“I’m doing okay. I just have to keep busy. And that approach has served me well. It’s how I built Cypress Lane.”
“I think you’re gonna crash eventually.”
I scoff. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“When’s the last time you did something for you? Something fun?”
I consider. “I had a night of great sex in Chicago three weeks ago.”
She smiles. “Touché. Been a lot longer than that for this girl.”
“I’m getting by, honestly,” I say. “And I feel like…if I need to talk, I can talk to you.”
“Absolutely. Anytime. You’ve got my cell. Call me anytime, day or night.”
“Okay. Thanks. And…same. You know, if you get laid and want to tell someone…or whatever.”
Percy laughs and gets up from the bench. “Alright, girl. Let’s go get in some ass-whoopin’.”
I balk. “I thought Whoop-Ass Wednesday was off this week?”
“Nah, just delayed.”
I blow out a breath as I stand up. “Fine.”
“So you’re seeing someone?” she asks as we walk over to the weight rack.
“No, it was just a one-night thing.”
“Ah. So the sex wasn’t that great, then.”
“No, it was amazing. Like…well, just really good. I’ll leave it at that.”
“And you don’t want to get any more of that?”
I shake my head. “Not if it requires dating.”
“Because a guy buying you dinner before you have amazing sex would be the worst.” She rolls her eyes.
“Less talking about my sex life, more ass-whoopin’ please.”
She shrugs. “You got it. But remember, you asked for it.”
I look at her expectantly.
“Give me fifty burpees.”
I cringe and then silently begin. Even burpees are better than talking about why I don’t date.
Chapter Eight
Luca
My hand is wound around a thick, silky section of long blond hair. I groan softly as her mouth works up and down my dick, so wet and warm I can hardly fucking stand it. I’m dying to shoot my load, but at the same time I don’t want this to end.
When she looks up, I meet Abby’s blue eyes for just a second before she climbs on top of me, her pussy sheathing my cock so tightly I nearly lose it.
She rides me then, hard and fast. There’s nothing sexier than this woman using my body to chase her own orgasm. Much as I want to give it to her, she’s not seeking pleasure from me; Abby just takes it all on her own.
“Uncle Luca! Wake up!”
I wake up in an instant, sitting up and looking around.
“Uncle Luca, get up,” Emerson says from the doorway. “It’s Muffins with Mom day. We have to go.”
I bunch the covers up over my lap to cover my morning wood. Even though Emerson’s in the doorway of my bedroom, I don’t want her seeing that.
“Huh?” I say, turning to face her.
Her tone is exasperated. “Uncle Luca. Muffins with Mom starts at 6:45.”
I glance over at the clock. 6:25. Fuck. My alarm is set for its usual time of 6:30.
“Did I forget to put this on the schedule?” I ask in a groggy tone as I get out of bed.
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t remember you telling me about this...what is it again?”
“Sheila’s here. She remembered.” My niece gives me a frustrated glare. “And all I know is there’s muffins.”
“And moms?”
Her lips curve down in a frown and she shrugs. My heart breaks into a thousand fucking pieces.
“It’s okay for me to go, right?” I say.
“They said if your mom can’t go, someone else can. A resonsirile adult.”
I grin at her mispronunciation as I walk into my closet to get dressed out of sight.
“I’m resonsirile,” I call out. “And I love muffins.”
I put on a pair of khakis and a blue dress shirt, grabbing dress socks and shoes on my way out of the closet. I squint as I pass the open doorway of my bathroom, checking my hair.
It’s a mess. I run into the bathroom and quickly brush my teeth with one hand and my hair with the other.
“Let’s go,” I say to Emerson. “You okay with eating school lunch today?”
“Sure,” she says glumly.
I glance down at her outfit. She’s wearing gray leggings and a red and gray striped dress. My babysitter Sheila is a fifty-something mom of two boys who are in college, and she’s a lifesaver when it comes to picking out clothes for the girls. Emerson’s outfit is cute, but her brown curls are sticking out in every direction.
“Let’s fix your hair,” I say as we jog down the stairs.
“We’re gonna be late,” Emerson protests.
“I’ll be quick.”
I run my hands under the kitchen faucet and wet them, doing my best to tamp down her curls.
“Hey, let me know about this stuff from now on, okay?” I say. “We have to put it on the schedule.”
“Which one?”
I consider. I’ve got a hard copy schedule hanging on the pantry door, and I keep one on an app on my phone, too.
“Both,” I say, locating a comb in a cabinet and trying to tame her hair with it.
“Don’t you read the emails from my teacher? It was in there.”
“Uh…”
I read them sometimes, but I don’t mention that.
“Ouch.” Emerson pulls her head away from my reach. “My hair is fine, let’s just go.”
Her hair looks bad, but if she doesn’t care, I’m not gonna sweat it, either.
All my efforts at small talk on the way to school fall flat. I don’t know if Em’s bad mood is because we’re running late or something else.
Her elementary school is a sprawling two-story brick building with lots of windows and rows of trees lining the sidewalks. I’ve only been here a couple times since she started kindergarten.
As soon as we walk in, a girl approaches Emerson and hugs her. Emerson lights up and I breathe a little easier.
“Where’s your mom?” the other girl asks.
“My mom’s dead. This is my Uncle Luca.”
Her solemn tone guts me. Part of me is glad the kids no longer burst into tears when the subject of their parents comes up, but it’s not much easier to hear them explaining in a perfunctory way that their parents are gone.
“Luca Campbell.” A tall brunette approaches and holds out her hand for me to shake. “So nice to finally meet you. We’ve been hoping to see you at PTA.”
“Hi.” I shake her hand and she laughs.
“Oh, I didn’t even introduce myself, I’m sorry. It’s not every day I meet a pro hockey player. I’m Stephanie Hollis, Peyton’s mom.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“Come on, Uncle Luca.”
Emerson takes my hand and pulls me down the hallway. I’m glad I don’t have to extricate myself from that situation. Stephanie was looking at me like a choice cut of meat.
The woman at the registration table lights up when I give her our names.
“You’re the hockey player!” She reaches to shake my hand and presses her other one on top of mine as we shake, and I’m relieved to see a giant diamond on her ring finger.
I’m not here to meet women; I just want to make this event the best I can for my niece.
The woman, wearing a nametag that says, ‘Giada,’ looks at Emerson with big, sympathetic eyes. “Honey, I’m so sorry about your parents.”
Emerson responds automatically. “Thank you.”
“And you—” Giada flashes me a big grin. “Taking in three kids like that—”
“They’re my family.”
“Still, it has to be hard. If you ever need anything, I’d be glad to help. My husband and I have three ourselves, and I don’t see how either one of us could ever do it alone. It’s a tag team some days!” She laughs and I smile politely.
>
“Anyway…” She waves a hand and passes us nametags to stick on our shirts. I put the pink heart-shaped sticker on the breast pocket of my shirt. “I’ve got a curly-haired one myself, if you need some advice.”
Her judgmental perusal of Emerson’s hair aggravates me. I can’t stand people who insert themselves into the lives of others.
“Where do we go from here?” I ask.
“Just head over to the muffin line,” Giada points to a long line of moms and bouncing kids. “And we hope to see you at more school functions, Luca.”
I don’t know if her comment is designed to make me feel inadequate, but it does. I can’t even handle all the kids’ homework, practices, games and appointments without help from Sheila. Between hockey and home, I’m usually beat. There’s no way I can fit anything else in.
When we get to the front of the line, Emerson and I get our muffins—blueberry for me and chocolate chip for her—and find a spot at a lunch table. It’s been a hot minute since I ate at one of these long tables, and it brings back memories of grade school.
I was a pretty well-behaved kid. Mostly quiet. Matt was always the bolder, braver and smarter one. He made it easy to look up to him.
“I’ll go get us some drinks,” I tell Emerson.
She looks across the cafeteria and says, “I have to go get something, too.”
I’m in line to get orange juice for Emerson when someone taps me on the shoulder. When I turn, hoping it’s not Stephanie or Giada, I see a clean-cut man grinning at me.
“Hi there.” He extends a hand. “Henry Maxwell.”
“Hi, I’m Luca Campbell.”
“We’re big Blaze fans,” he says.
“Thanks man, appreciate it.”
“I just wanted to let you know you’re not the only guy here. My husband and I brought our son and daughter.”
“Hey, that’s great.”
He points to a blond man sitting with two kids at a table nearby. “That’s John and our kids Shelby and Aiden.”
“You guys have a nice looking family.”
“Thanks. So do you. We saw you guys at Meet the Teacher Night, but it was so busy I never got a chance to introduce myself.”
“I’m glad you did today.”
He pats his pocket, seeming to look for something as I reach the front of the line.
“Damn, I don’t have any cards on me, but I’m an attorney. You can reach me at my office if you ever want to get the kids together or something. Aiden’s in kindergarten too.”
“I’ll do that.” I pick up two cups, one with coffee and the other with orange juice. “And you can reach me through the team’s front office if you ever want to.”
“Great.” Henry fills a tray with four drinks. “We’re always up for getting together.”
“Yeah, we’d love that. I don’t know many people at the kids’ schools yet, since this is their first year here.”
Henry nods. “We’d love to have you over for dinner sometime. And I promise we won’t make you talk hockey the whole time.”
“No worries, man. I don’t mind.”
“I’ll let you get back.” His expression turns serious. “And I hope you know you’re doing a great job with the kids, Luca.”
“I am?”
How would this guy know what kind of job I’m doing?
Henry’s smile makes the corners of his eyes crinkle. “Yeah. These things can make a person compare themselves to the other parents. At least they do for John and I. I mean, we’re gay, so our kids will never have a mom. It was tough that first year, with Giada Sutton offering us advice on girls’ clothes and stuff.”
“That’s not just me, then?”
He laughs. “Not just you. And John used to work for Chanel, so it’s not like we need fashion advice. Two queens may not know everything about raising a little girl, but the clothes? We’ve got that covered.”
I like Henry. I can see the kids and I hanging out with him and his family.
“I’m glad to know I’m not alone,” I say, and I’m not just talking about Giada offering advice.
“You love those kids, that’s obvious.” John looks over at Emerson, who’s taking a delicate little bite from the top of her muffin. “You’re enough, just in case you needed to hear that today.”
“I actually did need to hear that today. Thanks, man.”
John nods and turns toward his table. “Hope we can meet up soon.”
“Definitely. I’ll give your office a call.”
I feel lighter on the walk back to the table. Even though the counselor I went to when Danielle was sick told me I’d likely struggle with feelings of inadequacy, I didn’t know how shitty it would be.
I’d walk into traffic for those kids. When they’re hurting, my first thought is that I wish I could hurt instead of them. It doesn’t matter if it’s a skinned knee or a broken heart, I hate seeing them in any kind of pain.
I can’t absorb it for them, though. The kids and I have spent the past year figuring out how to feel the hurt instead of shoving it down. Our counselors have helped us get to this new normal, and I think we’d all still be a mess without them.
When I get back to the table and set our cups down, Emerson pushes a paper across the table toward me.
“I made it,” she says.
This must be what she picked up from the other side of the cafeteria. When I sit down and look at the paper, my heart cracks and warms simultaneously.
The white paper has a border of flowers Emerson neatly colored with crayons. The first pre-printed line says ‘My mom is good at…’
The word ‘mom’ is crossed out with pencil in every line, and in its place, Emerson wrote ‘uncle’ on top of it.
“My uncle is good at reading stories,” I read out loud. “Thanks, peanut. This is awesome.”
“It said ‘mom,’ but I changed it.”
“I see.” I keep reading. “My uncle likes to cook pizza. That’s true, I do.”
Emerson smiles proudly and I read the next line.
“My uncle always says shit?” I look up at her, my eyes wide.
She shrugs. “You do, Uncle Luca.”
In my head, I’m thinking shit right now. Irony.
“My uncle is sixty-five years old?” I laugh and Emerson shrugs again.
“How old are you?”
“I’m twenty-eight.”
“That’s old.”
I shake my head and read on.
“During the day my uncle plays hockey.”
Emerson smiles proudly, knowing she got that one right.
“My uncle is pretty because he has big muscles.”
She spelled it ‘musels,’ which makes me grin.
“This is one of the best things anyone’s ever given me,” I say.
“Really?”
“Yeah. This picture you drew of us is awesome. I’m gonna hang this up in my locker.”
Emerson’s smile is so proud. I’m glad I was able to be here today since I’m not out of town for a game.
As we eat our muffins, I think of something. I stuff my empty muffin wrapper into my empty coffee cup as Emerson’s finishing and say, “I’ve got an idea, peanut.”
“What?”
“Why don’t you look at the questions and tell me what you would have put down for your mom?” I glance at the paper and read the first line. “What was your mom good at?”
Em’s eyes soften as she considers my question. “Hide and go seek. And volleyball.”
“She was good at volleyball; I remember watching her play when she was in college.”
“You do?”
“Yep. I may even have some pictures of her from back then.”
“And cakes. She made me a bunny cake with whiskers.”
Emerson was four-and-a-half when Danielle died. She doesn’t have as many memories as the other two kids, and there are even fewer of Matt. It was hard for all of us to talk about them at first, but the more we listened to our counselors and did it anyway, the e
asier it became.
And now, I think it’s a good thing that we talk about them often. But as Emerson answers questions about Danielle, I feel a pang of sadness. She’ll never have a mom here to talk to her about periods and makeup and nail polish.
There’s only me. And I’m pretty sure I’ll need regular reminders like the one Henry just gave me that I’m enough.
Chapter Nine
Abby
There’s someone standing over me. I can’t tell who, though, because the figure is blurry. I blink my eyes a couple times and Anthony comes into clear focus.
“Rise and shine,” he says, sounding amused. “Your 1:00 p.m. meeting starts in exactly five minutes.”
“What?” I sit up on the couch in the corner of my office and look around, then at Anthony. “Was I asleep?”
“You’ve been out for forty-five minutes or so.”
I stand up, smoothing my hands over my hair. “I can’t believe I fell asleep. Why didn’t you wake me up?”
Anthony shrugs. “I figured you needed the rest. I brought your lunch in at noon and when I came in at 12:15, you still hadn’t touched it and you were sacked out here.”
“Oh my God.” I cover my face with my hands, slowly drawing them down.
This is embarrassing. I’ve never fallen asleep at work, even during the latest of nights at my desk. I don’t even remember coming over to the couch.
“I’ve got a fresh pot of coffee brewing,” Anthony says. “You’ll want to go into the bathroom and wipe the makeup out from under your eyes, though.”
I shake my head as he leaves my office. This couldn’t get much worse. I can only imagine what I looked like sprawled out on the leather sofa in my suit. At least Anthony was the only one who saw me.
When I walk into my office’s en suite bathroom, I flip on the light switch and cringe. I have mascara smudged under my eyes and my hair is a disaster. And is that…drool?
I wash my face and pat it dry, then put on some fresh makeup. After I run my hands through my hair, I wrap it into a neat bun at the nape of my neck and reapply some lipstick. When I survey my reflection, I decide it’s much better than the couch monster looking back at me before.
Luca: A Chicago Blaze Romance Page 5
