Chapter 169
HARLOTTE
I watched in horror, rooted to the ground, unable to look away.
Roman hit Luca hard and Luca hit back just as hard. It was painful to watch and wouldn’t be the first time I’d seen my best friend in a fight.
The first exchange was ugly enough to make my stomach drop.
Vale’s fist found Luca’s mouth and the sound made me wince. Luca’s shoulder drove into Vale’s ribs and they slammed into the barrier hard enough to bruise.
I gasped when I saw blood on Luca’s lip. I always got crazy protective when I saw even the smallest bruise him.
“I told you to stay away from her!” Roman shouted.
Luca spat blood and laughed through it, that terrible laugh he used when a crash had not quite killed him. “Haven’t you made her cry enough already?”
I didn’t know how to feel seeing how much Luca liked Olivia. It was new for me. Him actually like one of the girls he’d set his eyes on.
They went back and forth after that, arguing about the many times Luca got Olivia in trouble by just existing and the many times Vale let her down.
Luca hooked an arm around his neck and they hit the gravel together, Vale’s knee driving into his thigh, both of them making sounds that did not belong in a place for racers.
I did not know the whole story. I knew enough, and enough was already too much.
Olivia Monroe. She seemed to have every guy interested in her without even trying. I remembered Luca saying he liked her by the pool while I sat in the next chair with a smile that had taken years to perfect and
still hurt.
I had practiced that smile through hotels and girls who lasted a day or sometimes just an hour.
I told myself watching him choose someone else was a job I had signed up for at seventeen when I decided to be his full support and was too loyal to quit.
Today the job was standing in a pit lane while the first girl he had actually liked became the reason another man was trying to break his face, and my hands would not stay still at my sides.
I could not stand back and watch my best friend get beaten.
Olivia moved at the same time I did, as if we had been pulled by the same string.
I grabbed Luca. She grabbed Roman around the neck.
“Please stop!” She begged.
Mon, Sep 2
The Monkey Captain’s Unwanted Wile
Luca still had a fist twisted in Roman’s shirt, stubborn even with my weight on him. “At least I am not hiding that I like Olivia.”
My heart hurt at hearing him say that. It was the kind of hurt that made my fingers clumsy on his jacket.
I had been in love with Luca Vescari for a long time, and all he saw when he looked at me was his best friend, a sister, one of the boys, the person who went everywhere with him including every room where he picked up a new girl and forgot about me the second he did.
This was the first time he had actually liked one of them, and I understood that it was probably because
Olivia did not want him back.
He liked the challenge. I had known that about him since we were teenagers.
He liked her because she wasn’t like every other girl going all crazy over him. Because she said she was not interested. Because she had been crying over someone else and he had been the first person standing
there.
I was the one who brought washcloths and went to every game and never asked him to look at me like I was a risk worth taking.
Of course he did not. I was like furniture that traveled well.
“Stop fighting!” I screamed, and my voice did not sound like mine. “Now! Before I spray both of you with a fucking hose!”
Nobody looked at the hose.
A mechanic had one in his hand and still did not move.
Olivia was shaking. Vale was shaking. Luca was grinning with blood in his teeth like pain was a language he had always spoken fluently and had finally found an audience for.
Luca shoved Roman once more. “Either admit you like her or get the fuck out of her life! Stop making her cry or I’ll swoop in and steal her from you. Just you wait.”
Again. I felt it. The pain. I didn’t think Luca would ever see me as more than a friend. That hurt more than anything else.
Olivia still had her arms around Vale’s neck, holding him the way I was holding Luca, two girls trying to keep two storms from finishing what they had started.
“I don’t like her!” Vale shouted.
There was a pause after he said it and Olivia went rigid.
“I fucking love her!”
I froze with Luca’s jacket in my hands.
Olivia froze with her face against Vale’s throat.
No one had expected him to confess that at a time like this.
142 Mon, Sep 21 ) Md.
The Hockey Captams Unwanted Wife
I held onto the man I loved while he fought over a girl who would never look at him the way I did.
wanted to tell him I was here. I wanted to tell him I had always been here. I wanted to tell him that liking a girl who did not want him was not the end of the world. I wanted to tell him that I had liked him for years without asking for anything back except the seat next to his.
Instead, I said nothing.
I held on.
That had always been the story of us, and it seemed would never change.
宙
AD
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142 Mon, Sep 21 1 MS.
The Mockey Captam’s Unwanted Wife
Dex Morgan
Dex works to elevate each story with clean writing, emotional balance, and thoughtful flow for readers.