Page 4 of One Second After Another

Too many.

Even he knew it.

No doubt, the conversation wasn’t going to end particularly well but if Luca needed help, then he only had one person to go to for it, really. Naz. That was it.

“Where the fuck are you?”

The first words out of Naz’s mouth the second he picked up Luca’s call. Scrubbing a hand down his face, irritated by the thick patch of facial hair that had started to grow out since he’d been without a razor for too damn long, Luca tried not to sigh.

Tried being the keyword.

He failed.

“I’m ... in Nevada,” he muttered.

“What—”

“With Penny—or I was.”

Silence answered him back.

He waited Naz out.

“What?” his friend snarled.

Like a record on repeat.

“I don’t have long,” Luca said, not realizing how true that statement would actually be in just a few short minutes. “But I found her, man. I don’t have time to explain everything right now. We went from New York to Nevada—now she’s gone again.”

“But you were with her,” Naz replied.

It wasn’t even a question.

Luca swallowed hard. “Yeah—”

“And you didn’t tell me.”

Anger clung to his friend’s words. Luca understood that all too well even if he didn’t have the time to indulge whatever Naz felt about the news he had just dropped on him without warning. Welcome to Luca’s life—that shit was a regular thing now.

“Point is,” Luca said, trying to get the conversation back around to what was important, “she got me here, but then she left. And now I think she’s got people after her, Naz. Except they’re probably after me, too. I’ve got thirty minutes before I’m jumping on a flight. Better to be back in New York than here, no doubt.”

“You were with her and didn’t tell me.”

“Naz.”

He knew good and damn well why that was the thing Naz wanted to focus on. The entire reason why Luca stood where he did boiled down to the fact his friend asked him to find Penny in the first place. He’d done that. And didn’t tell Naz.

“What does that mean—she left?” Naz asked. “How can she leave, Luca? The girl is already gone.”

“Woman,” he corrected just because that was the only thing his stupid brain decided was most important to say. “She’s not—”

“Luca, what is going on?”

God.

He wished he had an answer. An excuse. Anything.

Instead, he was left saying, “A lot has happened, man.”