Page 30 of Twisted Trails
Luc
Are you okay?
Christ on a bike, why does that one text feel like a gut punch?
Maybe because it’s the first time he’s asked, and the part that kills me is I don’t even know the answer. I’m not sure if I’m pissed at Alaina or just wrecked because she let me in and didn’t trust me with the truth. I’m not sure if I want to fight Luc for everything he did yesterday or kiss him.
I lean my head against the cool glass of the van window, staring out at the blur of Italian countryside, not that I can actually appreciate the scenery. My brain is too busy rewinding that moment outside the hospital. The rain. The heat between us. His hand on my arm.
The way he looked at me.
And yeah, maybe he does want to fight me, or maybe we’re both idiots who can’t say what we mean until someone is halfway bleeding.
Are you okay?
He asked me that.Luc-fucking-Delacroix.The same guy who used to spit chewing gum into my helmet and call it a peace offering. The same guy I thought hated me now.
It should feel like something, but all it does is make everything worse, because I don’t know how I feel. Or maybe I do, and I just don’t want to name it.
My brain keeps circling the same pit, like a wheel stuck in the mud. Luc’s voice, that damn hoodie, the way he looked at me in the rain, and then, right next to it, a shadow stitched to the same thought,her.
Alaina Crews.
Because yeah, Luc is complicated, butshe’sthe one who cracked something open in me, while lying about who she was the whole damn time.
I think about her eyes, those big, Bambi eyes, and about her skin under my fingertips, and the way she let me trace her forearms. How she smiled when she told me I was allowed, that I was her nobody, and that she was mine.
Sheletme in.
Shechoseme.
Except she didn’t, not really, and now I feel like a fool.Again.It seems I’ve got a real talent for trusting the wrong women. First, Isla, with her crocodile tears and poison kiss, and now Alaina.
Is it fair to compare them, though?
It’s not, but I already did it in the hospital and hurt Alaina with it.
“I’m gonna eat so much pizza,” my dad announces, shattering my thoughts. “You can keep your protein shit. I’m going full-on gluten. Pizza, pasta,bam, I’m gonna be five kilos heavier by the time we leave Italy.”
I huff a dry laugh. “You’ll explode.”
“No, son. I will evolve. I’ll be the king of Italy.”
“Italy doesn’t have a king.”
“Well,it will soon.”
I shake my head and keep staring out at the passing fields, the golden light bleeding off the edges of the hills.
“And that will make you the prince,” he adds after a beat. “Little Prince Payne. Suits you.”
I finally look over, glaring. “Are youtryingto be annoying?”
He smirks. “Always.” But then he glances over again, just a flash of something serious in his face. “You said Delacroix is back to his annoying self and that Crews is doing okay, right? So why are you so bloody moody?”
I tense. “Why would it be about Crews?”
I haven’t mentioned her to him at all today.
