Overflow: The Carpino Series

“She said you’d want to wear your mom’s ring. I can’t imagine she’s wrong, so I had to put my diamond on you another way to show that you’re mine forever.”

But even worse, he’s pegged Olivia, who has a thick head of dark blonde hair just like her mother’s, as the one who will turn me gray and age me beyond my years.

“Sugar. No wonder he doesn’t like to sleep on his back when you let him nap on your chest like that all the time,” Jude chides me.

Then his right hand grabs my left one as his arm snakes around me to hold me tight. I look down to see what he’s doing and gasp when I see my mom’s engagement ring sliding onto my left ring finger.

“Your family is something else. That was Christmas mayhem at its best.”

“You’re going to make dinner?”

“I did eat before I met you, Gabby.”

“But it’s too cold to grill,” she says.

“I’m not grilling. I’m pretty sure I can figure something out,” I say sarcastically.

“Ooookaaaay,” she drawls, just as sarcastically.

The thought of decades with Gabby made me so happy that in the middle of the granite showroom, I pulled her close to me and put my lips to her ear.

But what I can’t get out of my head is that my parents won’t know you and see us together. They won’t get to be grandparents or enjoy that part of their life that they should get to live. That was stolen from them and me. Knowing it’s no accident that they won’t get that hurts in a whole new way.”

Give the man some peace,” I say, trying to get through to her he wants to be on his own. I didn’t go so far to say that if he had a woman he’d be fine with her lovin’ on him, but his mother, sisters, and cousin? No way.

“Although, I’ll never forget the look on his face when you supplied him with a whole bottle of stool softeners. I thought he was going to bust his stitches he was so pissed. That shit was funny.”