He placed one foot forward.
“Arianna. But we called her Ari.”
Samantha smiled. “I love that. How’d we come up with it?”
He paused, balancing for a brief second.
“I think it was from a book you read.”
“What did she look like?”
He stepped, gripping her hands tighter and wobbling violently while he groaned in frustration.
“What did she look like?” she repeated.
He placed his opposite foot on the ground. “She looked exactly like you. Long, brunette hair. She had green eyes.”
Samantha crinkled her nose, feeling surprised for being blatantly smitten at the idea of a child that sounded like a perfect combination of the two of them. This little exercise was obviously helping him, but she couldn’t help wondering if it was a bad idea to allow her imagination to entertain such a thing.
“Her daddy’s eyes,” she murmured, grinning widely.
Another wobbly step.
“Yeah. She was a dancer while she was in high school. I was constantly missing her recitals because of work. That didn’t make her too happy.”
Wobble; step; hands gripping fiercely.
“I’m sure she understood that people have to work,” Samantha offered.
“I’m not so sure about that. She also ended up at UT for a business degree.”
Less wobbling; more stepping.
She smirked. “Like father, like daughter.”
He chuckled. “Yeah.”
Step; step; step.
“She married a guy namedMatt,”he said with a small scoff, causing Samantha to giggle at his blatantly overprotective father type attitude. “But he was a good guy.”
“I guess we raised her right, then.”
He glanced at her face, appearing the slightest bit emotional all of a sudden.
“Nick,” she whispered, darting her gaze to the floor. “Look. You did it.”
He glanced at the floor, then lifted his chin triumphantly for a second. “I guess I did.”
He let go of the bar, then wrapped his arm around her waist and hugged her tightly while he kissed the side of her face.
“Thank you,” he said into her hair. “I couldn’t do this without you.”
“I’m sure you could.”
She felt him shake his head before releasing her and grabbing the bar.
“No. No, I really couldn’t. You’re my—”
