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A key jangles into the lock of the apartment door, and I snap my head around in alarm. I’m expecting Elena any minute now, but she doesn’t have a key. It can only be Luca.
He shoves open the door and I’m in his immediate line of sight. He storms toward me, a finger pointed angrily. “What the fuck did you do?”
“What?”
“Our accounts,” he spits. “Where are they?”
It’s sickening, just how quickly I’ve had to adjust to this new dynamic with Luca. When we were together, our voices were hardly ever raised. Disagreements were settled with understanding and resolution. He always had my back, no matter what, and he wouldneverhave let anyone speak to me the way he has recently. How unfathomable, that the person who promises to protect you can be the one who ends up hurting you the most .?.?.
We aren’t Gracie and Luca anymore. There’s venom woven between the lines of our failed relationship, and I hate that I’m now used to it.
“You can’t be that invested in them if it’s taken you three days to notice that they’re gone,” I say nonchalantly.
“Damnit, Gracie!” Luca slams his fist down on the kitchen counter and I flinch. “Why would you delete them? We could have kept making money until the end of the yearat least. What gave you the right to shut everything down without consulting with me first?”
I stand from the couch and approach him, my hands on my hips. “For starters, I was the one who always handled the admin. Second, I’m the one who did most of the work. Third, our entire brand is now a lie. We’re done, so guess what, Luca? That means our brand has to be done too.”
“We should have discussed this,” he growls, shaking his head furiously at the ceiling, like he can’t bear to look at me. “I’m letting you stay here while I slum it on my cousin’s couch, and this is how you repay me? By throwing away our income source?”
“You clearly haven’t checked our bank account recently,” I say. “We’re doing just fine.”
Luca scoffs, and as he looks back at me with his piercing blue-gray eyes, he notices something over my shoulder. “Now who gave you those?” he sneers. He fixes me with a hardened look as he crosses by me on his way to the coffee table where the box of roses sits. He tears out the small card. “Love, Weston.Surprise, surprise.”
“Don’t touch them,” I warn.
Luca mockingly holds up his hands and retreats from the coffee table, advancing back toward me. “I don’t care about your flowers. What I do care about, though, are both our names being on this lease. You want to bring a new guy around? Then I suggest you move out and find your own place.”
“Whoareyou, Luca?”
It’s terrifying that I don’t recognize the person standing in front of me despite our being together for seven years. He’s callous, bitter, selfish. He’sawful,and that hurts. It hurts that there’s still love for him deeply rooted inside of me. If only hating him could be as easy as loving him .?.?.
Luca places his hands on the edge of the kitchen counter either side of me, trapping me in place. He shrugs, his eyes fastened on mine, and says, “This is Luca Hartmann without Gracie Taylor.”
There’s a cough at the door. Elena struts into the apartment and whips off her sunglasses, suspiciously looking us over. “Are you guys fighting or fucking?”
I press my hands to Luca’s chest and shove him away from me, immediately dashing to Elena and pulling her into a brief hug. In a hushed voice, I tell her, “Fighting. Thank God you’re here.”
Elena’s demeanor shifts from blasé to poised and ready for war. She steps protectively in front of me and folds her arms, her brunette hair bouncing as she swings to face Luca. “You should get out of here.”
“It’s my apartment,” Luca counters.
“Don’t be a dick, Luca,” she says with a scathing look. “Just leave.”
Luca narrows his eyes at her, a beat of tense silence filling the apartment, and then he reluctantly gives in. As he heads for the door while Elena burns holes in his skull, he says, “We’ll finish this conversation later, Gracie.” He swings his keys to the apartment around his index finger as he leaves, and an uneasy feeling settles in the pit of my stomach.
The second Luca is over the threshold, Elena rushes to the door and slides on the chain lock. She even checks out the peephole to confirm his departure while I release a deep breath. Although I held my own while Luca was in front of me, I’m left feeling shaky in the aftermath.
“What was that about?” Elena asks, joining me.
“He finally realized I shut down all our accounts,” I say. I fill myself a glass of water and swig half of it, soothing the dry irritation in my throat. Elena and Maddie were thrilled when I told them I’d taken some initiative and deleted all of our social media accounts, but they were, of course, concerned when I admitted not having discussed it with Luca first. “He’s not happy about it. He’s .?.?. God, Elena. I don’t even know who he is anymore.”
“He’s an ass, that’s what he is,” Elena says, and then she gasps. “Oooh. Roses!”
Elena runs to the box of roses, and I hastily set down my water and follow after her, reaching out for the card that Luca left on the coffee table. “Wait!” I plead, but Elena grabs it first.
I cover my eyes with my hand as she reads the note Weston wrote, because I know my weeks of denial and omissions of the truth have finally come to an end. The jig is up. It’s time to come clean.
“Weston?Weston?” Elena gapes at me wildly. “The guy who got us kicked out of the club? The cop who attended to our noise complaint? You told me you’ve only seen that guy a couple times, and now he’s sending youroses?Spill, Gracie. Right now.”
