Aldo laughed. It was Luke’s fatal flaw, believing that what he needed most was to be left alone with his grief and regrets. If anyone could convince him otherwise, Aldo hoped it was Harper Wilde. “So why is she here?”

Luke shrugged, taking the ramp for the highway. “It started as a favor. The girl had no place to go and no way to get there.”

Aldo knew the story. After a very bad day, Harper had coasted into Remo’s parking lot on fumes and spotted Glenn Diller attacking Gloria. When Glenn had turned his fury on Harper, Luke had appeared and smashed the monster in his fucking face. Aldo’s hand balled into a fist in his lap.

What he wouldn’t give to have been the one to finally stop him.

“And then?” Aldo asked, keeping the conversation moving.

Luke cleared his throat. “Well, you’ve met her.”

“I have,” he nodded. “Think she’ll stay?”

Luke shook his head, his jaw tightening. “Nah. She’s got things to do, places to go. Six months is a long time to ask someone you just met to wait.”

“It’s a long time to ask anyone to wait,” Aldo reminded him. “She would, you know.” Harper would. The way she looked at Luke, like that grumpy son of a bitch had invented vibrators, screamed the big L-O-V-E.

Luke scrubbed a hand over his chin. “I don’t know if I’d want her to.”

“Bullshit,” Aldo argued cheerfully. It was fear that had Luke by the throat. Fear that feeling something for another woman would somehow lessen what he’d once felt for his wife.

“Kiss your mother with that mouth?”

“Where do you think I learned it?” Ina Moretta’s vocabulary would make a trash-talking UFC fighter at weigh-in blush. Her mastery of four-letter words was legendary.

“Speaking of women,” Luke said, suddenly chipper. “Harper seems to think you have a thing for Gloria.”

Aldo let out a sigh through his teeth. “She’s not wrong.”

“You’ve always had a thing for anything with a nice pair of legs and big brown eyes,” Luke pointed out.

“Where do you think I got my type?” It was true. Aldo had sowed his wild oats, expecting that high school crush to fade away into nostalgia. He’d dated. He’d fucked. He’d enjoyed the hell out of himself, all the while wondering where the connection was.

He’d found it, finally. Monday night with Gloria wrapped up in his arms under that lonely streetlight.

“So, if you’ve been carrying this torch since high school, how is Glenn still alive?” Luke asked, knowing his friend so well.