Last Love of Luka Hale: Saints and Sinners

By Eden Butler

She isn't the girl Luka Hale loved.

Gia Jilani killed the child she'd been, right along with the memory of his smile and the sting of his sweet kiss.

But sometimes, against her will, Luka comes back to her— his smile, his laugh, the crooked twist of his lips just before he kissed her. He's a phantom that won't ever fade. He's a reminder of what happens if you love too deeply.

Now Gia returns to the place where the past and the present converge. Where pain and pleasure threaten to consume her. Where she is forced to face a past that has never really left her and the memories that still haunt her and likely always will.  

This is a Saints and Sinners prequel novel set in the Thin Love timeline

SAINTS AND SINNERS SERIES ORDER

Last Love of Luka Hale

Roughing the Kicker

Offsides (September 2019)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eden Butler
• Release date: Aug 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393844525

Book preview

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©2019 Eden Butler

Warning: Massive spoilers for Eden Butler’s Thin Love are present in this novella.

It is advised that you read that story before beginning this title.

Last Love of Luka Hale does not spoil the plot of the current Saints & Sinners novel, Roughing the Kicker.

Copyright © 2019 Eden Butler

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All rights reserved as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the Author. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Author Publisher.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

The author acknowledges the copyrighted or trademarked status and trademark owners of the any word-marks and references mentioned in this work of fiction.

Edited by Julie Deaton

Cover Design by Lori Jackson

Cover Image by ShutterShock

Formatting by Tee Tate

ALSO BY EDEN BUTLER

THE SERENITY SERIES

Chasing Serenity

Behind the Pitch

Finding Serenity

Claiming Serenity

Catching Serenity

THE THIN LOVE SERIES

Thin Love

My Beloved

Thick Love

Thick & Thin

GOD OF ROCK SERIES

Kneel

Beg

SAINTS AND SINNERS SERIES

Roughing the Kicker

Offsides (September 2019)

STANDALONES

I’ve Seen You Naked and Didn’t Laugh

Platform Four

Fall

COLLABORATIONS

Nailed Down, Nailed Down Book One, with Chelle Bliss

Tied Down, Nailed Down Book Two, with Chelle Bliss

Kneel Down, Nailed Down Book Three, with Chelle Bliss

Stripped, Nailed Down Book Four, with Chelle Bliss

Find out more about Eden’s books on her site www.edenbutler.com

***

For everyone who loved Luka.

You weren’t alone.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ALSO BY EDEN BUTLER

WORDS AND PHRASES

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

INTERLUDE

ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

WORDS AND PHRASES

HAWAIIAN

Ko`u Aloha – My love

Kuku – grandfather

Lolo – crazy/stupid, an insult.

Makamae – Darling

Makuahine – Mother

Milimili – Sweetheart

Moʻopuna - grandchild

Nani – Beautiful

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ITALIAN

Cara – dear

Cazzo – shit

Chooch – jackass, dummy, idiot, or moron

Cuore mio – my heart

Dio santo – Good god!

Madonna santa – My god!

ONE

New York City, February 2017

Gia Jilani’s niece told her glitter was the herpes of the arts and crafts world.

It gets everywhere, on every damn thing, Bianca had announced, as she pulled Gia along the wide aisle of the craft store on Columbus Avenue, muttering something about decorations for the party. It’s impossible to get rid of once it’s spilled. She stopped walking, glancing at Gia, head tilted. I think Annaliese mentioned a sorority sister of hers putting a pound of glitter in the AC vents of some stalker that wouldn’t leave her alone, but... Oh...holy shit! They have champagne glitter!  

Bianca abandoned Gia and the story of her twin, Annaliese’s, Tri Sig sister, somewhere between gold streamers and the clay molds meant for newborn handprints. She’d found her niece scanning the row of glitter bottles, pulling two at a time in her basket. Silver and gold, she’d said, waving what looked like an eight-ounce bottle at Gia.

Arts and crafts herpes? she reminded her niece, earning a low laugh and a half-attempted shrug.

What? It’s still shiny. Besides, you kissed that security deposit goodbye after the New Year’s eight years ago.

Gia smiled remembering the wreck they’d made of her downstairs dining room during an impromptu drinking game—something she reminded herself she’d been far too old for every new year’s after that night. The flaming shots?

And the singed wood floors.  

Bianca’s champagne glitter had ended up in black and gold balloons—the team colors of Gia’s new employer, the New Orleans Steamers. That night, those balloons got popped in the fray of music, drink, and stupid things Bianca talked Gia into during her farewell party.

Bianca promised to help clear away the mess. Instead, Gia’s niece tucked a bottle of Moet under her arm four hours into the party and passed out on the small tufted armchair near the back corner of the living room, after she’d twirled around the equally drunk crowd, popping each balloon as she passed them.  

After Gia led the last guest through her door at four a.m. and stumbled to her not-at-all-empty bed, she’d spotted the mass of glitter coating the dark hardwood floors off Gia and Bianca’s rent-controlled Upper Westside apartment.  Melted wax fixed to the dozens and dozens of squat, white candles Bianca had insisted on placing along the fireplace mantel and up the small staircase leading to the second floor den. Empty wine glasses and discarded plates and silverware littered around the dining room table and chairs and filled Gia’s kitchen sink and counter.

She left it all for Bianca to manage, something she knew her niece wouldn’t mind. Gia had been the one to buy the apartment and let Bianca continue to live in it until she finished up grad school and landed her first professional job.  That might take a while, but Gia didn’t seem able to let the apartment go. Something kept her from letting go of New York completely.

Now it neared nine a.m. Just a few hours before the cab would arrive to bring her to JFK. A few hours to wake Bianca and remind her to meet the UPS driver when he came for the last boxes Gia would need sent to New Orleans. Only a few hours to finish packing up what remained of her decades-long life in New York.  

A few hours to make the dead weight laying across her naked body stir and dress and leave.

Problem was, he smelled good. Too good for Gia’s liking.

She gave herself five full minutes to remember the feel of Joe Kupa’s body over her last night and the half a dozen nights before when they’d been together. He was perfect, really. On paper Joe ticked off every proverbial box Gia pretended to require. The same requirements her niece swore she knew were made up.

Joe was a smart, handsome New Zealand expat with beautiful dark skin and black hair. His body was wide and muscular, big, just as Gia preferred. Like Gia, Joe was pushing close to forty, but still managed to look no older than thirty. Unlike Gia, though, he was an analytical CPA with a wild streak who liked to party and travel and do mad things Gia would never attempt like skydiving or taking the subway after midnight.

But Joe, like the men before him, like everyone, would never be enough. New York wasn’t the only thing she couldn’t quite let go of and it was that tight-held grip she couldn’t loosen that kept Joe at a distance. It kept Gia from being more than the occasional convivence most men wanted. She liked things that way. It suited her.

Gia inhaled one last time and slid from the comfortable weight of his massive forearms, she admitted to herself no one would ever be enough.

He stirred, coming to his side and curled that big arm under a pillow, his strong features were almost as delectable as his chest, all cut and defined, muscles sharp and chiseled. The sheet slipped below his navel and Gia inhaled, closing her eyes to keep herself controlled. The inclination was there, to slide back under the sheet and wake Joe with her mouth or tongue licking over that smooth, brown skin. But that would distract her. That would keep her from walking away and not bothering so much as even a glance over her shoulder.

Gia Jilani wasn’t a look back kind of woman.  

Looking back did nothing but remind you of where you shouldn’t be again.

Instead of waking him, she grabbed the heavy, refurbished Polaroid camera from the carryon bag near the foot of her bed. Joe didn’t move when she got closer, leaning one knee on the mattress as she focused the lens toward his sleeping form. The shot was beautiful, that much she knew before she snapped the picture and pulled the thin image free. It was her waving it back and forth, trying to dry it faster that woke him.

Joe stretched, blinking his long lashes as he watched her.

Morning, he said, scrubbing a hand over his face as Gia smiled, putting her camera back into her carryon and the drying picture on top of her empty dresser. I warrant another picture? He wasn’t mad, at least he didn’t seem that way and Gia shrugged, staying non-committal to the last. This wasn’t someone who expected anything more that answers that weren’t answers at all or maybes that would