AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I’d planned the meal to be done for the time when I expected him to get home. Even with traffic as crazy as it tended to be, I knew there was a fifteen-minute window in which he would arrive. But as the minutes ticked down, with no sign of Luca, my excitement began to turn to anxiety.
If he’d gotten stuck in traffic, he would have at least texted me to let me know not to worry. But what if he’d been in an accident?
No, I reassured myself as I adjusted the salad bowl on the table for the fifth time. I was his emergency contact in his cell phone. His wallet had a medical ID inside with his blood type and other important details with my information should something happen and he wasn’t able to speak for himself.
The fifteen minutes passed, then thirty. By the time an hour had come and gone, I was blowing up his phone. He didn’t pick up, no matter how many times I called back-to-back. Phone in hand, I paced the kitchen, chewing on my thumbnail as I debated what to do next.
Please don’t let something be wrong.
I was seconds away from calling Jenner, who was West Bridge’s chief of police, and getting him to put out a BOLO on Luca’s SUV when I heard him pull into the detached garage outside.
Unsure if I was more relieved or angry that he’d ignored my calls—calls that would have connected to the Bluetooth in his vehicle, so it wasn’t like it would have been fucking dangerous for him to answer my damned calls while he was driving—I stood in the middle of the kitchen waiting. My eyes were glued to the door to the mudroom that led outside. I heard it open and shut before I saw Luca’s shadow.
I heard his gym bag hit the floor with a hard thud, a sure sign he was pissed about something. I crossed my arms over my chest, my anger beginning to win out over my relief that he was home safely.
Please don’t let something be wrong.
For several minutes, neither of us moved. I stood there, waiting, while in the mudroom, he remained just out of view. All I could see was his shadow, and with each passing minute he didn’t come into the kitchen, the more upset I became.
This wasn’t how this night was supposed to go. His excitement over the wedding was supposed to put him in a good mood and amp him up for the even bigger news I wanted to share with him about our babies.
Please don’t let something be wrong.
Without realizing it, I lowered my hands to cover my belly. My stomach was still flat, but at eight weeks pregnant with twins, I wasn’t confident it would stay that way for long. Mila had started showing early with the boys, and even sooner with the girls. The doctor had said my uterus would expand quickly to make room for the babies, and since I’d already had one child, it would react even faster this time.
How big would I be by the second weekend of February? I would definitely have to go with a princess-style dress to try to hide the baby bump in our pictures.
The kitchen door finally opened all the way, and Luca stepped inside. His shoes and socks were off. He always tossed his sweaty practice clothes in the washer and started the cycle beforehand. Hearing the machine already running, I put my hands on my hips and cocked a brow at him, trying my best not to turn into a nag and demand to know where the fuck he’d been and why he hadn’t picked up any of my calls.
His face was completely blank when he closed the door, but no matter how hard he tried to keep his emotions in check, his eyes would always give him away. I knew what every shade of brown that swirled in his eyes meant. What I saw right then took me back to a day I never wanted to relive but suddenly began to replay in my mind as if it had happened only the day before.
The two of us standing in the surf outside my parents’ house in Santa Monica. Luca crying. Begging me to forgive him. Telling me he was going to be a father…
Mentally shaking away the bad memories, I lifted my phone and waved it. “Why didn’t you answer my calls?”
Please don’t let anything be wrong.
His eyes switched shades of brown so rapidly I struggled to keep up with the different emotions. The silent prayer of hoping nothing was wrong went unanswered, and in that moment, I knew it was something huge. The shifting of the shades of brown was both hypnotic and frustrating as hell. Add in his continued silence and I wanted to scream at him to just spit out what was bothering him.
The suspense of not knowing made my already throbbing head pound harder, and I was sure I was going to paint the kitchen an awful puke color if my nausea didn’t ease soon. The stress of worrying about him for more than an hour had only added to my indigestion, and I wanted to scream…and cry.
Damn pregnancy hormones.
It was obvious he was angry—or at least seriously upset about something. I read fear and pain in his eyes. Both made me want to wrap my arms around him and beg him to tell me what was going on, and then do whatever was within my power to fix it. Considering the huge bank account with my name on it, that had sat mostly untouched over the past five years, there wasn’t much I couldn’t fix for him.
Unless he’d done something to break my heart.
Then there would be no saving him.
“Luca, if you don’t say something soon, I’m going to start assuming the worst. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Throat bobbing, he clenched his eyes closed for a long moment, hiding from me.
I didn’t like that one little bit.
Hiding shit was not who we were now. We told each other everything. Everything, damn it. And there he stood. Holding back words he should have already spilled instead of keeping them trapped inside.
“Luca,” I gritted out between clenched teeth, fighting the sting of frustrated tears. “Why didn’t you answer any of my calls?”
