I should close the door. I should remind him of the danger. I should?—
"Pizza!" Rocco shouts from behind me.
In seconds, all three children are rushing toward us, their excited voices overlapping.
"Did you bring cheese?"
"I want pepperoni!"
"Are you gonna teach us more Italian words?"
Luca crouches down to their level. "I brought one cheese, one pepperoni, and one with everything because I wasn't sure what you liked."
"Everything!" Elio pumps his fist in the air.
"That's the yucky one." Adalina wrinkles her nose.
Watching them, my children and their father, laughing together creates an ache so profound, I want to cry out in frustration. This could have been our life.
For a moment, I allow myself to imagine it. Coming home to Luca every day, raising our children together, building a life without secrets or fear.
"You okay?" Luca asks, his dark eyes finding mine over the children's heads.
No, I'm not okay. I haven't been okay since the day I found out I was carrying his children and couldn't tell him.
"I'm fine," I lie, stepping back to let him in, ignoring Dom’s warning clanging in my head. "I was just about to start cooking, but it appears you beat me to it."
I usher everyone to the kitchen table. Luca opens the pizza boxes while I busy myself getting plates and napkins.
Rocco and Elio immediately start grabbing at the pizza. “Where are your manners? I swear I didn’t raise them to be animals.”
“It’s pizza,” Luca says as if that explains the behavior.
When we’re all seated with pizza, Rocco and Elio chatter away.
“We had a sleepover at Angelica’s,” Rocco starts.
“She has a brother but he’s too small for sleepovers,” Elio says, shoving his pizza in his mouth.
“That sounds like fun.”
“Isabella showed us how to sew,” Adalina says quietly.
“Sewing is for girls.” Rocco shakes his head.
“So is baking, but you do that,” Adalina shoots back.
“Wait.” Luca’s brow furrows. “Are you saying boys can’t sew or bake? That doesn’t seem fair. What if a boy wants to do those things?”
My lips twitch upward.
“They can,” Elio says. “But it’s for girls.”
“Huh… a man designed my suits. And another man tailors them.”
“What is a tailor?” Elio asks.
“He fixes the size so they fit me. That involves sewing.”
