I carefully sat in the chair and continued to slowly munch on my toast while he scooted back to lean on my legs.
He was staring at his phone, not doing anything with it.
By the time I’d finished my breakfast and wiped my hands on my jeans, he hadn’t moved an inch. His breathing was even, but I could sense the tension in him through every point of contact between us.
The front door opened and closed, and we could hear Ben and Holden talking in the front yard. Then the familiar sound of two engines, the truck and the cruiser, that started and then slowly, one by one, moved down the driveway as they headed to work.
I leaned forward and pressed my lips on top of Luca’s head, the shorn hair prickly against my skin. He took a shuddering breath and released it slowly.
“Okay, okay,” he mumbled and found Marissa’s number on his phone.
“You can do this.” I squeezed him with my legs.
As soon as he hit call, he reached up and when I gave him my hand, he brought it down to his chest.
“Luca, hey. Good morning,” a voice I hadn’t heard before answered the call.
“Mari.” That one word was so filled with pain that it made my heart constrict.
I turned my head so that my cheek rested on top of his hair and just breathed evenly for him.
She let out a choked little chuckle, and for a moment, they cried together. It made sense. They’d been close and now everything was different. There’d been no contact between them for months.
I grabbed a box of tissues off the windowsill and handed it to Luca.
“Thanks,” he whispered.
“You have company? Is Rian there?” Marissa asked, and then the sound of her blowing her nose carried through.
Luca did the same and we all chuckled.
“No, it’s my…. It’s Max.”
“Oh, one of the wolf brothers. Hi Max!” Marissa called out brightly through the call. She knew I could hear her perfectly fine and it was clear Rian had talked to her about the pack.
“Hi, Marissa.”
“So, how’s Mila? And Q?” Luca asked very quietly.
Marissa sighed. “Mila’s been out of rehab for a month. She’s at—she calls it ‘rich people halfway house.’”
Luca snorted. “Sounds like her.” But he didn’t ask where the place was, and that, to me, was telling.
“Q went to stay with his sister in Wyoming for the time being.”
Luca nodded, as if that made perfect sense, and I guess he didn’t need to say it out loud for her to hear. Then he sighed. “How much has Rian told you?”
This time, when she replied, her tone held some bitterness. “Well I know you were having symptoms that you first ignored, then were misdiagnosed, then found out you had terminal cancer and yet, I only heard about it after you were turned, somehow.”
Luca curled up, his shoulders rolling inwards as his lanky body shrank into itself. “I’m sorry,” he breathed out.
She sighed.
I wrapped my arms around him and squeezed. My face was buried in his neck, and I felt his pulse beat a normal human rate, which, for a vampire, was very fast.
“I know,” Marissa finally whispered. “I’m sorry I got so wrapped up with Mila’s situation that I believed you when you said you were fine.”
Luca snorted without humor. “Yeah.”
