, because how does a woman find herself engaged to five different men and related to an entire family of people who don’t give a shit about the important days in her life?
It would be like my mother not calling after a game where I hit a walk-off home run. Or like Nonna not emailing after my team sweeps a series.
Or like none of my cousins showing up for the playoffs that year that I was playing for Colorado when we clinched the division pennant.
My family drives me insane, but most of them are also there for the important days. And the everyday days too, like a random Wednesday when they read a Buzzfeed article that they think I’d enjoy, rather than a random Wednesday when they need me to talk to their pet bird and make everything about them and never about me.
So yeah, I’m kissing Henri.
I’m kissing her to make up for every damn book release she’s ever had that the rest of her family forgot.
I’m kissing her because she needs to know that she matters as a person with her own hopes and dreams and purpose, which isn’t to be there for everyone else.
I’m kissing her because I like her books. They’re hundreds of pages of laughter and joy and the best kind of utter ridiculousness.
I’m kissing her because she tastes like dessert and she feels like home and kissing her makes me see an entire new side of the world that I never would’ve known existed if she hadn’t come into my life.
And the longer I kiss her, the more I want her.
Not as the woman who’s easy and here.
But as the woman who’s been the ray of light that showed me how dark my life has been up until this exact moment.
She’s not my forever. She’s my first step toward a new tomorrow.
And I don’t know if that makes me one more asshole using her, but I know I don’t want to think about tomorrow when she’s here, kissing me like I’m the last man on earth and the fate of our very existence depends on the two of us getting it on right now.
I claw my shirt off as she’s tossing hers across the room. She dives for the button on my jeans while I reach for the clasp of her bra.
God, her breasts are magnificent.
And if my junk did shrink at any point in this Eye-ing process, it’s not having any problems growing back to its normal size today.
And then some?
Yeah.
Definitely and then some.
I shuck my jeans and boxer-briefs.
Henri wiggles out of her pajama pants.
“Condom!” she shrieks.