Page 42 of Green Flag (StormSprint #2)

Luca

Everly and I spent Christmas apart. I flew back to Italy in the early hours after the fight and she stayed with her dad, while I reunited with my family.

Though I wanted to see her.

And hug her.

Seeing her name in the PI’s report made me sick and lit a fire in my chest I couldn’t put out. Pedro had exploited her love and loyalty. He’d set her up for the fall, and I could only imagine it was her father who stopped those very incriminating logs from being used in the investigation.

I had a newfound respect for him.

Not that I could explain that to her.

She still believed Pedro was innocent and… I didn’t want to shatter her heart. She didn’t need to carry that extra wound.

Whenever she texted me, the normal excited feeling was accompanied by guilt.

I watched my phone like a hawk over the Christmas break.

Alessia, my sister, sat opposite me on the floor as we were playing scopone, eyeing my cards. We’d played this since we were little and we knew each other’s tells. So I went against my normal reactions and narrowed my eyes at her, clutching the cards to my chest.

My teammate was Gio, who had been trying to get me alone all day, no doubt to ask about the PI. Scopone was a good distraction for him — he was always invested in the game. His teammate used to be Alv, his brother.

I had to prove myself, so I rolled up the sleeves of the ugly Christmas jumper Everly bought me. Ready for battle on my Nonna’s living room floor.

Only to see I had some very high cards. Shit.

Gio started off strong with a 3 of cups. I needed something lower to help him win this round, just as Nonna started asking questions.

My work was not mentioned. Alv had been, but the accident and the legal proceedings hadn’t.

Until Nonna stopped stroking my cousin’s hair at the foot of her chair and said with a gleeful smile, “ I heard you have a girlfriend, Luca. ”

Alessia snorted, placing her card down and I was so taken aback by her questioning, that I didn’t even note what card it was before Uncle Stevano placed his on top.

“ Don’t. ” Mamma shook her head with a tsk.

“ Who is she? ” Nonna asked, shuffling further down her chair to get closer to me, ignoring her daughter.

“ Her name is Everly, Nonna ,” I told her, feigning focus on the cards. “ I work with her.” And she’s not my girlfriend.

“Ever-ly,” Nonna sounded out with a frown. “ Like the bike Alv used to own. ”

I nodded as tension filled the room. Gio glared at me as my attention had wavered and I placed down my card. He sighed and rolled his eyes.

Normally, I loved having any opportunity to talk about her.

I could go on for days about the small things: her little shoulder wiggle when she was excited, how music consumed her whole being, the way her laugh weakened my knees, her resilience and strength, how her lyrics resonated so deeply within me.

Alone, I expected to think about her beautiful, blushing face as she’d opened her mouth and let me see my cum on her tongue.

But it wasn’t my main focus. The visual that was embedded deep within my brain was her ecstatic, tender expression as she’d looked up at me with pride after I’d won and the panic that had swelled so deep in my gut when I saw her cut lip.

“ What does she do at StormSprint ?”

I breathed in deeply before turning to her with a polite smile. To stop short. She looked so vulnerable before me — she’d aged in the last year; her hair had greyed even further and her wrinkles had deepened around her eyes. The accident had impacted us all.

“ She’s one of the grid girls, ” I told her. “ But she’s a singer too .”

Mamma huffed.

“ What’s her full name? ” Nonna asked. “ Maybe I’ve heard some of her songs. ”

Even Alessia glared at me, silently ordering me not to answer. No one was playing scopone anymore. My cousin scooted away from Nonna’s feet.

“ I doubt you would have ,” I said. “ She’s a country artist. ”

“ I want to hear her songs, ” Nonna pressed, eyes sliding over her family’s reactions. Her smile was dampening, her wrinkles deepening as her face fell. “ What’s her name? ” she asked, more urgently this time.

“Everly Bacque,” I admitted.

Her expression shifted slightly.

“His daughter? ” she asked, voice still calm.

I nodded.

Her back straightened and she blinked into the crowded room of our relatives. “ You’re with the daughter of the man who killed my grandson? ”

Well, damn, when you put it like that.

It wasn’t her fault that she blamed Don. Unless you worked in the championship, you didn’t realise who was in control of what. Don was responsible.

“ She hates her dad ,” I said quickly, sitting up on my knees and facing her. “ She hardly talks to him.”

“ Where is she for Christmas? ” Nonna snapped. Her eyes were dark and furious as her nostrils flared.

When I didn’t answer, she sighed, closing her eyes. “ And she hates her father, you said? Hates him so much that she’d start working with him? Hates him so much she spends the holidays with him?”

People started to get up and leave us. Fucking fuckety fuck fuck.

Mamma stayed, watching and nodding along.

“ Yes, but she has younger siblings she likes to spend Christmas with, ” I said. “ The two boys still believe in Santa .”

She snorted.

“ You might have met her; she was at the funeral.”

“ I know who she is ,” Nonna barked. “ I saw her. Hiding behind the father she hates. She was the only reason I didn’t go over to him and give him a piece of my mind.”

“ It’s complicated. ”

“ You love her ?” she asked, breaths deep. “ Because the only reason you would shame your family this badly must be for love. ”

Panicked, I glanced at my mother but she was looking straight ahead, still shaking her head in small motions.

“ The issue here is her last name ,” Nonna went on. “ So, if you love her, you change it. ”

“Sorry?” I asked in English.

That infuriated her more. She took the deepest breath, her chest filling with air to fuel her rant.

“You spend too much time away from us. You avoid us after your own cousin dies and end up in bed with his killer’s family, Luca!

You travel the world, but only come home for his funeral, and fly away straight after!

Where are your texts? Where are your calls?

Your visits? You get to live your life, and find love while I’m drowning here. Your auntie is drowning.”

I swallowed, tears pricking my eyes.

Her lip was curled as she started to cry too. “ I’m ashamed of you, Luca .”

I flinched with the assault of those words and wiped at my eyes. “Ashamed, Nonna ?”

She nodded. “ This isn’t you. I don’t know what’s happened —”

“ Neither do I! ” I shouted, standing and trying to measure my breathing.

“ I loved Alv as all of you did. He’s the first person I’ve ever lost. I don’t know— I don’t know how to do it.

I keep thinking if I continue as normal, life will eventually become normal.

I’m emotionless. If everything is as it used to be, then I could hold everything together.

Do you want me to talk about him? Do you want to be reminded?

Right now I can’t be reminded, because I’m reminded every second and it hurts. ”

I refused to well up. I’d been the strong one. But maybe that was a lie. Maybe I’d actually just been the one ignoring all the problems, and there was very little strength within that.

I tried to breathe as Mamma tugged at my arm to fall onto the sofa where she’d been.

I stood tall. “ You don’t think I think of him every day?

The damn bike I’m on was meant to be his.

Every track I race on, he dominated. I just ride.

I’m not his replacement but his lesser placeholder until someone better comes along.

And, at the same time, why do I feel entitled to grieve so deeply?

I’m not his mother, his grandmother, his sister.

” I looked at Mamma then and her mascara was streaked down her cheek.

“ I’m his cousin and I hate that it hurts so much. ”

My breakdown was fast and all-consuming.

I was on the floor again, the cards from scopone spread out before me, mixed up as my knees fell onto them.

“ I have no idea how to feel. Sometimes I feel guilty about just how easily I can smile, even if it’s fake — how I feel nothing.

Then I’m consumed with anger and hatred towards the one thing I’ve really come to love. ”

Mamma was on the floor with me, stroking my arm now.

Nonna slid down her chair to sit in front of me, mouth opening then slamming shut as her brows came together in a deep pain of her own. “ Her? ”

I hadn’t meant Everly, I’d meant racing. But she was the only one who got genuine smiles out of me. She made me feel something other than alone.

I didn’t want to be, but with her, I was seen.

And I went back to that picture again; I had been abuzz with excitement at winning the fight, but her lip had been bleeding, and my entire being focused on her pain, all excitement evaporating because I would do anything with my aching muscles to protect her.

Because I cared so much about her.

“Yes,” I said.

Was that what love was? Someone to share troubles with? To feel something with?

If that was the case, my ‘yes’ wasn’t a lie.

Nonna took my hands with hers. “ I’m sorry,” she whispered. “ I’m so sorry. I just… I miss you, Luca.”

I buried my head into Mamma’s shoulder. “ I miss you too .” And I did. But I missed myself too.