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“You already know the answer.” I carefully untangled her clenched fingers from my shirt and kissed the back of her hand. “Now, do you want breadsticks or chips and guacamole while we wait for our food?”
“Onion rings,” she grumbled. “Because I want a burger.”
I winked as I stepped back. “Now, was that so hard?”
“You drive me crazy, you know that?” she snapped once I was behind the wheel. “I can never get an answer to any of my questions.”
“Seems pointless to give you answers you already know.” I pulled into traffic and turned in the direction of the best burger place in the city.
“Maybe I need the answer spelled out for me even if I do know,” she countered, still wanting to argue, but glaring out the window instead of at me this time.
“And maybe you aren’t ready to hear the answer even if your stubborn ass wants to hear it so badly you can’t see straight.” I made a turn and got stuck in traffic. Reaching out, I took her hand and rubbed my thumb over the engagement and wedding rings on her finger. The engagement ring reminded me of the ones I’d looked at a hundred different times when we were younger, before I’d fucked everything up.
She’d told me over and over again how much she loved Grace Kelly’s ring, and I’d searched online for one similar, but I could never decide which one to get her. None of them had ever called to me as being the one for my Violet. The one Remington had given her was almost a perfect replica of the one she’d always admired, so I knew it had to be close to ten carats.
But the thing was, it didn’t suit her pretty little hand. It was beautiful, just like her, but it was too flashy. My Vi wasn’t flashy. She was classic, and that was what I’d always envisioned putting on her hand. Something that would be just as bright and dazzling and fit her style perfectly.
Realizing I was staring at her rings, Violet jerked her hand away. “I’m not taking them off.”
Taking her hand back, I entwined our fingers and laid them on the leather console between us. “Okay.”
Traffic started moving again, and I got us to the restaurant before her hanger caused one of us to actually explode.
As she dipped her third onion ring in some weird sriracha-chocolate sauce and I made do with a salad to start because I was in training and had to eat cleaner than I did in the off-season, she started to cry silently.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered as she wiped at her eyes with a napkin. “I was a bitch earlier.”
I took a bite of my kale and berry salad with no dressing and frowned at her. “Were you? I didn’t notice.”
“Shut up, Luca,” she muttered, fighting a smile even as her eyes continued to leak. “I was horrible to you, and you just took it.”
“What was there to take?” I asked. “You were hungry and cranky. I’ve known you long enough not to pay attention to anything you might say when you’re hangry.”
Her eyes instantly dried up, and her smile turned into a glower once more. “So, nothing I said hurt you?”
“It would take more than that to scratch me up, Vi,” I told her with a half grin, but her eyes were glued to mine, and I knew I couldn’t hide the truth from her with their color change.
“Maybe I should go back to Santa Monica,” she muttered to herself as she stuffed another onion ring into her mouth.
Unable to take the thought of her leaving me, I slapped my hand on the tabletop. “You aren’t going anywhere without me,” I growled. Her eyes widened, and I gentled my tone. “We have a childbirth class Friday night.”
“Luca…”
“Don’t,” I gritted out. “Do not do this shit to me right now, Violet. I’m already hanging on by a thread, so please. For both our sakes, just don’t.”
Chapter 51
Violet
Between getting the nursery ready, Luca going to practice, and the two of us taking a weekly childbirth class together, we were so busy that time seemed to get away from me. It was like I blinked and suddenly I was thirty-six weeks pregnant, anxiously awaiting the baby’s arrival.
And I needed to decide on a name for her. Luca and I both called her Love Bug when we talked to her, and sometimes Luca called her his little princess, but we had to give her an actual name and I just couldn’t decide. What if I named her something Remington wouldn’t have liked? What if the name didn’t fit her? What if mean little brats made fun of her name?
Every time I thought I liked a name, I would second-guess myself, and I couldn’t give my baby a name if I wasn’t a hundred percent sure it belonged to her.
It drove me so crazy that I started sneaking into the home office every few nights and reading through all of the emails Remington and Luca had sent to each other, hoping to find some clue in them that would lead me in the right direction to help with this whole name debacle. My husband had left instructions on all kinds of shit that blew my mind, but our daughter’s name wasn’t one of them.
Still, I read through them all. Repeatedly. Until I could recite every one of them by heart in my sleep.
