Luca's P.O.V
My conversation with Phoenix before we left wasn't pleasent. I hope she's not mad. I feel like a jerk for bringing it up.
I've been driving for what feels like forever and I haven't once stopped thinking about how I brought that up. I know it's a bad thing but I'm completely jealous of the way she talks about Cody. The few things she's said about him to me were in admiration and love.
I wonder if she ever speaks of me like that... Do I mean that much to her? It sounds as if Cody's her hero. And I'm just... Well... me.
I love her more than anything and I know she loves me but would she really pick me over him...
I shake my head clearing those thoughts.
She loves you. She loves him. It's okay to love two people.
Phoenix stirs in her sleep, making me quickly glance her way. Shes so beautiful. How did I get so lucky. I don't know if I would survive without her.
Music plays softly on the radio. A few Fall Out Boy songs have played along with some I didn't recognize. The beginning of Stone Walls by We The Kings came on, making me smile. I saw this song on Nix's IPod. She doesn't play it often.
After about half the song, I'm snapped out of my thoughts. My ringtone goes off, waking Phoenix up.
"Sorry, Kitten." I automatically dismiss the call, not caring who it was.
"It's fine." Her voice is slow, like she's still half asleep. She blinks, trying to gain some focus. "Are we almost there?"
"Impatient?"
"Yup. Answer the question." When she's tired, she's cranky and it's obvious in her demanding tone.
I chuckle. "Maybe an hour or so away."
"Why didn't you wake me up?! I could've driven for a while!" She yawns.
Is it just me or does the idea of her driving when she's that tired seem dangerous? I can't be the only one who thinks that.
"Like I'd let you behind the wheel in that shape." I roll my eyes.
She suddenly looks serious. "Like you could stop me."
I try my best to hide a laugh but it doesn't work, and in turn, I get slapped on the arm.
Flinching slightly, I lean away from her. "Hey! That's dangerous! Don't hit the driver!"
"I'll do what I want to the driver!"
I smirk. "You have no idea how that sounded."
"I know exactly how that sounded."
"Good. Cause I like where this is going."
☕️☕️☕️
Phoenix's P.O.V.
There's the exit! 'Stay calm. stay calm.' I repeat in my head but I'm just so excited!
I look over at Luca in the driver's seat. We finally pull off of the highway. "How far are we from the hotel?!" I ask, my voice sounding childish.
"Five minutes. You remind me of a chihuahua." He says.
Weird.
"I remind you of a chihuahua? What?" I give him a confused glance.
"You shaking so much that you look like you have to pee. And those dogs never stop shaking." He shrugs.
"So you're comparing me to a dog?" My voice is almost a growl.
"Can we go back in time so I can NOT say those words?" He chuckles nervously.
"I'll forget you ever said them if you buy me Taco Bell."
"Deal." He responds quickly.
"Is that our hotel?!" I see a big Holiday Inn with an indoor an outdoor swimming pool up ahead.
"No." Luca smiles.
"Ugh!" I sigh. "How much longer?!"
"Wow you really are impatient."
I slap his arm again. Before he can say anything else I see another hotel.
"Yes that's our hotel!" He yells before I can ask.
"Yeah!!!!!!" My hand goes straight to the car door handle.
"I don't care how excited you are, you're not getting out while the car is moving and while we're still on the road!" Luca yells like he actually thinks I would jump out like that. (Not that I haven't done that before, but he was never around to see it.)
"I'm not going to! I'm just getting ready to open the door!" Stupid, yes. But I don't care.
"Princessa, calm down. It's just a hotel. It's not like it's the concert." He chuckles.
"Yes, but it has a pool. And a hot tub. And we've been on the car for forevvvvver." I hold out my voice making it sound even more pathetic and causing him to laugh at me again. I just roll me eyes in response as he finally pulls into a parking space.
I pull on the handle an it clicks, releasing me from my beautiful yet cramped cage. The van pulls into a place a couple spaces down from Rayne. Running over to it I see Emily getting out and she's all fidgety like me. We jump up and down squealing with each other for a bit. It's the first time in a while that we've been on a road trip of any kind together.
We're pulled back to reality by Bentley's voice. "Are you two going to help unload or do the men have to do everything?"
Emily and I exchange looks. I don't know what she's thinking but I know what I'm thinking and that's that Bentley is not a man. He's an overgrown child who buys life size versions of his hot wheels. No offense.
"Is my bag to heavy for you?" Emily says in the voice you'd use to talk to a cute baby.
"What's in this thing?! Tampons made of rocks?!" Bentley replies.
"That would really defeat the purpose of a tampon considering their supposed to absorb-" I begin.
"I DONT WANT TO KNOW." Is the only response we get. Emily and I just laugh at him while a couple of the boys look disgusted, including Luca, might I add.
I walk towards Luca and decide to mess with him a bit more. "Hey Luca." I smirk. "Do you know what tampons do?"
"Ew ew ew ew!" He covers his ears while yelling and walking away from me. "No! Don't even start that!"
Emily, who was laughing at this, moves to stand beside me. "Why are boys such period - phobics?" She asks.
"The world may never know."
Emily and I grab a suitcase each and start after the boys.
Since Emily and I were out of hearing range of the boys, Emily says, "So, will you and Luca be sharing a room?" She wiggles her eyebrows and I can feel my cheeks heat up in embarrassment.
"I don't know, we didn't talk about that but who knows. How many rooms did we book?" Seeing as she's the organized person who set all of this up, she should know.
"I asked for four rooms." She replies.
Four? Why? There are only... Wait. Let me count. Luca, me, Bentley, Nate, Jake, Mason, and Emily here. That's seven people for four rooms! That's insane.
"How are we going to decide who sleeps where?! Seven people to four rooms!" I try and point out the fact that it's to many rooms but she proceeds to tell me she was going to ask for seven rooms and that she made herself limit it.
Rich people. Cue eye roll.
"Well, I figured we could share a room and let the boys argue over the other rooms." She suggests.
"Fine with me." A night away from Luca couldn't be all that bad. I could spend some time with my bestie.
"Alright, I'll tell the boys after we all figure out the room numbers. Hopefully they're all close to each other." Emily says just before we get inside the hotel.
She walks up to the front desk an exchanges a few words with the lady behind the counter. I can tell that something's wrong from the angry look on her face but I decide not to worry and walk over to where the boys, who are standing cluelessly doing nothing, are.
Emily finally stops arguing and walks over to us. "All four rooms are on different floors." She huffs.
"What floors?" Jake asks. I think Emily is the only one who cares that we're not all going to be on the same floor.
"Two, four, five, and the top floor, which is floor seven."
"Girls call top floor!" I shout, attracting a few stares from other people in the lobby. I give a sheepish grin to one lady.
"Alright then, it looks like Phoenix and I are taking room 614. The floor two room is this key card," Emily holds up a blue card. "And the room number is 87..."
She continues on about the other rooms but I'm not paying attention. All I can see is the look of disappointment Luca has. I move around the rest of the group, which happens to be watching Emily, and stand next to Luca.
"It's only a couple nights." I whisper.
"A couple is far to much." His voice is strained.
"You can survive a couple nights. We don't need to be glued to each other. I think Emily is already a little upset I haven't spent much time with her lately. And I think Bentley's mad at me as well."
Something in his eyes tells me it's not just that he wants to be around me.
"I'm not going to disappear again. I promise." I say.
"You were gone for three days..."
Before I can reply Emily pulls me away towards the elevator. "So, we're going to go out to eat for dinner later but other than that we've got the whole night to ourselves for a sleepover and the boys are going to have their 'manly' version of a sleepover." She sounds so excited, so I pretend to be excited to. But in reality I just feel bad. He doesn't really think I'm going to leave him like that again, right?
☕️☕️☕️
Luca's P.O.V.
We're watching a movie/throwing popcorn and trying to catch it in our mouth. Well, they are. By they I mean all the other guys on the trip. We all decided to go to the room on floor two and mess around until dinner.
I'm laying on one of the beds throwing the red ball that Phoenix and I were throwing out on the roof, up and catching it, then repeating the process.
"I'm so bored..." Mason groans.
Jake throws a piece of popcorn at him. "Shut up, man. This is the good part." His eyes are glued to the television screen. Although Mason is right. This is boring. We've been watching movies and eating multiple bags of popcorn since we got into the room. That's was hours ago.
"I'm goin to unpack my stuff. See ya." Masons heading towards the door.
"I think I'll do the same." Maybe that'll give me something to do for a little while.
I stand up and follow Mason out the door, leaving the others to continue watching the first Transformers movie.
"So, you and Phoenix?" Mason says.
"Really? Did you really just ask that?" I laugh at his question. "I think the entire world knows that by now. You don't really need confirmation from me."
"Alright then, how about Nate and Emily?"
"Now that is something I'd like conformation on." I laugh.
Nate gets off the elevator on floor four and I get off on five.
I reach for my wallet in my back pocket to get the card out and slip it into the door. When the door clicks I push it open and head inside.
My temporary roommate is Jake. Nate and Mason are on floor four and since Bentley doesn't know the rest of us as well, he's the only one on floor two.
After mindlessly unpacking stuff and shoving it into the hotel room dresser, I decide to pass time by taking a shower.
☕️☕️☕️
Just as I'm running out of hot water I turn the dial off and the water slows to a stop. I step out with a towel around my waist and check my phone.
7:45 PM. We're all going to eat late at 8:30. Im going to have to convince everyone to go to Taco Bell since I owe free tacos to Nix. The Taco Bell is across the street so that's a plus.
I pull a toothbrush out of the bag I brought into the bathroom. Not that my breath is bad, I just have a habit of brushing my teeth after I take a shower.
Knowing Jake, he's probably still watching the movie so I walk into the room still in my towel.
Phoenix's P.O.V.
Luca walks out I the bathroom in a gray towel. Only a gray towel. His hair is all messy and the water makes it look darker... If that's even possible.
And those gray eyes. So cold. I remember when I first saw them. I was terrified. Those icy eyes never change. But I don't want them to.
Apparently I'm somewhat blending into the surroundings or he's oblivious to everything around him because he doesn't see me sitting on his bed when he walks over to the dresser.
I can see the black tribal tattoo stretching over his shoulder. The scars they cover are barely visible. It kills me knowing that all that happened to him.
I push that out of my brain for a while.
I was getting board in my room so I asked Emily for the spare key to his room. She has an extra to all the rooms.
It's taking everything I have not to laugh at the fact that he still has no idea that I'm here. I stand up and walk over to where he's standing and tap on his shoulder. He stops moving.
"Please please please tell me you're Nix."
"Lucky guess."
"Thank God..." He lets out the breath he was apparently holding in and I laugh. "How did you get in here?" He turns around. "You do realize how close you're standing and the fact that I'm only in a towel?"
"Emily gave me a key. And yes, does that make you uncomfortable?" I try to tease him.
"Nope. Even if I dropped the towel, I would be perfectly fine." Well teasing him backfired. He smirks. "Don't worry, I'm not going to. I'm just saying around you, That kind of thing doesn't make me nervous."
Yeah, well it scares the hell out of me.
"Just take your pants." I roll my eyes and hand him a pair of dark blue jeans.
"Kitten?" He says, letting his eyes leave mine.
"Yes?"
"Have you seen my belt?" He says confused.
"Left pocket of your bag." I sigh.
"Thank you." He kisses my forehead, grabs his belt and goes back to the bathroom to change.
When he comes out he's still only covering his lower half. "Seriously? You couldn't have grabbed a shirt?"
He runs his hand through his still messy black hair. (To be honest, that's what I want to do. I pray to the heavens he leaves it that way because the pieces that fall just over his eyes are not helping my breathing.)
"Well, you're kinda the only person I can be around without my shirt on... I'd like to take advantage of that." I'm confused for a moment but I realize I'm the only one who knows about the tattoo.
"Ah. I guess that's fine then."
"If it makes you nervous or uncomfortable I can put a shirt on." Aww how sweet. I want to shout no and I wish I could say that I didn't do what I wanted to do but I did...
"No!" I slap my hand over my mouth.
"Right now, your mind is arguing with your heart isn't it?" He says jokingly even though that's actually true. "And I'm glad you like this." He gestures to himself.
I roll my eyes. I think I'm doing that a lot more lately than when I didn't date him.
Luckily Luca put a shirt on before Jake walked in. Might I add that Jake walked in five minutes before we're suppose to leave to go eat. He's going to make us late along with the rest of the boys. Why can't boys manage time? Also how was Luca on time? That is a true miracle.
We all meet in the lobby fifteen minutes later than planned.
"Taco Bell?" Luca asks.
He remembered my Taco Bell. I smile at him and he returns it with his mischievous smile. The one that made him popular.
We all nod and start towards the fast food place. I'm starving! I'm gonna get one of those cool ranch Doritos taco things and a ton of other stuff. I can't wait for food. If I didn't have Luca I'd marry food. Am I rambling? Oh well. Who cares. I get food!
Author's Note -
So I'm not a huge fan of this chapter and it's actually kinda bad but oh well. I spent two days almost constantly writing it so it's gonna get posted.
Comment if you're willing to follow me or already follow me so I can follow you back. I'm looking to follow more people. :)
Sorry it's been so long since I updated this book. I've been a bit busy. Hope you enjoyed this! I'll start working on the next chapter ASAP! :)
~ Nyx S.