Real Fake Love (Copper Valley Fireballs #2)(70)

Ohmygosh.

I didn’t name my laptop.

I didn’t name it, and I should’ve, and now it’s gone to the great laptop heaven in the sky, and it was my friend and I didn’t even give it a name.

I’m a complete and total laptop mama failure, and my sister’s going to be a bestselling author in like two weeks, probably without naming her laptop either, except she’s Elsa, so of course she’ll remember to name it, and it’ll be something beautiful like Violet Sparkle von Gorgeous, and I can’t even have a proper pity party.

Also, Luca’s hair dye is fading, and it should look like a light brown rainbow of poop, but instead, it’s utterly adorable, like a chestnut wave kissed by a unicorn that would look spectacular on one of the billboards on the interstate where his current billboard holding Kangapoo resides, whereas my hair is once again at that perfect length where I caught myself having devil horns when I glanced in the mirror three hours ago.

“It’s something else, isn’t it?” He pulls back, his green eyes going wide and worried. “Did someone die? Fuck, Henri. Tell me how to fix this.”

I shake my head and grip his forearm, and holy crap, his forearm is solid.

Also, I’m not sure we’ve been this physically close since the hotel room in Boston—at least, not when someone else wasn’t watching—and I like it.

Especially when he throws his towel on the table, mutters, “Screw it,” and grabs me in a giant Luca hug.

It’s not a normal hug, because it’s bigger and stronger and like being cradled by a giant teddy bear that acts like a tyrannosaurus rex but only because he’s been taught for so long that it’s the only way to keep his heart safe.

He squeezes me tight and buries his nose in my crazy hair and all of my panic and insecurities and sobs slow until I’m a giant blob of worn-out muscles and jelly bones.

Check that.

I’m an embarrassed giant blob.

“Elsa’s writing a romance novel,” I whisper.

His body goes so tense that the hug shifts from a teddy bear cuddle to trying to rub myself against a steel refrigerator door. “Your sister Elsa?”

I nod into his chest.

“The Elsa with the twenty-three kids and ten pets and forty-three volunteer organizations and her own YouTube channel? That Elsa?”

Once more, I nod.

“Why the fuck is she doing that?”

I swallow hard and don’t answer.

“Because you write romance novels?”

There’s a deadly calm in his voice that should probably make me worry, but it’s hard to worry when I’m snuggling a steel door with a heartbeat getting stronger and faster under my ear, and when I suspect he gets it, and I like that he would instantly understand why I’m upset about this, when I shouldn’t. It’s a free world, and if Elsa wants to write a romance novel, I shouldn’t stop her. I know how it feels to have people try to keep you from your dream, and even if I’m horribly jealous and broken and neurotic, that’s no reason to make her the same way.

“Henri?” Luca’s voice rumbles through the kitchen and makes me shiver in the good way. “Tell me she’s not doing it because you do it too.”

“She has everything else. Why does she need this too?” I shudder and try to grab the words back. “If this will make her happy, of course she should do it. There’s plenty of room in the world for her stories too. And I always say every story has a reader.”

“Christ on a tortellini,” he mutters. He pulls back again, grips my arms, gets right in my face, and growls, “Stay.”

And then he turns and marches out of the kitchen, pulling his phone out of his pocket and giving me a view of his rear end that I’ve been trying very, very hard not to appreciate every time I watch a baseball game, because that ass ain’t mine.

To quote…someone.

Probably.

As soon as he disappears from view, I remember my friends, and I drop my own phone trying to pull it out to open the video chat app and get back to them.

Katharine, Dorothea, and Jen are still there, Jen bouncing the baby now, and they’re all staring intently at me while my phone takes sixty-five years to fully engage the app.

“Are you okay?”

“What happened?”

“Tell me that rugged baseball player you’re shacking up with came home and threw you on that table and had his way with you until you can’t feel your legs.”

“Dorothea. She’s upset. She doesn’t need penis.”

“Penis wouldn’t hurt. But then, she wasn’t gone long, so maybe that would’ve hurt.”

Jen makes a face. “Is your laptop toast?”

“I’m okay,” I tell them. “At least, I think I will be. I’m sorry I overreacted. I—”

“Oh my god, Henrietta, you are not overreacting, and stop apologizing for it. You’re allowed to have feelings when someone you love dismisses and pisses all over what you love simply because they’re jealous that you’ve done something they can’t.”

I open my mouth to defend Elsa. I don’t think she understands what she’s doing, except isn’t that what I’ve done with her entire life?

Have I?

I don’t think I’ve ever dismissed her life to her face. And I wouldn’t, because her life makes her happy.