Page 53 of One Step After Another

15.

Luca

THE last thing Lucaexpected to find himself doing was Penny. So to speak. A part of him was still trying to reconcile the girl he remembered with the woman she had become in the years since he’d first met her. But it had become very apparent to him that it didn’t matter when that time was already over, and he had to deal with the now.

And Penny now?

He wanted that.

Her.

More than he should—more than was okay, even.

He had done well to ignore it during their stay at Freddie’s haven but with nothing else to do but look at Penny, or wander the halls of the large building and think, it kept leading Luca back to the same thing. Her.

It all came right back to her.

He shouldn’t have kissed her the first time, but that could be excused as a needed requirement to get the two of them out of a bad situation. Except he kept thinking about it. The way her lips felt against his—how he wanted another taste and to touch her again. Until his fingers felt a phantom ache that didn’t exist, and they itched with the need to trace the scars that covered her thighs and arms and even her chest while she slept in the small bed next to him.

Oh, he hadn’t slept.

Not a fucking wink.

He’d been too busy staring at her.

“You’re obsessed,” she whispered against his lips.

Luca’s heavy breath pulsed from his mouth to hers when he hovered over her where he had backed her against the hallway wall. Just outside their room. Another couple of feet and they would be safely out of view. Yet, when those words slipped past her trembling lips, swollen and pink from their kisses, he couldn’t think about anything but what she said.

“How—”

“Me,” Penny told him. “You’re obsessed with me. Maybe the idea of me or this ghost of who I used to be, but still ... How could you not be? How long have you spent looking for even a hint of my existence? How many times have you talked about me, thought about me ... how many pictures and videos have you watched for even a glimpse of me? Am I in your dreams, Luca? Do I fill your thoughts when the day is quiet and no one is around? Do you think of me in a crowded room, too?”

God.

Every single one of her words hit him right in the fucking chest. Like they were punches she had thrown with the knowledge that their impact would take his breath away. It certainly didn’t hurt like he thought maybe it should, but the weight was still heavy.

And hard to carry.

He wanted to deny it.

He tried.

“You don’t know that,” he muttered, watching her while his hands locked her wrists at both sides of her head. “You don’t know any—”

“Am I your every waking thought? How many calls a day are dedicated to finding information about me? Have you ever dated in the last five years since you started this for Naz? Do you have a life at all outside of trying to find me? Or is it just ... me?”

A slow, steady stream of air passed his lax lips as he desperately tried to find something—anything—to prove what she said wasn’t true. Not because she seemed pleased or satisfied but rather, that she knew at all. That she could say it so easily, without malice, while it still managed to taunt him all the same.

But she wasn’t wrong.

Here he was at thirty years old playing hide and seek with a ghost from his past, but the game had changed. Everything he used to want was inconsequential to winning. Because winning meant finding her and bringing her home to the people who loved her the most. He couldn’t quite say that he was ready for the new rules—the game had clearly changed between them—but what choice did he have now?

“Luca,” Penny murmured, “just say it.”

He wanted to.

He did.