Real Fake Love (Copper Valley Fireballs #2)(82)

“Thank you,” she finally says softly.

I nod.

Starting right now, this very minute, I will be everything she doesn’t even know she needs.





32





Henri



Luca and I spend the last weeks of the regular season texting and talking on the phone while he’s on the road for the team’s last away series, and having a lot of sex and talking about everything except what’s going on between us when he’s home and not at Duggan Field.

Denial becomes my second-favorite hobby, but since the tension involved with denial is so much more comfortable than the tension of not trying to touch each other, I’m okay with this.

I’m embracing denial, which might also explain why I’ve had five failed engagements.

Utter refusal to acknowledge everything that was wrong right in front of my face.

Also, I’m worried that Luca’s put renovating the house at the top of his list when he’s not playing baseball or talking me out of my pants, checking off projects like fixing the broken stair—which had someone’s rock collection beneath it, and yes, I’m serious, and also, now I want to write a story about a fairy who fell in love with a pet dog and couldn’t tell him since they didn’t speak the same language, so instead, she left him rocks in their special spot.

But back to Luca.

He’s also having flooring installed in the living room and getting estimates on having an air conditioner re-installed before next summer and he asked if I had any ideas for what to do with the kitchen, like he somehow knew I would’ve thought about it, and now he’s having a builder draw up a formal plan based on my favorite idea.

It’s like he’s accepted that the season is coming to an end, and if the Fireballs don’t renew his contract, then he’ll be ready.

I don’t like it. I can justify staying in Copper Valley when the season is over, but I couldn’t justify following him if he’s traded to a new team, and he told me himself that it’s fate that as soon as he finishes a house, he gets traded.

I don’t want him to get traded to a new team. He seems so happy playing for the Fireballs.

And it’s not even that they’ve won so much, though I’m sure his happiness is just as tied to the winning as the winning is tied to his happiness.

It’s more that he fits with this team, which is even more apparent when he takes me to Mackenzie and Brooks’s wedding on the day between the last regular season game and the first game of the playoffs.

Yeah.

Luca and I go to a wedding together.

And as we’re taking our seats before the ceremony starts, we look at each other, and we both start laughing.

And laughing.

And laughing.

We are legitimately the last two people anyone should want at their weddings, but there’s something comforting in knowing that this wedding will go off without a hitch—though, naturally, it comes with plenty of tears, as every good wedding does—and that Mackenzie and Brooks are exactly the right kind of crazy for each other.

We both get another fit of the giggles as the groom kisses the bride.

It’s like we’re both thinking so this is what the end of the wedding looks like.

As though neither of us have ever attended one before.

We’re ridiculous.

And it fades fast, because everyone’s a bundle of nerves at the small private reception inside the locker room at Duggan Field after the wedding.

They’re still happy. You can feel the joy radiating throughout the room, and the brotherhood amongst the players as they tease each other but also grab one another a beer or an extra piece of wedding cake, or come to each other’s defenses when the mascot contenders get too forward.

Yes.

All of the mascots are at the wedding.

It’s Mackenzie’s wedding, at Duggan Field.

Of course the mascots are here.

And what’s even funnier, which I didn’t realize until the reception starts, is that all of the players are in matching mascot socks under their formalwear.

“Is that bad luck?” I whisper to Luca, because I can see Glow and Meaty and Firequacker and Spike on his socks, but not Fiery.

Luca’s grinning as he shakes his head. “To walk all over the horrible mascot options at Mackenzie’s wedding? Nope.”

The team’s owners stop short of telling us which one will be the next mascot, and I swear that unites the guys on the team even more.

“It means we still have a chance to get Fiery back, no matter what,” Robinson tells me.

“Fiery forever,” Francisco agrees.

Luca’s at my side the entire time. He tests the punch before he lets me have any, which makes Mackenzie roll her eyes, because of course her punch won’t be spiked.

She also sends Glow over to give him what-for, which is funny, because Luca’s seriously creeped out by the firefly.

“Do we need to talk about this?” I ask him.

“No, we need management to pick the damn meatball so Mackenzie can move on to the next phase of her plan and we can get Fiery back,” he replies in a mutter that I swear has the Fireballs’ owners turning to look at him from all the way across the room.

“Did they hear you?” I whisper.

“No way. And even if they did, they have to know something’s coming. Mackenzie hasn’t given them a single week of peace all season without something going wrong with their mascot contest.”