Falling, Fallen | ✔️

35

~Ayla's POV~

The doorbell rang. I looked up from where I sat on my bed on my laptop, wondering who the hell was here on a Friday night.

For a little while I considered just ignoring it because Soren wasn't home and we lived up in the fucking mountains, basically. Who would even come up here? It just seemed like the beginning of some horror movie to me and I was not planning to get brutally murdered anytime soon.

However, the doorbell kept on ringing, over and over until I wanted to pull my hair out of my head. This was certainly one persistent son of a bitch, that was for sure. Annoyed, I paused my show on Netflix and stood up, glancing at myself to be sure I looked appropriate enough to answer the door. I had on just a big t-shirt that fell to my knees but I was feeling paranoid, so I pulled on a pair of leggings and then quietly went downstairs to check the front door, where I grabbed a knife from the kitchen along the way. Like I said, I didn't have any desire to be brutally murdered anytime soon.

I pushed up on my toes when I reached the front door and looked out the peep hole, glad that the porch light had been turned on already so I didn't have to turn it on myself. All of my previous paranoia fell away when my eyes landed on Soren's friend stood outside of the house, hands shoved in his pockets as he waited. If I recalled correctly, his name was Luca.

Sighing in frustration, I unlocked the door and then aggressively swung it open. Sure enough, Luca stood there, now staring down at me with raised brows as I narrowed my eyes up at him and clutched a giant kitchen knife in my fist still. "Luca, what on earth are you doing here? Soren isn't even home from work yet." I asked, secretly very relieved that it was only Luca. Sure, I didn't know him very well but he seemed nice enough. He scratched the back of his head with an awkward look on his face. "Yeah, I know. Sorry, I was expecting to get here at about the same time as him but I really overestimated how bad traffic was going to be." He told me apologetically, shrugging his shoulders. I let out a sigh and stepped to the side, holding open the door as I gestured inside with the knife in my hand. "You can come in and wait for him. He should be home in about thirty minutes, or so." I said, not missing the way he warily eyed the knife in my hand as he slinked past me.

"Don't look at me like that. It's not like I'm going to use it on you." I assured him, snorting in amusement as I shut and locked the front door again. He chuckled nervously and awkwardly nodded his head, keeping a close watch on me as I turned and walked past him. I rolled my eyes at his paranoia, putting the knife back where I found it in the kitchen. "You scared me, you know. It would've been nice if I had known you were coming over at all tonight, but Soren never tells me these things." I pouted, crossing my arms over my chest as I turned to face him and leaned against the island counter.

Luca laughed, making me smile because he seemed to relax a little bit more. He plopped down on the couch and kicked his shoes off on the floor, glancing over at me. "Sorry. I didn't really think about that." He apologized once more, but I just smiled and casually shrugged it off. "I'm guessing you two made plans to hang out tonight?" I asked, deciding to head over to the living room with him, where I sat down on the other couch. I didn't have anything against Luca, but I also didn't really like being super close to people I didn't know well if I could keep my distance. "Yeah. He called me yesterday and was asking me to come hang out, get drunk with him. We used to do that pretty often before he met you and had to play husband." He explained, causing me to chuckle.

"Um, you two have been friends a long time, right? Since high school?" I asked, curious. Luca nodded his head and I hummed in thought. "Was Soren always the way he is, then? You know, a playboy, I mean." I couldn't help but to wonder. It seemed so natural for him that I couldn't really picture him not being like that.

To my surprise, though, Luca laughed and shook his head. "Not at all, actually. When we were in high school, he and I were both kind of nerds. I mean, he still had some girls that wanted him I suppose, but at the time he had his focus on school. It wasn't until after he graduated high school and he'd been in college for about two or three months that he started to get more involved with girls." He explained, making me raise my brows in surprise. It was kind of hard to picture Soren, the big and intimidatingly hot man, as a nerd. "Wow. Soren was a nerd?" I couldn't help but to giggle to myself.

I didn't want to seem mean for laughing about that, so I felt better when Luca laughed along and nodded his head. "Yeah, yeah. He also had this phase when we were sixteen where he really loved frogs, and he had a shitload of books on them in his room. When we had to do a lab assignment to dissect a dead frog, the poor guy was absolutely mortified. He refused to even touch it." He said, causing me to smile slightly. I remembered having to do the exact same lab, and I hadn't touched it either.

"But Soren, even though now he's quite the notorious womanizer, is still a great guy. I think the media just has a tendency to paint things like that in a bad light, so people often have the wrong impression of him." Luca added thoughtfully, making me bite my lip. "Fair point. It's not exactly like he does anything to help it, though. I mean, when we were on our honeymoon he brought a girl to our room. I was so mad." I recalled, shaking my head. Luca surprised me by laughing. Yes, he laughed at that! "Hey!" I scowled, and he laughed a little bit more. Once he stopped, he grinned at me. "Sorry, Ayla, but I'm just not surprised by that. He was pretty upset about the marriage before it even actually happened, so he probably did that just to spite you." Luca said, giving me a shrug.

Unamused, I leveled my gaze with his. "Doesn't matter. It's not like I was thrilled about it, either, but I wasn't fucking random guys." I grumbled. Truthfully, I was still a little bit peeved about that. He could've seriously screwed everything up.

"Aw. You sound jealous, Ayla." Luca teased, causing my face to burn in embarrassment. "I'm not jealous over anything!" I huffed, which only made him snicker in amusement. I was beginning to realize why Soren and him were best friends. These two were incredibly alike one another. "Uh huh. I'm sure." He said casually, the tone of his voice making it obvious that he didn't believe that whatsoever. I narrowed my eyes at him, opening my mouth to continue to insist that I was not jealous—even though I was—right as I heard the sound of the front door being open and then closed.

My mouth immediately snapped shut and I looked over my shoulder as Soren came sauntering down the hall, entering the living room. To my surprise, his eyes landed on me first before flicking over to Luca. "Oh, hey. I didn't know you were here already." Soren said casually, making me glare at him. "You really need to get in the habit of telling me if we have someone coming over. Nearly made me think I was about to get murdered when he rang the doorbell." I said, crossing my arms over my chest.

Soren's blue eyes flicked down to me and he smirked, taking off his suit jacket as he approached me. I felt my face flush immediately at the sight of his biceps rippling beneath his tight dress shirt, wanting to practically rip his clothes off. I quickly looked away, hoping it would make my face cool down if I wasn't looking at him anymore. "Such a feisty little thing." He teased, playfully dropping his suit jacket over my head. It completely covered my face, but it actually smelled really good and was still warm so I didn't mind it very much at all. Regardless I pulled it off and narrowed my eyes up at him, holding it in my lap. "You're an idiot." I whispered, pressing my back into the couch as he leaned down towards me.

He placed his large hands on either side of me, gripping the back of the couch as his head ducked down until his breath softly fanned over my neck. "Am I, hm?" He murmured into my ear. "Well Luca and I are probably about to get shitfaced drunk, Ayla, and if you think I'm an idiot now then you should go upstairs because you really won't want to see me when I'm drunk." He muttered. I couldn't help but to giggle to myself. "Are you saying you become an even bigger idiot?" I asked, amused.

"Yeah." He muttered, surprising me slightly. "So much so that I would get you naked and fuck you right on the spot here. Now if you don't want that, I'd get upstairs."

Both mortified and turned on by his words, I practically got up and ran up the stairs when he pulled away, glancing down at him over the edge of the railing as I headed towards my room. He caught my gaze and gave me a playful wink, cracking open a beer that Luca had handed to him. I rushed into my room and slammed the door shut in response.