Real Fake Love (Copper Valley Fireballs #2)(83)

“Mm.”

He eyes me.

I smile brightly.

“You know something.”

“Merely a fraction. I am a Lady Fireball. We talk. But we all have secrets too, and I’m almost certain Mackenzie’s keeping the most from all of us.”

He cracks up, and then we spend the rest of the reception dancing and laughing and talking, and in a weird way, I’m glad that I’ve had five failed engagements.

They’ve made me appreciate this wedding, and my date to it, all the more.

I’m already planning to stay in Copper Valley when the season ends. Maybe I’ll move into an apartment over near the aquarium, and Luca and I can stay friends.

It would be horrible to not be friends when we’ve come this far.

And maybe we can be friends who have sex a few nights a week.

Or…every night.

That’s normal, right?

The reception ends early, because the team’s first game is tomorrow evening at Duggan Field, and we head home to change Dogzilla into Fireballs pajamas and tumble into bed like horny teenagers.

But the Fireballs lose the first game in their five-game division championship round, and the next week is a whirl of tension, baseball, and nerves.

“Explain it to me one more time?” I ask Mackenzie as we camp out at her apartment with Tillie Jean and Marisol and Mackenzie’s dads and Beck Ryder and his wife, watching the fourth game. Baltimore is up, two games to one, and I know if they win tonight, the Fireballs are done.

But if the Fireballs tie the series, we’re heading to…somewhere?

“If we win tonight and tomorrow and clinch the division, we play whoever wins the series between Seattle and Boston. That would be a seven-game league championship series. And if we win that…” She pauses and fans her shiny eyeballs. “Then we’d go to the World Series for the first time in Fireballs history.”

Now I’m getting wet in the eyeballs too. “That would be so amazing.”

“I wasn’t even alive the last time they made it this far. So I won’t complain about anything this post-season. It’s one day at a time. One moment at a time. Just soaking it all in. And I really, really, really wish I was in Baltimore right now.”

Same.

Same.

It’s a nail-biter, but the Fireballs eke out the win.

Luca gets home in the middle of the night. He has a day off before the final game of the series, and he’s keyed up, so we head out to the mountains and spend the day hiking. I tell him stories about some things I think my characters have probably done after their happily ever afters, and we end up falling into a creek and laughing until we’re both crying.

And then kissing.

And making love on the side of a mountain.

Yes.

Making love.

This crazy, talented, smart, wounded, funny man has completely captured my heart.

And it’s not like the last times I’ve fallen in love, because I didn’t want this.

He wasn’t supposed to be attractive.

I had to dig to find it, because he stood for everything I could’ve never believed in, or so I thought. I had to put the worst parts of me on display and not hide my feelings, not hold back saying what I wanted to say for fear that it would be the thing that would make him leave me.

And yet, he’s still here.

Not talking about how our agreement could formally be over tomorrow night, or, best case, in another three weeks. Not talking about Nonna and her Eye.

But instead, talking about a new restaurant we should try when the season’s over.

I tell myself it’s because we’ve become friends. I can’t go to that place where I start to believe in the dreams of the fluffy white dress and the dashing man in a tux and the mascots dancing at our reception, because that’s not our future.

And for the first time in my life, I’m okay with a future without that milestone.

I was chasing the trappings, when what I need is the bone-deep love.

The next night, we’re all gathered together in the Fireballs’ Family and VIP suite.

The family, I mean.

Clearly, Luca’s on the field with the team.

Max is warming up on the mound. Luca’s playing catch with a kid in the outfield. The mascots are reveling in having another home game to audition for their role as final official mascot for the Fireballs, and they’re in party clothes today, which looks totally weird on the meatball, but Glow—dude.

Luca’s right.

It’s not normal to see a large ball of yellow flame sticking out from behind him in normal times, but today, when he’s dressed like he’s going to an eighties party?

No. Just no.

The only person not with us is Mackenzie, because she insisted on sitting in her normal season ticket seats on the third base line where that bird attacked me and my sequin hat.

Marisol’s pacing the carpet.

Tanesha and the baby are both fretting.

Lila and Tripp, the Fireballs’ owners, who have been incredibly kind every time I’ve met them, pop in a few times before the game to check on us.

Cooper’s whole family is here, and Francisco’s grandmother, and some of the other guys’ parents or siblings.

Nonna’s here. Luca’s mom is here too, and the two of them have been acting like long-lost sisters, which is the weirdest thing ever.