“You waited for me,” I whisper, surprised he didn’t bolt out after, like I thought he had done.
“When don’t I walk you to your next class?” Luca asks, and he accompanies me outside.
I button my coat as we walk; the cold air whipping around us.
“Are you going to tell me how you got—” I gesture at my face, wanting to know about his bruises.
“Ashton.”
“What? How did that happen?”
Luca’s gaze is on the sidewalk, his head down, his eyes refusing to meet mine. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Ashton assaulted you. How can you not want to talk about it?”
He glances at me for a brief second and then his attention is back on the cement. “I threw the first punch.”
Fuck.
That was not what I was expecting to hear from him. “Okay,” I say slowly and shuffle my backpack from one shoulder to the other.
“Here, give me that,” Luca offers, taking my backpack with my books and laptop, carrying it for me across campus.
“Thanks.”
“I thought about skipping class today,” Luca says and then glances at me, “but I wanted to talk to you.”
“About the fight?” Not that he’s really explained any of it to me.
I still don’t know what Ashton and Luca were fighting about. Maybe I can ask Ashton if he shows up during lunch again. He has been making it a habit lately.
Is it because he has a thing for Kensley?
“Not about the fight. About something Dante said to me over the weekend.”
“Oh.” I exhale forcefully, and my breath hovers in the air.
“The wedding,” Luca says, and I stop walking.
The building is up ahead, and we have time since we finished the quiz early. “What’d your father say about our wedding?” My stomach is turbulent at the mention of our wedding, but I need to know what brought Luca all the way to class after clearly avoiding me last night.
“He wants us to marry in February.”
“This February?” My voice raises an octave. I hadn’t quite intended to sound so squeaky, but he caught me off guard with that comment.
“With school and your son, he’s willing to have Nikki plan the wedding for us and have it at their home.”
“Of course, he is. Where he has complete control of everything,” I mutter. “What’d you tell him?”
Luca stalls, staring at me. “Not really much. He’s intimidating as fuck!”
I huff and take a step back. “I know, he’s about to be my father-in-law.” That thought turns my stomach even more sour, like I just had bad milk.
“The bright side was he told me we could choose the date.”
Seriously?
“How generous of him,” I mock and turn on my heels, walking to my next class.
