“I’ll try,” I promised.
He eyed me another moment and continued. “If Bill calls and tries to get you back, I want to know. I’ll be fucking pissed, but I’ll do my best to control it. Because I need you to come to me.”
I narrowed my eyes. “This is a two-way street, isn’t it?”
He raised his chin at me. “What does that mean?” he asked.
“You haven’t exactly been a saint through all of this. Dani, Maria, Amber, all the other girls—I think there was a Brittany in there . . .” My nose twitched. “They’re gone, right?”
The angles of his face sharpened, and he looked almost angry. “Gone. I have nothing to hide from you, and I never have.”
“What about Oak Park?”
I had him there, and he knew it. Even though the Oak Park house had been my dream home, it had also symbolized the beginning of a new future with Bill. And David hadn’t hesitated to snatch it out from under us.
David looked away and didn’t speak until his gaze found me again. “I’m sorry about Oak Park. The thing is, when I had you there in front of me, and we were in that house, run-down as it was—I saw us there, together, as a couple.”
I sucked in a breath. He’d seen it, too. We belonged in that house—everything about it had been right. I remembered how awful I’d felt having that thought when I was supposed to be building a life with someone else.
“I knew one day it would be real,” he said. “By the time we were leaving, I’d already done some initial sketches in my head. We’d work on it together, move in, raise a family, be fucking happy. When you told me Bill had made an offer, well . . . it hit me like a ton of bricks, Olivia. I was shocked. I wasn’t going to give up that dream.”
He was so beautiful when passionate, and I loved listening to him as much as watching him. I thought back to the day we’d seen the house together, how suddenly quiet and stiff he’d gotten when I’d told him about our offer.
“I guess I had this idea that you and I would eventually end up together,” David said, “and that news sort of shattered it.”
“You thought that?” I asked.
“Finding out Bill might get you that house was one moment where I worried I really was living in a fantasy—that I might never have you. Instead of waiting to find out, I acted. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, but I’m sure as hell not sorry that I did it.”
“I saw it, too,” I blurted.
“Saw what?” He asked.
“Us. There. Together. It scared me. I realized my problems with Bill ran deeper than I thought, and that . . . my feelings for you did, too.”
David’s expression softened. “I always follow my gut, Olivia. It’s how I’ve done most of my business. It’s how this happened.” He motioned between us, and I nodded in agreement. “It’s why I bought the house,” he concluded.
I extended a leg and rubbed the inside of his thigh with my foot. “Thank you for the home,” I said. Maybe I should’ve stayed angry, but David’s belief in us awed me. “I don’t think I ever saidthank you.”
He caught my ankle and massaged it gently. “Do you accept the terms of the honesty agreement?”
I nodded, simply because I couldn’t fathom David would let me get away with anything else. “I do.”
“Next, what birth control do you use?”
My thoughts screeched to a halt with the change in topic. I blinked at him. “What?” I asked. “I’m on the pill.”
He touched his thumb to the corner of his mouth. “We need it to be the Fort Knox of birth control, considering my plans for you.”
Oh, my. That was a good thing, wasn’t it? I nodded slowly.
“I just made a joke,” he said. “Why do you look scared?”
I shifted against the back of the couch. Although eager to find out David’s plans for me, the pill brought up memories I’d rather forget. Like when I’d accused Bill of hiding my pack. “Toward the end, Bill and I fought a lot about birth control,” I said. “He pressured me to go off it.”
“Pressured you?” he repeated. “How?”
“He wanted kids,” I said frankly. “And he didn’t believe me when I said I wasn’t ready.”
