Page 31 of My Pucking Enemy
It’s matter-of-fact, and when he says it to his sister, there’s none of the heartbreak that was there when he and I talked about it. I watch him carefully, note the ways he’s pretending for her, acting like everything is fine.
Sloane’s mouth drops open. “Lastsummer. You’ve been lying to me for ayear?”
“Keeping something to myself is not lying, Sloane,” he runs a hand down his face, takes a breath. “Any chance we can talk about this later?”
“I just—I feel like I don’t evenknowyou right now!” Sloane hiccups, and tears start to run down her face.
“Okay, come on, baby,” Callum steps forward, putting and arm around her shoulders. “Let’s go home and take a bath. I’m hungry, I bet you’re hungry. Let’s all just take a second and come back to it.”
Cal glances at Luca, then walks down the hall with his wife, who doesn’t say goodbye to her brother, and whispers to her husband all the way to the door.
When it shuts, I let out a shaky laugh, “Well, that sucked.”
He meets my eye, and I watch as he tries to use that same mask with me. Beneath it is rage, hurt, betrayal. Maybe he’s not as nonchalant about Mandy being this publicly divorced from him as he might want us to believe. “You didn’t have to stay.”
“You wanted me to,” I counter, expecting him to deny that, but he doesn’t.
Instead, he just lets out a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. For a second, we stand in the hallway quietly together. When he finally breaks the silence, it’s to say, “I can already tell this is going to be a shit show.”
***
And it is.
For whatever reason—maybe the fact that it’s Christie Elle, maybe the fact that it’s gay, maybe the fact that Luca and the Frost are clearly heading to the Stanley Cup this year—the press is lined up outside the arena for the next week, acting more like paparazzi than professional reporters.
It’s all over the news. I keep waiting for it to die down, for people not to care about it after a day or two, but YouTubers are putting out think pieces on the topic, and Luca’s face is appearing on my feed much more than I want.
Even worse, it’s obviously bothering him. At the next away game, Coach Vic has to pull him off the ice because he’s so obviously rattled and even his arguments about not being rattled sound a little unhinged.
On Thursday, when Luca and I are supposed to have a strategy meeting, I manage to walk past the paparazzi without causing a scene. The moment I’m through security and inside the complex, I pull out my phone to text Luca.
Wren:The press are outside the west side entrance, waiting for you.
“Yeah, I know. They were at my house, too.”
I spin around, bringing my hand to my heart, watching Luca as he pushes off the wall beside the door, his eyes locked on me. He jerks his head toward the elevator that will take us to our normal meeting room, and I realize he was waiting for me.
When he presses the button for the elevator, what he said registers. “They were at yourhouse?”
He lets out a cynical laugh, glancing quickly at me as we step on together. “Yup. Lined up right outside my property. That is, after I caught one of them in the bushes and threatened to sue.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t threaten something worse,” I say, pushing into the room, but it’s a lie. I’m not surprised. In fact, what I am surprised about is that Luca doesn’t have a fence or something, some way to keep people from coming to his home.
Surely he’s famous enough to warrant some kind of security, right? Has he ever had a stalker, or an overzealous fan who didn’t understand boundaries? Where does he even live?
I catch the thought as I set my things down, laughing at myself—that makesmesound like the crazed fan.
“I should have,” Luca says, already flipping open his binder, then looking up at me. “A few years ago, they put Callum and Sloane through some shit too. It’s such a waste of time, a waste of everyone’s energy and resources.”
With a start, a sudden recollection, I realize what he’s talking about. That would have been during my trial, before my time with the FBI. Back then, I’d made friends with one of the jailers, and she’d bring me her gossip rags when she was done with them.
I hadn’t thought it important back then—in fact, the reason I loved those magazines was because everything was sounimportant. But now I can clearly remember Callum and Sloane splashed over the front.
“Wait,” I hold my hand up, “did CallumdateChristie Elle? Isn’t that what that whole thing was about?”
“They’re just friends,” Luca sighs, and the room falls silent.
“Right.” I pause, looking down at my notes, shifting from foot to foot. Reading people might be one of my specialties, but I’m good at exploiting weaknesses, not comforting. I don’t know what to say to help him feel better.
