Real Fake Love (Copper Valley Fireballs #2)(20)

“Shh, baby. Shh. You didn’t hear a thing.”

I drop my head in my hands and fall back into my seat. “I can’t leave this room until I know I’m not going to get Alonzo-ed.”

“Alonzo-ed?”

“What happened to my cousin Alonzo when he told Nonna off when she put The Eye on him. It—it was bad. Like, career-ending bad.”

“Is he a race car driver?” Cooper asks.

“Accountant.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah. She ended his accounting career. And then he still got married. So I’m sitting here, where it’s safe, until I’m de-cursed.”

“You know Lila fell through the ceiling here in the clubhouse and almost squashed Tripp last fall, right?” Mackenzie offers.

I stare at her, because no, I didn’t know the Fireballs’ new owner fell through the ceiling last fall and almost killed her co-owner.

Brooks snort-laughs. “Aw, man, I forgot about that.”

But I’m going lightheaded. “Something could crash through the ceiling here?”

“No.” Mackenzie’s eyes go wide, and she shakes her head with enough force to rattle her brain out of her ears. “That’s already been done. Definitely not.”

“I’m not safe.”

Max found a baseball, and he’s tossing it in the air. “Back up. Back up. Why did your Nonna put The Eye on you? Is this so you get yourself a woman and settle down? Because you told us you have a girlfriend, so…I’m missing the problem.”

“Having a girlfriend and getting married are two very different things. I don’t want to marry my girlfriend.”

“So why are you dating her?”

“For the sex.” Jesus. Jesus on a tiramisu. I need to shut the fuck up. “And I can’t have sex if Nonna shrunk my junk because she doesn’t like my girlfriend.”

Yeah. That wasn’t shutting up.

“Wait, your nonna? TikTok Nonna?” Cooper bolts straight. “We gotta tell Lila and Tripp to do a grandparent week, where—”

I lunge for him and rub my junk-hand all over his face until I get his mouth covered. “Don’t ever say that again.”

“Junk-hand! Junk-hand!” Cooper leaps up and dashes for the sink, spitting as he goes.

Francisco’s snickering. “What’s wrong with your nonna? I thought you loved your nonna?”

“Not when she’s putting The fucking Eye on me!”

Mackenzie sighs. She marches to the sink at the small galley kitchen, shoves Cooper out of the way, squats, and pulls an industrial-sized bottle of hand sanitizer out from under it.

Then she strides across the room and points the industrial-size pump at me. “Bathe,” she orders.

I dutifully take six industrial-size squirts and rub the sanitizer all over my hands, up my arms, and over my exposed legs. I still have enough left to take to my junk, which I won’t do. First of all, it would sting. Second, my junk is already in enough danger. And third, if I put my hand down my pants again, Mackenzie will leave, and I don’t know anyone else superstitious enough to help me plot out how to counter Nonna’s Eye.

She pats her cheeks. “Face too. I saw you touch your face.”

I obey, because I know she wants us to win even more badly than we want to win, because that’s Mackenzie.

When I’m properly rubbed down in sanitizer, she bends over, grabs me by the cheeks, and stares straight into my eyes. “Why did your Nonna Eye you?”

“She wants me to get married and have babies.”

“Dude.” Cooper bolts closer to the door while Max and Francisco crack up. “That’s not funny. Warn a guy before he gets that close to that kind of curse.”

“Cooper, shut up,” Mackenzie says. “Luca. You have a girlfriend?”

I swallow.

She frowns.

“It’s complicated,” I grumble.

“You’re an idiot.”

“That too.”

“Get up, Rossi. You have work to do. The only way you have any chance of countering this is by doing as many good deeds as you can think of. Help old ladies cross the street. Pick up your own smelly jockstrap. Sign all the baseballs for all the kids. Donate lunch to the cleaning staff at the park. You get me?”

I nod.

She’s probably screwing with me, but I’ll try anything.

“Also, we’re going to need to meet your girlfriend, because if you took a fake girlfriend to try to counteract The Eye, you’re basically a dead man, and I will be so pissed at you forever, because the Fireballs are going to win this year, and you’re currently helping us get there, but if you screw it up, I’ll have my dads put another Eye on you and they really know how to shrink junk.”

I open my mouth.

Close it again.

And I realize I need to talk to Henri, because I can blurt out she can’t come, she’s writing, but I don’t know the first thing about her writing.

Except that she has a vampire-turtle shifter named Confucius in her books.

“Go easy on him, Kenz.” Brooks pulls her back. “He’s gonna need a few days here. Not every day a guy gets saddled with a girlfriend and The Eye at the same time.”

“If he makes us lose—”