•3•Could It Be Him?

EVA'S POV

"He was looking at me, Vic. Come on, just accept it."

"You wish! Everyone knows that nobody beats me on the hotness scale. If only you hadn't scared him away."

"You..."

I pursed my lips, having no doubt that my two best friends were soon going to ask me to decide which one of them was dressed the hottest for tonight.

They always competed with each other in a playful way, but it was starting to get frustrating. There was no need to compare because both of them were stunning.

Standing at five feet seven with oval-shaped faces, rosy pouty lips, pert noses, luscious-looking breasts, and lean bodies that tapered to wide hips, Victoria Vidal and June Hoying could be passed for siblings.

Except Vicky was more tanned with brunette hair, and June had a lighter complexion to match her strawberry blonde hair.

Rolling my eyes, I looked away from my bickering friends, planting the earpiece back into my left ear as I refocused on my tablet screen and the video I was watching on YouTube.

I nearly let out a scream when the semi-beefcake of a man on my screen, who for all the right reasons had to be out of his goddamn mind, reached the peak of a mountain on his motorbike and flipped himself and his motor twice in the air before landing on a steep slope.

Adam Garcia.

My shock soon gave way to fascination as I watched him speed down the rest of the slope on his motor. Lucky him; he looks like he had a lot of fun risking his life like that.

No wonder he has been nicknamed The Wild One.

"Eva.... Eva!" I heard June's voice over the applause of the people in the YouTube video. "What the heck? What are you doing?"

Before I could get the chance to answer, June walked over to where I was sitting on the couch and snatched my tablet from my hands. She looked at the screen for just a bit before turning an incredulous look my way.

"Really, Eva? I can't believe you're still watching these extreme sports videos again."

"Told you, June. She's just so obsessed with watching them." Victoria said with a cocky hump.

"But seriously, you guys should see this." I quickly said defensively, taking my tablet from June. "Adam Garcia is just..."

"Adam Garcia, this. Adam Garcia, that. Always Adam Garcia." June said dramatically. "Seriously, Eva, we have better things to discuss than watch some guy who, for some reason, obviously doesn't love his life and hence resorts to extreme sports to increase his risk of dying soon. Besides, you only discovered his videos last week!"

"Extreme sportsmen value their lives too." I retorted, not liking the nonchalant way she spoke. "They do this for the thrill it invokes. It makes them happy. It..."

I shut up when my friends looked at me like I'd fried my brain like the steak for the dinner we ate a while ago.

"June, am I the only one who thinks Eva needs some serious counseling?" Jesus, she's obviously considering doing extreme sports." Victoria said, wide-eyed, as she slumped beside me on the couch.

"Baby doll, you are just twenty-four years old. I don't want to be faking tears at your funeral anytime soon." June said, crossing her arms over her chest. "I mean, people die from extreme sports, you know?"

"The risk of dying from doing extreme sports has reduced drastically over the past decade." I once again tried to make them see reason. "Besides, I'm sane, you know? I just watch these videos because I think these people are crazy brave."

"Something you and I both knowthat you'll never be in this situation." Victoria pointed it out, making me scowl at her even though I knew she was right.

Watching Adam Garcia's videos has made me find extreme sports very enthralling, but there's no way I can ever muster the courage to try it out.

"Now, chap, chap!" June clapped her hands. "Get up and let's go."

"Ugh." I groaned. "Do we really have to go to the nightclub? Can't we just stay inside?"

I was usually the fun person who liked going out, but I just wasn't in the mood today.

"Nope. We have to go. One, because it's been months since I last got laid and I need to be dicked down." June replied, making me scrunch my face in disgust at the detail. "And two, because of you."

"Because of me?"

"Yes. You need to go out and have some fun, Eva. That's what you need. Watching extreme sports videos isn't going to help cure your heartbreak. Now get your ass off the couch and let's go."

With that said, June and Vicky turned to walk out, expecting me to follow. I sighed, getting up from the couch to follow them.

Before I turned my tablet off, I looked at the screen one last time, and my heart did another stupid leap as I stared at the man on the screen whose extreme sports videos I've been binge-watching for a week.

Adam Garcia.

God, why did he... Why did he seem so familiar?

Like I already knew him before discovering him on the internet.

"Eva!" Vicky and June snapped at the door.

"What?" I asked in irritation as I dropped my tablet and followed them out.

༺❀༻

The nightclub Vicky and June took me to was called The Storm.

The place was just like I remembered it from the last time we were here. There was a long queue of people winding around the block, waiting to be let inside by the bouncer. There must've been more than 100 people in the queue. No joke.

"Can someone please explain to me again why, out of the thousands of nightclubs in LA, we had to come to this one?" I demanded after thirty minutes of standing in a line that felt like it hadn't moved an inch.

And it wasn't just having to wait in the queue that irked me. The air was cold as fuck outside, and the dress I was wearing wasn't exactly wired to protect me from the weather.

"Excuse me?" June said, turning to look at me like I'd lost my mind. "The Storm is the five-star nightclub that has all the craze."

I rolled my eyes. "People buy ratings, you know? Besides, what's the importance of it being five stars when it's always congested and you have to wait in line forever to get in?"

"Eva, stop bitching and wait. We'll be in there soon." Victoria said as if I'd been complaining forever.

Scowling, I crossed my hands on my chest and did as she said: waited. But after thirty minutes of more waiting, I was just about ready to get the hell out of there.

Just as I was about to tell Vicky and June, a sleek white Ferrari screeched to a halt in front of the club's entrance. And like a scene from a movie, four guys stepped out of it.

I gawked at them because, with their tall, muscled bodies emphasized by the body-hugging T-shirts they were wearing, they all looked good enough to eat.

After the one who'd been driving tossed his keys to the valet, I expected them to walk to the back of the line like everyone else. But when they made their way straight to the door, obviously trying to talk the bouncers into letting them bypass the queue, my irritation level skyrocketed.

"They're trying to bypass the queue!" I growled. "Who do they think they are?"

Both June and Vicky shrugged. "Celebs perhaps?" Vicky suggested.

"Or maybe they're just filthy rich." June supplied.

I gritted my teeth. "Well, I'm rich too, but I'm not going around trying to buy my way out of having to wait in line like everyone else."

And without thinking, I stepped out of the line and stormed towards the entrance.

"Shit! Eva, where are you? I heard June and Vicky hurrying behind me.

Once I got there, I stood behind the dark-haired guy who was talking with the two bouncers and tapped him firmly on the shoulder.

"Excuse me. You can't just..."

The rest of my words flew away with the breeze as the dark-haired man turned to face me.

He was gorgeous. His spiky, dark hair was deliberately tweaked in every tweaked way and left to lie haphazardly on his head in messy disarray, giving him an outdoor, rugged-man look.

But that wasn't what startled me. His eyes... that peculiar shade of brown irises... They were so similar to the eyes I haven't been able to stop dreaming about for the past four months.

I let my eyes travel to his lips and I instantly remembered the feel of similar looking lips on mine. Lips that had kissed me until I was breathless and shook to the core.

My heart racing inside my chest, I looked back into those mesmerizing brown eyes.

Could it be?

Could this be the masked stranger who kissed me four months ago at the New Year's Eve masquerade party?