Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 78011 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 390(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78011 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 390(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
“I’m …” My eyes are still on the paper. “He’s got my name as his middle name.”
“That wasn’t changed,” she starts to say. “Luca was always his middle name. I couldn’t list you as the father without a last name, but I wasn’t going to let our son not have a piece of you.”
It’s me now who’s blinking away the tears. “I love you,” I tell her finally.
Smiling, she looks down, tucking the hair behind her ear when it falls forward. Her eyes look back up at me. “I love you, too,” she says softly, “but if we don’t get outside, we are going to have both our parents knocking down the door.” I look out into the yard to see Nick with Aiden, but both our parents are looking at us. My parents with a worried look on their face.
I turn to put the paper away and then grab her hand and kiss her fingers. We walk out of the house, and I walk down the steps, and my father is the first to congratulate me. “My son has a son,” he says, and I just nod.
My mother hugs me at my waist and then moves aside, so Maryse comes to me. “Congratulations, my dear,” she says, and I bend to kiss her on the cheek. “Welcome to the family.”
“Welcome to the family,” Leonard says, putting out his hand and shaking mine. “Couldn’t have asked for a better dad for Aiden,” he says, and right now, it means the world to me.
“Dad!” I hear Aiden yell and look his way to see him standing next to a table. “We have cake.”
Shaking my head, I walk over to him where Eli stands next to him, and everyone follows me to the table. I greet a couple of people while I walk over to the table, and I look down at the cake. “Nonna made it,” Aiden says, and I’m not surprised. She’s always made my cakes and decorated them with simple vanilla or chocolate frosting. This one is chocolate with white writing. Coco-DiMarco. I smile and grab Aiden and pick him up.
“Look over here,” Nick says, and we turn toward him. With my right hand holding Aiden, I reach over and hug Eli with my left. Her arms go around my waist, and we take our first family picture.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Eliahn
“I think I ate too much,” I say, putting my hand on my stomach as soon as we leave Luca’s parents’ house. It’s been three weeks since we started this tradition of Sunday lunches. I didn’t know what to expect, but it wasn’t to have our parents get along so well. My father has actually been golfing with Dominic a couple of times since they met, and my mother is over at their house at least twice a week because they bake together.
“I told you not to eat that second piece of cake,” Luca says from beside me as we drive home. It’s been a month since we moved into Luca’s home, and it became ours. After we lived there for our trial week, it just became easy to see that we didn’t care where we lived as long as it was together. So one night after dinner, we moved all my clothes into Luca’s house. Aiden, of course, had to bring his whole entire room with him, so he has two bedrooms in the house. He calls one the playroom and the other his bedroom.
“It was dulce de Leche.” I look over at him. “It’s my favorite cake ever. The way your mother fills it with the cream, oh my God,” I say, and then my stomach gets a touch queasy.
“Well, she packed you a whole one for the week,” he says, and I look over at him. He is wearing jeans and a regular white polo short-sleeved shirt, and I have to laugh because he dressed Aiden like him today. I lean over and run my fingers through his hair like I do a couple of times a day. We wake up every day wrapped in each other. The night doesn’t go by without one of us waking up, looking for the other.
“Well, we have two soccer practices and skating this week.” The weekdays go fast with Aiden now in soccer, football, and starting skating lessons, but he loves it.
“It’s going to be another busy week,” he says, looking at me and smiling. I lean over and kiss him when he gets to the red light. “Love you.”
He takes off, and my stomach falls again. “I really don’t feel well,” I tell him, and we pull up to the house, and I get out.
“Go in and lie down. I’ll take care of all the bags,” he says, and I nod at him. Gabriella knows how busy we are during the week, so she prepares our meals, and I have to say it’s a godsend. I walk into the house and kick off my ballerina shoes, going to the couch. Lying down on my side, I close my eyes, and my stomach lurches, so I rush up, running to the bathroom. I close the door and make it to the bowl before I lose my lunch. It doesn’t stop for the next ten minutes, but then I get up and rinse out my mouth and go upstairs to change out of my clothes and into my comfy pjs.