Page 101

“I’m good.”Better than good, but that was beside the point. “Why you asking?”

I ate my first handful of fries and cut him a look out the corner of my eye. Ever since Goldyn had introduced me to the food at Lucky’s Tavern, I ate here at least once a week.

“Because I haven’t in a while,” Romeo answered, licking his lips. “Checkin’ in and shit.”

Cleaning my hands, I grabbed my ginger ale and nodded. “What about you? You good?”

The question felt redundant when I couldreadhow he felt written all over his face. Romeo was the happiest I’d seen him in a while. Hell, I didn’t know if I’d ever seen him this happy.

Goldyn had shown up and pored light into all the darkest parts of us until all we could do was radiate it. We were good before she came, but she made us better.

I expected a terse reply from Romeo, but he surprised me and said, “I’ve never felt like this before. About anything or anybody. It’s scary, but most days I don’t even give a fuck. I like being lost in her. I can’t go back to what I was doing before she showed up. I thought I was happy, but I was just existing.”

“You’re in love,” I supplied, picking up my burger. Chili spilled from the sides and my mouth watered at the sight.

“It’s deeper than that. I don’t even know if what I feel is healthy, but it gets deeper every day.”

“As long as you don’t wake up one morning and decide to run from it, we’re good.”

He scoffed until I cut my eyes at him again.

“I’m serious, Rome. Goldynlovesyou. When we asked her to stay for good, she made sure we knew she was in love with you and wouldn’t stop seeing you. Her heart and happiness are wrapped up in this too. And I know we promised to never let a woman come between us a long time ago, but you gotta understand Goldyn isn’t just ‘a woman.’ The same way I don’t want her to hurt you, if you hurt her…”

“You never gotta worry about that,” Rome assured me, his voice calm but unrelenting. I could hear the love lacing his words and my chest squeezed.

“Good. Now why aren’t you eating?” I took a bite of my burger while I waited for his reply.

“Nervous,” he mumbled, and if the place wasn’t so quiet right now I wouldn’t have heard it.

Thankfully, it was the lull between the lunch and dinner rushes, and no one was talking except us.

“What if she has to get surgery?” he asked lowly, and I dropped my burger, my appetite waning the more he made me think about it.

Lorenzo and Goldyn had been in Charlotte all morning for an appointment with her new OBGYN.

She’d had another bad episode earlier this month, and the heavy bleeding that came a few days after it scared the fuck out of Rome. To the point that he knocked on our bedroom door in the middle of the night and told us to be on standby in case we needed to go to the hospital.

But Goldyn had declined the hospital visit, saying she knew her body and the bleeding would get better in a couple days.

It did, but the thought of her being in bed for two days while her body waged war on her was still a mindfuck.

“She’ll be fine. And if she has to have surgery, she’ll be getting it from one of the best doctor’s in the state.”

He nodded, still looking unconvinced until I threw my arm around his broad shoulders.

“She’sfine, Rome. Us worrying about it won’t make it better, either. Just wait for her to get here and tell us how it went.”

“Yea…right.”

I wasn’t used to Rome being the one in need of reassurance, but the worry emanating off of him was almost a tangible thing, wedging itself between us.

“Besides,” I added, trying to lighten the mood. “Aren’t you still working on a new tea for her hormones? Goldyn Hour or something?” I fully knew the name of the proprietary blendRomeo had formulated for our girl, but I hoped giving him a chance to talk about it would ease some of the tension bunching his shoulders.

And it worked. Little by little, he relaxed as he caught me up on the progress he’d made with it this week. “There’s still work to be done before I let her try it. But I’m using Lottie as my guinea pig and she said it tastes good and her last period had mild cramps.”

As if we’d summoned her, Goldyn appeared in the doorway to Lucky’s a few seconds later. Her usual sunny smile was missing, but I was convinced that had more to do with how long she’d been up today. She and Lorenzo got on the road at seven o’clock this morning.

Her eyes glowed when they landed on us, and she made a beeline for our table.