Page 40

LUKAS

T he whiskey burned, but it was a Jack Daniels kind of night. Totally on brand since Lukas’s whole life was jack shit. He tossed back another shot and turned the glass upside down on the bar.

Well, at least he didn’t have to hide the ugly truth of it anymore. Fuck, what did he care if the whole world knew?

He might as well accept his fate and whore it up right out in the open. Everyone expected it of him anyway, didn’t they? The media had cast him as the womanizing pretty boy for years. Might as well give the fans what they want, yeah?

Elliette hadn’t even been shocked by it. What was it she said? Oh, yeah. It’s not like it’s a huge surprise.

Apparently, she’d never taken him seriously. When she told her brother she wanted to color outside the lines, she’d just been playing around. Getting messy for the fun of it. Not because she needed to grab hold of anything real.

Lukas snorted and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. How ironic that he was well on his way to getting shit-faced when a drunken stupor had ruined things in the first place.

Had he really been so out of it that he told her every sordid detail? Especially when he’d done everything in his power to hide the truth all these years?

He caught the bartender’s eye and tapped his empty shot glass. The bartender draped his towel over his shoulder and poured Lukas another one.

God . Elliette. He could still feel her in his arms. Her skin, so fucking soft. Her hair, like silk. Her breasts, perfectly sized, filling his hands. And the taste of her… Damn it all to hell.

At least the whiskey drowned out the sweet honey of that particular memory or he’d be losing his shit, if not his mind.

A citrus scent. Movement in his periphery. A manicured female hand on the bar top beside his newly filled shot glass. Nails painted blood red. “Malbec, please.”

The bartender brought a glass, and Lukas’s new bar-stool neighbor took a sip. Then, without any prelude or prompt she asked, “Drinking alone?”

Lukas didn’t look away from his glass. “Just me and my thoughts.”

“Deep ones?”

“Deep enough.” He swirled the amber liquid.

“I’ve never seen you here before.”

Lukas finally pinpointed her scent. It had been a long time since he’d encountered a pooka.

They were fae, but also shape shifters, much like him, though pookas took the form of a rabbit, or a colt, or—he turned his head just enough to get a peek—a beautiful raven-haired woman. Their natural form was far more nasty .

On top of that, pookas were just as likely to lead someone away from trouble as they were to lead them straight into the fire. The unpredictability was the reason Lukas had made it a rule to steer clear. But not tonight.

Tonight, trouble seemed like just the ticket. Give him a one-way train to self-destruction. His bags were already packed.

“You haven’t seen me because I’m new in town,” he said, then downed his third— fourth? —shot.

“Thought so.” She tipped her head to the side, studying him. “Has anyone ever told you that you look like that hockey player? Lukas Bakken?”

“Once or twice.” What he wouldn’t do, what he wouldn’t pay to be anybody else.

“You’re a little more sauced, of course,” she said with a laugh. “I doubt the real Lukas Bakken is out tonight. The season opener is tomorrow.”

“You follow hockey?”

She scoffed. “No. Hard pass. But they mentioned it on the news last night. I’m Felicia.”

Lukas ran his finger around the rim of his shot glass. “Jack.”

His phone lit up with a text from Rafe. It was another one of his pre-game curfew checks. The third one tonight. Lukas hadn’t responded to the first two, so he texted a quick:

Already in bed. Quit waking me up.

Rafe sent back a thumbs-up emoji, and Lukas turned his phone over.

The pooka—He’d already forgotten her name— swiveled her stool toward him, bringing her wine glass along for the ride.

Lukas turned to face her, too. She wore a black dress with a thin red trim around the low-cut neckline. She crossed her legs, and the slit in her skirt split to mid-thigh.

The whole look seemed cheap. Easy. Very un-Elliette-like.

“I don’t follow hockey either,” he said.

“What are you into?” she asked.

Lukas laughed bitterly. “Whiskey, women, and wine.”

“You’re in luck,” she said. “You’ve got all three right here at your fingertips.”

“Oh yeah?”

She smiled. “If you play your cards right.”

Lukas shook his head. “Too bad I’m shit at cards.”

He turned back toward the bar as the scent of peonies and vanilla hit his nose.

“ Lukas? ”

Lukas’s spine stiffened at the sound of Elli calling his name from across the bar. Her voice was small and hurt, reminding him of the way she used to speak around her father.

To hear her using that voice with him made Lukas wish he could punch himself in the face. He curled his fingers into his cocktail napkin and crushed it into a ball.

“Ah,” the pooka said, obviously reacting to his response. “Let me guess, Lukas . She’s the last hand of cards you played.”

He didn’t turn to watch Elliette weave her way through the tables, but he felt every step she took, the space between them narrowing as misery prickled his skin.

“How did you find me?” he asked when she was finally close enough to hear.

“Evan gave me the names of a couple places to try.” She stopped between him and the pooka, but barely gave the fae a glance.

“Interesting,” Lukas said, “seeing as I’ve never come here before.”

“He said he mentioned this bar to you once, and it’s not too far from the apartment.”

“So, you got lucky with me. Again .” Lukas didn’t hide the double entendre or irony of his comment. He wanted to cheapen their time together. Convince himself it meant nothing.

“It wasn’t the first place I tried,” she admitted, ignoring his bitter word play. “I’ve been driving around all night, going from bar to bar.”

He curled his hand around his empty shot glass and squeezed. “You think that’s safe?”

She didn’t answer that.

“You know what?” the pooka said, sliding off her stool. “I think I’ll leave you two to discuss what obviously needs discussing.”

Lukas jumped at the opportunity to extricate himself from this fucking scene. “I’ll go with you.”

Elliette sucked in a breath, sounding surprised and more hurt than before.

The pooka seemed equally caught off guard. She studied Elliette, then slid her gaze to Lukas. Whatever she made of Elliette’s bruises or of Lukas’s obvious snub was unclear. She merely shrugged, said, “I’ll wait,” and headed toward the door.

Lukas got off his stool and would have left immediately if Elliette hadn’t wrapped her hand around his arm. He stopped. Her touch nearly brought him to his knees .

“We need to talk,” she whispered. “I know?—”

“I know you know. You made that abundantly clear.” She knew it all, everything he’d kept from her all these years—the good, the bad, and the very, very ugly.

“Don’t ice me out,” she said. “I?—”

“I can’t ice you out , Elliette.” He purposefully used the name she hated, the name he loved more than any other name on the planet. “Not when you were never in . We had a fun night. That’s all.”

“You said you loved me, and?—”

“I said what I needed to say to get what I wanted. Now that I’ve had my taste of you, there’s no reason to stick around.”

The words were bitter in his mouth, but he didn’t know what else to say. He needed to sever whatever was left of the threads that still bound him to her. It was the only way.

Elliette swallowed hard, clearly shaken by his crudeness, but she still managed to hold her ground. “You’re lying.”

“Yeah? Well, here’s some truth.” He pried her fingers off his arm. “I don’t care what you think of me.”

Her eyes flashed. “You’re still lying.”

Lukas growled in frustration. “Then I’ll rephrase. It doesn’t matter what you think of me. Add that to your list of things that shouldn’t be a huge surprise .”

Elli flinched, hearing her own words flung back at her.

Lukas’s wolf snarled in his ears, hating the bad blood between them and demanding that he make things right.

Instead, he ignored the beast and glanced toward the exit where the pooka stood, waiting. “Ready to go, sweetheart?”

“Ready when you are,” the pooka purred .

“Lukas,” Elli whispered.

He grabbed his jacket off the back of the bar stool, shoved his arms roughly down the sleeves, and drove the last nail in the coffin. “See you around, Elliette.”

“Lukas, wait!” she cried, lunging for him.

But he didn’t wait. And he was already gone.