I climb on behind him, adjusting carefully, finding the balance point, and the second I shift closer, I feel him react. Sharp inhale. Stillness through his whole body.
“Take your time,” he says, in a tone that very clearly means the opposite.
I grin against his shoulder, pull my helmet on, then I wrap my arms around his waist. “So none of you are looking?” I ask,because if I don’t keep talking, I’m going to start noticing the shape of him under my hands, and that seems unwise.
He starts the engine, and the bike comes alive beneath us with that low, hungry growl.
“I didn’t say we weren’t looking,” he says louder as we pull out. “I said nothing stuck. Different problem.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The wrong ones keep showing up.”
“That’s almost poetic,” I say.
“Don’t spread it around.”
Warm air hits us as we pick up speed, and I press in a little closer, partly because of the road and also because apparently my body has stopped consulting me. His scent wraps around me straight away, the vanilla, the dark-roasted espresso, and the fresh rain smell sinking through me.
I’ve felt this before—on the plane, with Ace.
Back then I told myself it was a combination of nerves, champagne, and adrenaline… oh, and the fact that I’d had an unexpectedly filthy encounter with a stranger in first class.
I’m starting to think maybe it wasn’t.
“You keep doing that,” Luca says over the engine.
“What?”
“Pressing closer and rubbing yourself against me, then pulling back.”
I stare down at the road sliding under us. “That’s just the bike.”
“The road is straight.”
“Then why am I bouncing around?”
“That’s what I’m asking.” He laughs, and it vibrates into me through his back. His hand drops for a second, covering mine where it’s clasped around his waist, before going back to the handlebar. “I’m glad you paddled out to us this morning.”
That catches me off guard. My throat goes tight in that annoying, emotional way it’s been doing all day. “That was almost sweet,” I say at last.
He just nods and rides onward. The palms blur by on either side, late light turning everything gold, and somewhere ahead is a house on the beach and three men who, for reasons I still don’t understand, have decided my mess is worth stepping into.
I think about what Luca told me earlier, about not sleeping, trying to find himself on the other side of a bad stretch by getting up before dawn and chasing waves until his head went quiet.
Then I remember that since leaving LA, I’ve been checking over my shoulder, studying every parked car twice, the anxiety clinging to me like a straitjacket.
Maybe Oahu is just a place for damaged people with good instincts and bad timing. And that’s why the location feels so perfect. I tighten my arms around his waist a little.
He doesn’t say anything.
Neither do I.
The road curves, the ocean flashes between buildings in a streak of blue and gold, and for once, it doesn’t feel as if my life may be actively collapsing around me.
10
LUCA
