“It’s OK,” I said through the tears. “I mean, I do want to be pregnant—Iwillbe, in the next year. And there’s just…there’s nothing you can say, I mean, I can’t let you hold me back from this, I just…”
Oliver shuffled closer, legs tangling with mine. “You do get what this all means, don’t you? What I said on Windward Ridge? Iloveyou.”
There was something about the way those words sounded in Oliver’s soft, low, bedtime voice, with his gaze holding mine. I’ve had men tell me they loved me before, but nobody else has ever said it so I felt it right in the very center of my soul, as though they were speaking to something deep within me.
“Aspen…” Oliver reached for my hand. “I thought you were pregnant the day after we kissed. I was a little thrown at first, sure, and I wondered…well, I obviously wondered who the father was, given that you’ve been here for a couple of months now, so it was probably…someone on the island…”
“Oh, wow, you must’ve…Who…?”
“Believe me,” Oliver said, voice warm with amusement, “I was really struggling to put that one together.”
I started to laugh. “Oh my God, did you think I was, like, having Rog’s baby?”
“I mean, I assumed a tourist fling, actually, but I did wonder when you’d found the time.”
I wiped my eyes. The laugh had loosened something in my chest. I looked down at the freckles on the backs of his hands, the ones I’d traced that night I’d told him I couldn’t be with him.
“Do you want to know how I feel about having children, Aspen?”
“No,” I said instantly, letting go of him and covering my face with my hands. “Oh, God. Yes? I don’t know. I mean, even if you say you’re OK with me pursuing motherhood on my own, then I don’t know that I could ever quite believe you.”
“Really?” His voice was light. “Don’t you get what I’m saying to you? I told you I love you. And I thought you were pregnant.”
“Yes, I know that, I—”
“I was already ready to love you and your baby.”
I almost couldn’t absorb his words. I just blinked at him, my heart beating so hard.
“What are you…what are you saying?”
“I’m saying, if this is really the reason you’ve decided you don’t want to be with me, you’re going to have to come up with something else.”
I threw myself across the sofa and wept as he closed his arms around me, that huge, kind heart pressed hard against mine.
“I’ve always wanted a family,” Oliver said. “In answer to the question you have spent the last two months not asking me.”
“Don’t, don’t,” I sobbed into his shoulder. “It’s too much.”
“It’s the truth. Charlie never actually told me she didn’t want kids until we broke up. But I do want children, as it happens. And I’m not going to ruin your plans, or ask you to slow down for me. I just want to love you.”
So I let it in. I let myself say it—the other big secret I’ve been carrying far longer than I’d like to admit.
“I love you,” I told him, and kissed him, my tears on our lips.
It was my first time ever saying it with my whole self, not a single thing held back. It felt so new—richer, lovelier, deeper than any “I love you” I’d said before.
“Are you sure?” Oliver said, pulling back from me for a moment. “You know I can be…hard work. I want to say I won’t ever go through a dark patch again, but I can’t promise it, and…”
“I love you,” I said again, leaning my forehead to his. “I love you now, and I’ll love you then.”
He closed his eyes and breathed out slowly.
“I didn’t know I could feel like this.”
“Feel like what?”
“Like the future is the brightest place.”
