Craving a change of pace from our usual cocktail chatter, I dragged Phoebe and the rest of the girls alongwithme.
Justforfun.
Nothingspecial.
Certainly nothinglife-altering.
I remember the moment so clearly. We were all laughing, placing bets, joking around, making fun of each other, much like any other night of the week… and thenhestrode into the ring. That’s really the only word I can use, because Luca doesn’t walk, but he doesn’t swagger, either. Hestrides— not with excessive drama or flair; with determination and an undeniable air of self-assuredness.
He cut through that crowd like fire through paper, and when he jumped up into the ring, his fans roared so loud they drowned out the familiar strains ofShipping Up To Bostonby the Dropkick Murphys blaring from the speakers overhead. I didn’t pay any attention to the fangirls pressed up at the front in their too-tight t-shirts, dying for his attention. I barely glanced at my friends as they cooed appreciatively at the sightofhim.
The laughter died in mythroat.
The thoughts in my head wentsilent.
The sounds of the crowd fell awaycompletely.
For the next hour, I stood transfixed. All my attention was used up by the man with ruthlessly short red-gold hair, throwing punches and ducking his opponent’s blows like he’d been born to do it. Every ounce of my energy was inexplicably coiled like a live wire beneath the surface of my skin as I watched this stranger, this man with whom I’d never exchanged a single word, dole out a beating with a level of skill I didn’t even know waspossible.
I’m sure some people looking at him saw a savage. Amonster.
But me? I saw sheer beauty in that ring. In every bead of sweat, every lethal scowl, every drop of blood that oozed from his cracked knuckles by the final round, when his foe lay in a defeated heap of bruised limbs at hisbarefeet…
He wasbeautiful.
I don’t know how it happened, exactly, but when he looked up at the crowd, scanning the crush of cheering fans pressing in from all sides… somehow his eyes found mine in the melee. Ice blue, but full of fire, fury, and bloodlust, they scored into me like a sword. A killstrike.
He could’ve looked away… but hedidn’t.
Ishould’velooked away… but Icouldn’t.
For a long, insane moment, through the din, through the sea of a hundred strangers… our gazes locked. And held. Andburned.
Those blue eyes raked me from head to toe, seeing more of me in a second than most men saw when I took my clothes off in front of them. There was no apology in his assessment — his was a frank, appreciative examination, so thorough I felt like he knew everything from the color of my underwear to the precise location of the tiny heart-shaped mole just below my righthipbone.
Redhead stereotypes aside, I don’t blush easily… but just the weight of his stare had my cheeks staining red beneath the gym’s fluorescent lights. Barely daring to breathe, I watched as some of that leftover fire in his eyes faded out… as it was replaced by something else. Something that made my toes curl inside my favorite pair of heeled leatherboots.
I swear, everyone in the building was screaming at the top of their lungs, but in that moment, just before someone clapped Luca on the back in congratulations and he finally looked away, my world went totally quiet. Everything in my existence narrowed to a single, ludicrous thought. A sole, insanedesire.
I wantthisman.
I made up my mind right then, to go after him. To do what I always do — reel him in, chew him up, then spit him out as soon as I’d had my fill. Just looking at him, I knew it would be the most satisfying meal ofmylife…
Or, itwould’vebeen.
If not for the fact that, ten minutes later, he walked straight up to my gaggle of girlfriends to say hello to Nate and Phoebe… and I felt my heart plummet like a stone as I learned he was already a part of my extended friend group. One of the Knox Investigations “boys” who worked security for Nate, not to mention best friends with Zoe, the girl Phoebe’s brother Parker just so happened to be inlovewith.
Luca Buchanan was intractably intertwined with my life before I evermethim.
Justmyluck.
My plans of seduction flickered and died faster than my middle school goth phase because, if there’s one unbreakable dating rule I live by, it’s that you never, ever, ever date someone you’re friends with. (Also, that no one can pull off that excessive-eyeliner look except AvrilLavigne.)
Still, my point remains: dating a friend — or a friend of a friend — never ends well for either of the parties involved. In fact, it pretty much contradicts my entire philosophy — that a typical Lila Sinclair relationship should never exceed the lifespan of a common house fly. Or the shelf life of a gallonofmilk.
When you hook up with a friend, there’s no way to extract yourself gracefully after that blissful, month-long honeymoon phase starts to wane. It makes the latter part oflove him and leave himdamn near impossible to pull off without serious collateraldamage.
So, though it damn near killed me… I shoved my dreams of Luca Buchanan into the farthest, darkest corner of my mind, and did what any logical girl would, in this situation: avoided him like the plague in any and all social situations where our paths mightcross.