“I’ll take you anywhere you want to go, baby,” Luca says. I appreciate the gesture, but now that I know Fred is out there somewhere, the idea of leaving freaks me out. Even with extra security.
I give him a little smile. “I’ll think about it. For now, I’m good here.”
Lil nods and drops onto the couch next to me. “Yeah, we have some really girly shit we’ve been waiting to watch. Now’s our chance.” She pulls half my blanket onto her lap and steals the remote.
When Luca leans down to give me a kiss, I grab his shirt to keep him there for a second. “Hey, just, you know… be careful and shit.”
He winks and holds up a pinky. I wrap mine around it, and the pressure in my chest lightens a little.
Flipping through Netflix, Lil glances at our fingers. “I want to be annoyed about DeVille promises not being just our thing anymore, but I also want to be annoyed that no one else thought to do it before. Why does Dad not have the tattoos? Imagine the things we wouldn’t have done if we had made DeVille promises!”
“What kinds of things?” Luca asks.
Lil opens her mouth but I slap my hand over it. “Nothing. Not a damn thing,” I say, glaring at her.
Luca’s eyes sparkle, and he fights a grin. “Right.” He kisses my cheek, whispering, “You’re such a bratty liar, Minx,” against my ear before he heads out of the room, laughing when I flip him off.
“Hnnnnn. Geetttt u hmmmnd oooooof meeee mof!” Lil’s muffled words are followed by her tongue poking out between her lips and tickling my palm.
I yank my hand back and wipe it on her hair. “Fuck. Yuck! Asshole.”
“Well, maybe don’t smack me in the face next time, asshole.”
“Well, maybe stop spilling secrets to my husband, asshole.”
“I thought you didn’t have secrets from your husband, asshole.”
“You and I will always have secrets, asshole. Luca understands and accepts that fact.”
“Good man, that cousin of mine.”
“Yeah. We need to find you a good someone,” I tell her, leaning my head against her shoulder. She switches the remote to her other hand and links our pinkies.
She sighs. “I think I’ve given up on that idea.”
“So we’re looking for a bad someone? How bad? Like bad bad? Or like slightly bad? Does morally questionable count as bad? Because if so, we’re definitely bad.”
“No, we’re just not looking at all. I’m done with that. I’m good with what I have.”
“You’re twenty. You can’t just give up already.”
“Can, too.”
“Come on, Lil. You’ll find your match.”
“People who get us don’t just randomly show up, Ari. Luca is a fluke-a.”
When I stop chuckling at her goofy ass, I say, “It could happen again. There’s all kinds of people who end up around here. Stew’s sister, remember her? You thought she was cute. And Carlo’s brother’s best friend’s… whoever the fuck that guy was, he seemed okay with our world. And he was totally into you.”
“First off, we all thought Stew’s sister was cute.”
I snort. “True story.”
“Second off, being good with the DeVille lifestyle is not the same as understanding the Lil and Ariana connection.”
“It sounds weird that way. Ariana and Lil flows better.”
“We’re not having this conversation again.”
