Her eyes narrowed, immediately jealous.
I shrugged, unable to keep the smile off my face. “Long before you, baby.”
She turned to the pot roast and scooped the food onto her plate. “How was your day?”
“Good.” I thought about my conversation with Thorn but didn’t mention it. “I’ve been thinking about our wedding plans.”
“Yeah? I thought men didn’t think about that sort of thing.”
“Well, I do.”
She smiled. “I’m a lucky lady.”
“You want to do a quick courthouse thing?”
She made a disgusted face. “Uh, no. I’ve always wanted to get married outside.”
“So you want a big wedding?”
“No. I want fewer than twenty people to be there.”
“Good. Me too.”
“Let’s do it on a beach somewhere,” she said. “I love Thailand. How about there?”
“It is a beautiful place.”
“And we can start the honeymoon right away.”
I grinned. “I do like the sound of that.”
“I’m getting old, so I need to put my ovaries to use while they’re still functioning.”
Other men might be put off by that, but I certainly wasn’t. “You want me to knock you up right away?”
She pushed her food around on her plate, her eyes watching her movements. “Depends. How do you feel about that?”
“Whatever you want, I’m in.”
“Yes, I know,” she said with a chuckle. “But what do you want?”
“I’ve always wanted a family. You know that.”
“So you want to start now?”
“Sure. I know you’re almost thirty-one, so you’d be thirty-two by the time the baby got here. Then we’d want to have another…so, yeah. We should get started.”
“Wow, that was easy,” she said with a chuckle. “I thought I would have to talk you into it more.”
“Nope. I’m excited to get you pregnant. I’m excited to be a dad. I’m excited for all of it.”
“Even though we won’t have much time alone together?” she asked. “Everything has moved so fast, you know?”
“We have our whole lives, baby. Besides, our love will grow. I’m not worried about it.”
“Great.” She finally took a bite. “Then I’m excited.”
“I’m excited too.” I was thirty-five years old, fifteen years older than when my father had me. I wanted to still be young when they were adults. If I waited too long, I might not have the energy to run around with them. “Which brings me to my next point…”
“Why does that sound ominous?” she asked, taking a bite of broccoli.
“Because we’re going to argue.”
“I thought you liked it when we argued?” she teased.
“In certain contexts…”
“Tell me what you’re thinking, Diesel.”
I’d already imagined the conversation before it even started. She would fight me every step of the way. She would give me her reasons, and while they were legitimate, it wouldn’t bring us closer to a solution. “Your last name.”
She stared at me after she heard me speak. Then she turned her attention back to her food, eating like she hadn’t heard me at all.
I knew she was gathering her thoughts, considering how to respond to me. “I guess we’ll have to come to an agreement about this…” The response was vague, but it told me exactly what her stance was on the matter.
“You know what I want.”
“Yes.”
“So, we can argue in endless circles about it, or we could come to a compromise.”
“I don’t think I can change my last name, Diesel…” She stopped eating and set her fork down. She’d hardly eaten her food, but that was how her eating habits always were. I’d given up trying to push her to eat more. “It’s my identity. It’s my father’s legacy. If I had a brother, it would be different. But I don’t…”
“I understand, baby. I’d be open-minded to it if it were just the two of us…but it’s not gonna be the two of us much longer.”
“I know,” she whispered.
“My children will have my last name.” I didn’t want to be harsh, especially when those tactics didn’t work on a woman like her. But I wasn’t going to compromise on this. “And I’m not doing a Titan-Hunt hyphen. Some people do that, but the second name always gets dropped. And even if it was Hunt-Titan, it still doesn’t sound great.”
“I think Hunt-Titan is the best compromise we’re going to find.”
I took a deep breath, steadying my anger the best I could. She was injured and recovering, and I shouldn’t get her worked up right now. Her blood pressure would go up, and she would get upset. That wasn’t good for either of us. “No hyphen. Hunt will be their last name. You know I understand where you’re coming from, but I’m not going to let that go. If you really want, their middle name can be Titan. But that’s the most I’m going to offer.”
“These kids are half mine, Diesel. I don’t think it’s fair that you demand they carry your last name when I’m the one who created them, who gave birth to them. It’s an old sexist practice.”
“Even if it is, it’s a tradition that’s not going to disappear. It’ll be confusing for them as they age through life. By having a hyphen, it indicates they have two allegiances—to their mother and father. By having a single last name we all share, it unites us as a family.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, but she didn’t display that aggressive look she sometimes wore. “Then why don’t you change your last name to Titan?”
I wasn’t even going to respond to that. I just stared her down, my pissed-off expression doing all the talking.
“It’s sexist that I’m expected to take your last name.”
“And it would be sexist for a man to take a woman’s last name. It goes both ways. No matter what sex gets their way, the other sex will be disappointed. But that’s how it works. And there’s no way in hell I’m taking your last name, especially in our society. If you thought I was a man who would actually make that sacrifice, you wouldn’t be marrying me. We both know it.”
She didn’t blink or reposition her body in the chair. “Then where does that leave
