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I swear I feel my womb get tight again when he says this. I remember what he said about wanting to have children with me and my desire to wait. Now, he’s lost a child. It’s probably bringing home his desire with even more force. I wipe my cheeks, looking up at him, his attentive expression blurry with the tears.
“Are you sure it’s true?” I ask.
“I spoke to Elio about it,” Luca replies. “This woman recorded a video describing what she did in detail. As for actual proof, there’s her prison record and the death certificate. The fact I know the woman and the timeline match up.”
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.
“So am I,” he growls. “But?—”
He suddenly stands up and walks away from me, standing at the window with the city skyline as his backdrop. His back rises and falls with his intense breathing. His fists clench at his sides. His shirt stretches from shoulder to shoulder as if highlighting his muscular back.
I stand, approach him, and place my hand on his arm. The heat of his body is shocking, a blaze through the fabric of his shirt. “What is it?” I ask.
When he turns to me, there are tears in his eyes. He coughs them away, rubbing angrily at his cheeks.
I grab his hand and squeeze it with all the support stowed up in me and all the affection burning from this past week we’ve been apart. “You don’t have to be ashamed,” I tell him.
“I do,” he says miserably, “because what happened is evil. What she did… It’s evil, but the truth is, I wanted my first baby to be with you. I want to build a life with you.”
“Oh, Luca.”
He pulls me into a hug. I wrap my arms around him as tightly as possible, squeezing on.
“I’ll never judge you for how you feel,” I tell him. “And what if she lied? What if, somehow, the congressman made all that up? Imagine somebody who’d do a thing like that. It’s not like lying is above them.”
“Do you think so?”
“I don’t know, but I do know that jumping to conclusions before considering all the sources and the evidence is never a good idea.”
He laughs, though I can hear anguish all tangled up in there. “My beautiful historian, looking at the sources as usual… I’ve asked a friend to look into it. Colt.”
“Colt,” I murmur. “That’s the one who stopped Lexi from…” I swallow. This really has been the most insane couple of days of my life. “… from making a big mistake, right?”
“Yeah, that’s him. He’s a good man.”
“Lexi seems to think so, too,” I murmur.
Luca laughs darkly. “If she’s got a crush on him, I think she’ll be disappointed. I get the sense that Colt’s never going to settle down.”
“You thought the same about yourself once, right?”
He smooths his hand through my hair, then moves his hands down to my hips and does that thing where he gently moves me away, as if he wants to get a better look at me. His eyes are dry now, though his gaze still contains so much pain but passion as well. “True, but you’re special, Ruby.”
“So is Lexi,” I say. “Who knows…”
When Luca’s cell phone rings, he sighs. “Sorry about this. It might be Family business.”
“I guess I should expect that from a prince, right?” I tease.
He rolls his eyes as if, somehow, we can push away all the darkness and all the pain. He takes out his cell phone. “Mom? A party? Really?” Alessia speaks so loudly down the phone that I can hear the excitement in her voice, though not the words. “Okay, I’ll talk to her about it. Jeez, relax, will you? Okay, love you.”
He hangs up, slipping the phone into his pocket.
“Mom thinks things have been too grim lately. She wants to throw a party. She wants to invite your family, Ruby, your parents, your sister, a bunch of our friends, Scarlet and Elio, obviously. She wants to focus on the good things in our lives instead of the bad.”
He looks at me doubtfully. In truth, I’m doubtful about it, too. Is a party the best idea after everything? Honestly, there’s that nasty feeling of jealousy twisting through me when I think about the possibility I’m never going to be the one to give Luca his first child. It’s a vicious thought, considering what happened, but I can’t help it.
For his sake, as much as my own, I say, “I think a party’s a great idea.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” I say firmly. “Alessia’s right. Everything has been so gloomy lately.”
He nods, not needing me to explain why I hesitated. “It’s hard to find the right word, right?”
“Evil,” I correct. “Cruel. Unfair. Twisted. But we can make our own light.”
“All our families together under one roof…” Luca laughs, nudging me playfully in the side. “Do you think we’ll be able to survive that?”
