The Romance Revival(41)

Crash continues to stare down at Luca’s leg, looking deeply skeptical, then over to Annie. “Aren’t you a vet?”

She straightens, offended. “We’re both medically trained. Why don’t I break your face and fix you right up?”

“Wait,” he says, entirely unfazed, “and Em actually took time off work?” Crash looks over at me, frowning. I register that this is the least credible part of the story and scowl at him for being right.

“Of course I did.”

“?‘Of course’?” he repeats, laughing dryly. Crash stands to press the back of his hand to Luca’s forehead. “What, are you dying or something?” He laughs again but it lands with a thud. You could hear a pin drop. He looks at each of us in turn. “Okay.” He sits back in the chair. “Why didn’t anyone call me about his leg? All you said was he was sick.” He returns his focus to Luca. “Why are you being so quiet? And why is everyone being so weird?”

Annie and I lock eyes, and I feel the decision solidify inside me. I promised to do better and that means no more lies.

Dammit.

“Let’s sit down,” I suggest, and Annie reaches for my arm.

“Are you crazy?” she hisses.

“We have to tell him,” I say. “I have to. Besides, he knows too much already.”

“Or we could kill him,” she counters, and Crash cackles behind us.

“She’s a little scary,” he tells Luca. “It’s sort of hot.”

“I’m going to pretend you’re kidding,” I say to her.

“Try me,” she says, moving to the other chair while I take up the spot beside Luca on the sofa.

“Okay,” I continue, “before I start, you need to swear on your shirtless life that you won’t breathe a word of this to anyone.”

Crash bends his arm and brings the side of his straightened right hand to his temple. He’s momentarily distracted by the flexing of his own biceps but finally blinks back over to me. “Scout’s honor.”

“That’s a salute, dumbass,” Annie tells him.

“I’m serious. You can’t tell your mom, your fuck buddies, or even your cat,” I say. “Do you understand me?”

Crash’s brows pull low, and he hesitates before nodding. “Sure, yeah, whatever. What the fuck, Em?”

Annie and Luca watch me with keen interest while I take a deep breath and put the story together in my head. “On Friday night, I was late getting home—”

Crash barks out a laugh, saying, “Yeah, no shit,” before turning to Luca, who stares blankly back at him before shrugging. Crash’s concerned attention lingers on him for a beat before he looks back to me. I have to admit, this stings.

But it’s not unfair.

“Right, well, Luca was out for a run, and I was parked, waiting for him. We were going to go the beach. He started to cross the street, and someone hit him.”

“Wait, for real?”

“He was really hurt and was bleeding out.”

“He bled out,” Annie corrects.

Crash stands up. “What?”

I nod. “I know.”

He points to Luca’s leg. “That? No way that’s from Friday.”

“Just listen to me, okay?”

Slowly, he sits back down, sending both hands through his hair. “Jesus.”

I explain to Crash that my job isn’t really what he thinks it is. That I work for a privately funded company as a research scientist.

“So you’re not actually a—what was it? Project manager or, like… laser queen?”

I shake my head. “No. And Annie isn’t at a vet practice anymore. She also works for BioNEX.”

Crash huffs out a laugh. “Got it. Cool.”

I feel the way my head pulls back on my neck. That’s it? He’s not even a little surprised?

He and I have always gotten along, but I have to wonder now whether Crash has been faking a friendship with me for the sake of Luca. None of these revelations—my lateness on Friday, my enormous lie about my job—seem to faze him at all. He must think the absolute worst of me.

I chance a look at Luca, who is quietly taking all of this in. I’ve admitted as much, but I hate that he’s seeing such a shitty side of me before we even get to know each other again. Hell, I hate that I’m seeing such a shitty side of me.

“Luca didn’t have a pulse,” I say. “There’s a very advanced, very secret technology at my work—I’ll skip the specifics—”

“Because I’m just a shirtless dummy,” Crash says.

I quickly shake my head. “Sorry, no, I just—”

“No, no, I’m being serious.” He smiles. “No shade heard. I barely followed conversations about your job when it was supposedly simple. From now on, I’m just going to assume you’re a mad scientist.”

“Fair enough. Well, the machine we’ve developed can diagnose and heal illness and injury. Not all, but many. And it can also… revive.”

“Sweet, like, bring back from the dead?” Crash says laughing, clearly thinking we must be joking.

But none of us are smiling. “Exactly that,” Annie says. “Within a very limited time frame.”