Sorry brother, but Sophia is the LOML. And, if you’re asking me, I think our Raffy boy has entered his lover-boy era.
Raf:
Clearly, you’ve had far too many drugs.
Marco:
You know what…If I’m right and you end up falling for her, you get a tattoo and I get to choose what it is and where it goes.
Raf:
Someone tell Sophia to call the nurse.
Luca:
I second this bet.
Seb:
Me too. Raf, I hope you’re ready for some fresh ink on that virgin skin.
Raf has left the chat.
Marco has added Raf back to the chat.
Chapter Thirty
Bad Bets And Tattoo Debts
Raf
I’mbent at the waist on the verge of puking, while Beavis and Butthead, formerly known as my brothers, hop around the ring whooping like teenagers.
I lost all three rounds—two to Seb and one to Luca. I even had a rest in between while Luca and Seb fought it out in their own best of three—the wager being who would be Marco’s best man after he told us today that he plans to make Sophia his wife as soon as he’s fully recovered. We all know the only man for the job is Seb, but Luca needed the challenge and to let out the frustration over his own fucked-up love life.The worst thing about the loss wasn’t so much that I was challenged physically; it was more that my mind was completely elsewhere. Or, more specifically, on a tiny woman wearing a bear coat and sporting my marks on her neck. Chiara made a point of being on her phone the entire trip back to Arabella’s where she asked to be dropped off so she could finish packing and organize for her things to be couriered over to my place. When she did speak, it was only to answer my question—no banter, no innuendo, noteasing. It felt foreign, yet that’s exactly what I once thought I wanted from her. How quickly the fucked fall.
I offered to have my driver go back and pick her up, but she said she had already messaged Avery andhad some other errands to run. I gave her the access codes to my door just in case she got home before me to wait for the couriers. Then she got out of the car and the emptiness felt heavy. I’ve traveled in the back seat of that car mostly alone for the best part of my single life, but once she was gone, an odd feeling settled in the pit of my stomach. Like when you say goodbye to someone at the airport, and for a fleeting moment you consider that it could be the last time you see them.
It’s quite clear that she and Avery have an unspoken bond. She trusts him in a way I’m not sure she trusts many, which is precisely his job requirement. Does it make my skin prickle with unchecked jealousy? Yes. Is that completely, utterly irrational? Also yes, but as I’m coming to understand, whenever Chiara is around, she takes a match to everything I ever believed to be true and torches it. How can I experience a connection so unparalleled yet declare we can’t be anything, then be maddened to the point of violence at the notion of her finding solace and maybe more in the arms of someone else? Quite easily apparently, because just the thought of her on her knees for anyone but me was the slippery slope that led to me being taken out at the knees by a right hook to my jaw and a left uppercut to my ribs.
I lift my head from where I’m still bent over and look at them.
“You both need to find a new hobby if details about my sex life elicit this sort of excitement. I hear porn helps.”
“Every freshly fucked grump needs a hype crew,” quips Luca. “Besides, at this point, as sad as it is to admit, we’re living vicariously through you.”
“Speak for yourself,” says Seb.
“What? Did you and Evie finally go from friends to lovers?” Luca says. “I love that trope by the way.”
“No comment,” Seb smirks coyly.
“He’s holding out on us,” I state to Luca, hoping he’ll take the bait and run with it so this entire conversation goes down a completely differentrabbit hole.
“Good try, Raf. That’s a pro-lawyer move there. Setting a trap for someone else to deflect the attention away from the real matter at hand,” says Luca.
“Wow. Dad would be proud. Nice intercept of the deflection strategy,” muses Seb before he leans down and gets in my face. “A bet is a bet, Raf, and a Princi never backs out of a bet. I have the scars to prove it.”
“What do you want to know?”
