“Hey, hey,” I said to pull him out of his jealous haze and bring his attention back to me. “Your jersey is on my bed at home. No,” I said, answering the next question I knew he was going to ask. “It hasn’t been washed. It still smells like you and sweat.”
He had two jerseys, and the one he wore the previous week, I was to wear at that week’s game. He said it was his good luck charm, but I was sure it was more to do with everyone in the stands knowing I was his.
As if the entire world wasn’t already aware.
Having his name on my back and his scent all over me was Luca Thornton’s way of marking his territory. And I would be lying if I said I didn’t like it.
I heard him blow out a frustrated breath and paused, waiting for him to tell me what was wrong. “Coach just said one of the scouts that is going to be at the game tonight is from Bama,” he confessed. “I’m stressed, babe. I have to play my best game tonight.”
For all of two seconds, I contemplated sabotaging him. Then guilt hit me so hard, I felt tears sting my eyes. I wasn’t that girl. Luca was part of my soul, and I couldn’t breathe when he was unhappy. Going to Alabama was his dream, and I wasn’t going to do anything to stop him from living that dream. I had to stop being so damn selfish.
“You play your best game every Friday night,” I reminded him. “This one isn’t going to be any different. You are Luca Fucking Thornton. The offense pisses themselves when they know they have to face you on the field.”
Shaw gave me a smirk, nodding her head in agreement with every word I spoke.
“Yeah. Okay.” Then he groaned. “Fuck.”
“Tell me what you need,” I murmured. “Tell me, and I’ll make it happen.”
I heard his sharp inhale and knew his mind was moving exactly where I wanted it to. To me. Us. Alone.
“Goddamn, Vi,” he growled. “Now I’m nervous and hard. You’re evil.” But I heard the grin in his voice and began to relax a little. A bell rang in the background where he was, and he muttered a curse. “I love you. See you tonight. Okay, babe?”
“I love you too.”
Putting my phone back in my purse, I started walking with Shaw again. Our small delay in the hall had caused others to stop what they were doing and watch us. As if we were some freak-show side act to entertain them or something. It wasn’t like we were the most famous students at Santa Monica Prep, but we tended to be the ones most often in the stupid trash magazines.
Shaw’s dad was Axton Cage, lead singer of OtherWorld. His band was legendary in rock, just like my dad’s was. Her mom was an ex-model covered head to toe in ink. She’d been a nurse for most of our childhood, but mostly she was a stay-at-home mother these days. Shaw had followed in Aunt Dallas’s footsteps and was already one of the top-paid models in the world. She had contracts with some of the biggest names in makeup and fashion. While Cannon was following in Axton’s footsteps and spent most of his summers touring with Jagger Armstrong and their band.
The other students’ attention wasn’t on me just because I was Shaw’s best friend. My dad was the bassist for Demon’s Wings. He’d been some kind of manwhore back in the day until Mom came along and tamed him. Ever since, she’d needed her own bodyguard to keep the idiots in their place because there were women out there still pissed she’d landed the one guy everyone thought was unobtainable. She was also the editor at one of the two magazines she owned.
And I was their princess. The daughter the world thought they would never have. I’d been their miracle, and everyone stopped to stare, no matter where I went. There were some nutjobs out there who even wanted to touch me because they thought I was magical and that holding my hand for a few minutes could help them conceive.
I wasn’t a gift from God or whatever else some people assumed. My mom went through hell and had the help of the world’s leading fertility specialist to help her and Dad get pregnant with me. I’d stopped asking to hear the stories years ago because she always got a haunted look in her eyes when she talked about it, making me wonder if she suffered from PTSD because of everything that had happened before I was born.
My brother was the true miracle. They weren’t even trying to get pregnant with him. She always said they didn’t want to be greedy. They got me, and that was enough for them. But Mason surprised the hell out of everyone three years later. There was no fertility specialist, no daily shots, no stressing over if the pregnancy test was going to be negative that month. Even her pregnancy with him was fairly uneventful, whereas hers with me had caused my parents to have nightmares for years.
Shaw glared at the group of girls standing closest that were gawking at us. “Take a picture, bitches. You can finger yourselves to it later.” She flipped them off and then linked her arm through mine as we walked to our shared locker.
It was technically mine, but there was no use in us having two separate lockers when we only needed one and mine was closer to our first class of the day.
“How pissed do you think Cannon would be if we stole his car and drive over to Malibu at lunch?” I asked her as I opened the locker and exchanged my AP English Lit book for my trig.
She snorted. “I don’t think there is a word in the English language for how mad he will be. But that never stopped us before.” She took out her chemistry book. “This is why I always carry my set of keys to his car.” She winked as she backed away. “Meet me outside after second period.”
Grinning, I waved and started down the hall to my class. Pulling out my phone, I texted Luca a kiss.
Chapter 2
Violet
As soon as the bell rang at the end of second period, I grabbed my things and headed for the nearest exit. I got to the student parking lot without anyone stopping me, and I might have gotten into Cannon’s car with no one even noticing if it weren’t for my spotting a familiar dark ponytail about to disappear into a black car.
Arella turned, and our gazes locked. My cousin grinned. “You saw nothing.”
“Same to you, cuz,” I said with a wink.
“You going to Malibu?”
“No comment.”
She laughed and walked over to hug me. She was in the same grade as Shaw, so they were a year ahead of me, but I didn’t see Arella often in the halls. She didn’t take AP classes, and most of her friends were in the drama club with her.
“How is Uncle Drake?” I asked when we parted from our hug.
“Same,” she said with a sad twist of her lips. “And he and Mom are still forbidding us from telling Nevaeh. I feel so bad for keeping his illness from her.”
“I know. But it’s for the best,” I tried to soothe, but I felt just as guilty. I didn’t even talk to Nevaeh often, but I still felt bad for keeping the secret about her dad’s liver disease. My dad was his brother, and he’d gotten tested to see if he was a match as soon as Uncle Drake told him he needed a liver transplant. The results were good—better than good, actually—but I still hadn’t fully grasped what that would mean for Dad.
I hadn’t let myself think of what could go wrong. The “what-ifs” of complications. I couldn’t, or I would beg him not to go through with it. And I couldn’t do that to him or Uncle Drake. So, I tried not to think about it at all. I would let myself worry when the surgery actually happened. Until then, I would pretend nothing was wrong.