Page 24 of Amore
“Nothing?”
“Absolutely nothing.”
Even though I had only known the teenage Lucy, I felt certain she was pissed—like Luke had been—about my actions afterthat night. I didn’t blame her, but how would I have answered any of her questions back then? Prior to that night, there had never been any weirdness among the three of us.
Amore scratched at my backdoor, and I got up to let him in. I downed the rest of my glass of wine. “Since you’re staying over, do you want that glass of wine now?”
“Yeah.” He stood. “I’m going to need it.”
I arched a brow. “Why’s that?”
“Lucy wants to video chat.”
8
LUKE
I wasn’tsure if I was more scared of my girlfriend’s wrath or my sister’s, since she had held a grudge forever.
It wasn’t as though Frankie and I were dating or messing around. We’d had a moment at the coffee shop, and then shit hit the fan. We’d had no time to process that our young hearts had been in love, and I didn’t have a plan other than to keep her safe. If I had to sleep on her couch every night, I would, and it wasn’t because I’d taken an oath to serve and protect. If anything happened to Frankie, I wasn’t sure my heart would ever recover.
“All right,” Frankie replied. “I ripped the Band-Aid off with you. I can do it with Lucy.”
I grunted a laugh. “She won’t make it easy on you. You know how she is.”
“I don’t, actually. Not anymore.” She frowned.
I went to where she stood at the kitchen island in front of the wine bottle. “She’s still the same Lucy you knew back then. Just pregnant and hormonal now.”
Frankie’s eyes widened. “She’s pregnant?”
“I think about six or seven months,” I replied, nodding.
She passed me a glass of the red wine. “Wow. Is she married?”
My phone buzzed on the island in front of me. Glancing down, I saw it was a text from Candace. Instead of replying to her, I said to Frankie, “Yeah. She got married a few years ago to a guy she met in Kansas where she lives.”
Frankie’s mouth fell open. “She stayed in Kansas?”
“She loves it there.” A text from Lucy lit up my screen, saying that she was waiting. “She’s waiting. Are you ready?”
“What are we going to say?”
I shrugged. “The truth?”
Her brown eyes widened. “That we had sex, and I freaked out?”
“Well,” I snorted, “I would leave that part out.”
“What do I say about why we stopped talking?”
“That’s on you, Franks.” If she wanted to lie to my sister, that was on her.
“I’m so nervous,” she admitted.
We didn’t have a chance to keep talking because Lucy wasn’t waiting around for us to video call her. Instead, she took it upon herself to call us. I showed Frankie my ringing phone before I answered. “Hey, sis.” I smiled, trying to act as though everything was peachy.
“Don’t ‘Hey, sis’ me!” she snapped. “What the hell is going on?”
