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“I bet Elio’s not sorry he’s not playing in this game,” Hazel, Aldo and Kayden’s girlfriend, pointed out. She was still relatively new to their group, only moving to Philadelphia from Boston last spring.
“He hated games like this,” Liza confided. Elio, her older brother, had played with the Stingrays up until the end of last season, when he’d hung up his skates and moved back home. Within months of retiring from the game, he’d married Gianna, the two of them having a daughter in September.
Elio and Gianna had planned to come today, but their daughter had been up all night with a fever, so they opted to stay home. Elio had sounded exhausted when he’d called Luca earlier this morning to bail.
Keeley perked up from her spot between Gio and Rafe in the front row, turning to look over the top of her recliner at Hazel. “They were planning to watch it at the inn. I might text Gianna to make sure Elio hasn’t thrown anything at the TV.”
Elio, Gio, and Rafe were all business partners, the three men opening a “haunted” inn that Elio and Gianna ran. The haunted part of the inn’s description sounded scarier than it was, considering the ghosts were believed to be Rafe’s grandparents, who were proving to be mischievous matchmakers rather than frightening spirits.
Ordinarily, Luca would have been right in the middle of the bitching and moaning about the Stingrays’ shitty playing, but he was struggling to follow the game today, too amused by Conor and Harper’s reactions to the utter chaos surrounding them.
Harper had admitted to being an only child, and while Conor hadn’t said a lot about his upbringing, Luca had spent enough time with Gage to learn that the Russo household hadn’t been overly familiar with things like laughter and fun when the boys were growing up.
“This is insane.” Harper leaned over Luca so that Conor could hear her. The noise level was currently off-the-charts as the clock clicked down and everyone kept yelling at the refs, the players, the coaches, the commentators, and whoever else they thought had let them down.
“You’re not kidding.” Conor did the same lean, so now Luca sat with both of them bent over his lap. He hoped neither of them glanced down because as the game progressed, and they continued to down beers and Harper’s endless array of appetizers, Luca found it increasingly difficult to keep his mind on the game and not on the smell of Harper’s shampoo.
Or, God help him, Conor’s cologne.
Fucking Joey had planted a seed when he’d expressed his opinion on Conor’s sexuality. After three weeks of thinking about it, and spending time with Harper and Conor, he’d finally given up the internal battle and admitted to himself that he was attracted to both of his current clients. Like, off-the-charts attracted.
Today had been a true test of his willpower every time Harper grabbed his arm when someone scored…when Conor reached into the bowl on Luca’s lap to steal a handful of chips…as they took turns leaning in to whisper their questions about the game into his ears.
Luca had spent years watching his siblings with their partners. Enough that he’d come to realize he likely wouldn’t be satisfied in a relationship with just one person. He figured the reason he’d been resistant to admit that truth before now was because he’d been suffering a long streak of bad dates and zero sex. How could he hope to find two people who made his heart race when he couldn’t even find one?
He grinned as Harper and Conor joined in the countdown to the end of the game with the rest of his friends and family.
“Ten, nine, eight!”
“Goddammit! Shoot the fucking puck,” Aldo yelled, using every angry Italian gesture in his repertoire, while Hazel and Kayden rolled their eyes at their boyfriend’s over-the-top fury.
Meanwhile, Gio and Rafe had appeared to accept the defeat with a bit more grace, the two men tickling Keeley over some disparaging remark she’d made about the Rays, demanding she take back whatever it was she’d said while she giggled and tried to fight them off.
Since that post-fire walk-through of the restaurant, followed by donuts, Luca had seen Conor and Harper every single day, the three of them meeting for an after-work drink to discuss the renovations. Initially, that was exactly what they’d talked about. But given how little they’d discussed work this past week, talking about everything else under the sun, it was obvious they were using the construction as an excuse to get together.
The more time Luca spent with Harper and Conor, the more he started believing the relationships Gio and Aldo had might not be such an unachievable goal for himself.
Luca’s dick twitched when Conor’s arm brushed against his. God.
“Three, two, one!”
The buzzer sounded, and just like that, the Stingrays’ stellar season came to an end.
“Damn,” Luca muttered. “Well, that sucked.”
“Sorry your team lost.” Harper bumped her shoulder against his.
“Did you have fun at least?” Luca asked.
His family was extremely important to him. So much so, he could never be in a relationship with someone who couldn’t accept them. He’d broken up with a long-term girlfriend once because she began refusing to attend family events, claiming all the noise gave her a headache. When he assured her that he was fine attending alone, she’d doubled down, constantly putting him in the position of having to choose between his family or her.
He’d stupidly picked her a few times, missing a couple birthday parties and a Fourth of July picnic, before he figured out he had a hell of a lot more fun with his family than he did with her. Since then, getting along with his family was high on his list of what he was looking for in a relationship.
“Are you kidding?” Harper replied. “Who could sit in a room with these people and not have fun?”
Luca smiled, feeling like a million bucks.
“It occurs to me I haven’t been using this room to its full potential any more than the kitchen, keeping it to myself when it was made for a lot of people,” Conor mused. “Do you think everyone would want to come back for the finals, even if the Stingrays aren’t in it?”
