Real Fake Love (Copper Valley Fireballs #2)(85)

They won.

They won their first division championship in I don’t know how long. According to Mackenzie, it’s been fifty years since they last got this far.

The guys are all circled up at home plate, hugging and leaping for joy. Security escorts Mackenzie onto the field, because she’s been their good luck charm all year. She high-fives every one of the mascots as she dashes to join the players, who swallow her up into their group.

“Our baby girl did it,” her dad says beside me.

Her papa nods. “She believed. She believed for all of the whole damn city.”

Am I crying?

Oh my gosh. Yes. Yes, I’m crying too.

We’re hustled down to the locker room via a set of private elevators that staff use to get around, and soon the entire place is one mass of joy.

Emilio and Marisol are laughing and hugging. Francisco gets mauled by his grandmother, and Cooper’s proudly wearing his grandfather’s parrot while we all pull Fireballs, Division Champions T-shirts over our heads and someone pops the champagne.

“Nuh-uh, not you.” Luca grabs me and plops safety glasses onto my eyes, an umbrella hat on my head, and ties a Fireballs bandana around my head to shield my nose and mouth.

“You’re being ridiculous,” I tell him with a laugh.

He sweeps me up in a hug and twirls. “And you’re going to enjoy the hell out of this party.”

When he sets me down, he frowns, then he lifts the bandana and captures my lips in the sweetest kiss ever. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

And dammit if that doesn’t make me tear up. “Me too.”

“Henri—”

He cuts himself off as he gazes at me, his green eyes searching for something while his grip tightens on my hips.

I must look crazy, like a cross between a mad scientist and a train bandit, whereas he’s in his baseball pants that make his butt look amazing, wearing his hat backwards, which is stupidly adorable, but he’s gazing at me like I’m the most beautiful, precious sight he’s ever seen.

This man.

He sees me.

He sees me, and he’s still here, not despite who I am, but maybe, possibly, because of who I am?

“Marry me,” he says suddenly.

I momentarily freeze—my toes, my fingers, my face, my heart—and then I suck in a surprised breath so hard that I get the tip of the bandana caught up in my mouth and have to spit it out, because I forgot how my hands work.

His grip tightens. “Henri—”

“No,” I gasp, because I’m seeing my future so clearly. Me, in another fancy dress. Luca, sweating profusely next to the minister. His nonna cackling. His father crashing the ceremony. His mother whispering the question about if he wants to do this to make his grandmother happy, and then he’d be running, and this time, it wouldn’t be a wedding ruining my dream of what I think love should look like.

This time, it would be a wedding ruining something that feels more real than any love I’ve ever experienced.

This isn’t I could settle with you and be happy love.

This is I don’t ever want to live without you love.

This is you’ve set the bar for what love should be love.

“We’re perfect.” He leans down to eye level, and he’s a little blurry between the tears and the goggles fogging up, but I can still feel his gaze. “You don’t want to have another wedding, and I don’t want to go through all of this ridiculousness again with Nonna, so we’ll have a quiet little thing at the courthouse, and we can both escape the whole dating scene and be good friends who have amazing sex and laugh and—”

“No.”

“But—”

“Do you love me?”

“Henri—”

“Do you? Do you love me, or do you simply like me enough to settle?”

“I—” He stops, and with all of his teammates cheering and celebrating and spraying champagne and kissing and hugging their loved ones around us, he chokes.

He can’t say he loves me.

He can’t say he loves me.

“I asked you to help me learn to not fall in love, Luca Rossi. And you did one better. You helped me realize what love is. What I deserve. What every human being deserves. But this? This? I never would’ve expected this from you. Not even when we first met.”

I don’t wait for him to try again to say something he doesn’t feel, and instead, I hand my hat, my goggles, and my bandana to the security guy on the way out the door.

I thought being left at the altar was the worst thing that could ever happen.

Turns out, I was wrong.

I was so very, very wrong.





33





Luca



I can’t get to Henri fast enough. People keep getting in my way.

Nonna wants to hug me. Mom wants to hug me. My teammates and their wives and girlfriends want to hug me.

And I want to catch up to the light in my life that’s slipping away.

“What’s wrong with you?” Mom asks as I try to dodge her. “This is what you’ve been working for since you were so little you couldn’t even hold a bat.”

“Henri—”

She lifts a brow.

Nonna cackles behind me, and I spin on her. “This is your fault. You and your fucking meddling and your Eye and your ziti—you made me fall for Henri.”