Page 89 of The Good Guy on My Porch

CHAPTER TWENTY

Epilogue

Dilly

I put down my note cards and smiled at the applauding, and very large, audience. I was riding the high of having completed my speech without a mistake. I sought out Oscar, his face lit with pride, his smile huge. I stepped away from the podium, hurried off the stage, and through the crowd to him.

I threw my arms around him and hugged him tight.

“You were amazing,” he said, his breath warm against my ear, his voice husky. My whole body shivered with a desire for another kind of adrenaline rush.

I stepped back from him and grinned. “You have to say that.”

He nodded. “I do, but it’s true. I’m so proud of you.”

“I love you,” I said, unable not to speak the words that filled me with so much uncontainable emotion.

He pulled me back in for a quick, hard kiss. “I love you, too. What do you want to do next? Did you want to go to the presentation about technology and media?”

He’d been so wonderful over the past two days. He’d gone to every presentation I’d wanted to see, and he hadn’t complained once about what must have been terribly boring for him. He’d claimed he wanted to learn more about my industry. “I want to spend some time with you.” I laced my fingers through his and pulled him through the crowd. Okay, I didn’t pull him, because he’s bigger and heavier than me by a lot, but I yanked and he followed.

“You want to see the city?” he asked. “There’s supposed to be a good band at a bar not too far from here.”

I spun and wrapped my arms around his neck. “I just want to be with you. Whatever you want to do, I want to do. You’ve been doing what I want for two days. Now, it’s your turn.”

His eyes lit. “You’ve been rewarding me very well every night at our hotel. I really can’t complain.”

I stepped closer, pressing my body against his. “It’s been as much my reward as yours. What do you want to do with our last twenty-four hours in New Orleans?”

If I was honest, which I was trying to be all the time, being away from Catalpa Creek hadn’t been easy. I worried about my mother every five minutes and I worried about Buddy every other five minutes, but I’d still managed to have the time of my life and Oscar had been very good at helping me forget my concerns. Mom had continued seeing her therapist and had even started taking medication for her anxiety. She still had a long way to go, and preferred not to leave her apartment, but she was doing so much better than I’d ever thought it was possible to hope for. She’d even laughed with me and Oscar when we’d visited before we left for New Orleans. It helped that I had a whole posse of women willing to drop everything and go see Mom when she was having a bad day.

I’d also been seeing a therapist on my own, and with my mother. She’d helped me to work through what I now understood was trauma from my past, and she’d helped me to accept that I wasn’t at fault, that I wasn’t a bad person.

Oscar grinned down at me. “I’d be happy to spend our last twenty-four hours in bed, but we shouldn’t pass up the opportunity to see New Orleans.”

“How about we spend the next hour in bed, explore the city for a bit, and go back to bed?”

“That sounds like an amazing plan.” He pressed a soft kiss to my lips and we walked out of the conference hall together.

As we stepped out onto the street and into the hot, humid, sunshiney day, my phone dinged with a text from Carrie asking how my presentation had gone.

I smiled, glad I’d convinced her to forgive me for lying to her for the past ten years. There was a new wariness from her and I knew I hadn’t regained her trust, yet, but I would. She was my best friend and I wouldn’t give up on her. Not ever. Surprisingly, Lance had been the reason she’d been willing to talk to me when I’d knocked on her door. Somehow, he’d become a good friend, too. Cody, on the other hand, was even more wary about me than Carrie was. I got it. I hurt his wife and he wasn’t going to let me hurt her again. I’d convince him, too. It would just take time.

I sent Carrie a quick text back as Oscar guided me with a hand on my back, so I didn’t run into anyone. Once I slid my phone in my back pocket, he wrapped his arm around my shoulders and squeezed me tight to his side. Happiness rolled through me like a gentle wave and I wrapped my arm tight around his waist. My life might not be perfect or easy, but it was all mine and I wouldn’t trade lives with the richest woman in the world.

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