Page 36 of Nine Months to Love
“You don’t tell me anything real. Anything that matters.” She shifts in her seat to face me fully. “You claimed you killed your mother, but you didn’t exactly give me details, did you? You keep everything locked up tight. You dole out information on a need-to-know basis, but I’m never the one who needs to know, and I’m supposed to just accept that? Just trust that you’ll tell me what I need to know when you think I’m ready?”
“I told you I killed my fucking mother!” I roar. “What more do you want?”
“I want you to talk to me like I’m a person you actually care, Stefan.That’swhat I want.”
I force myself to breathe. To count to five. Olivia isn’t my mother or my enemy or any of the countless people who’ve tried to destroy me over the years, and I need to remind myself of that.
She’s the woman carrying my child. The woman I lo?—
Fuck. I can’t even finish that thought.
“What kind of conversation would you like to have?” I ask through gritted teeth.
“The honest kind. The kind where you actually give me answers and details instead of vague statements designed to shut me up.”
“Did you ever think that maybe the reason I didn’t give you details is not because I don’t trust you, but because I wanted to spare you?”
She blinks. Opens her mouth. Closes it.
“How bad is it?” she asks quietly.
“For someone like you? Pretty bad.”
“Someone like me?” Her hackles are up again. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Someone good. Someone kind, decent… normal.” I risk a glance at her. “I may be an asshole, Olivia, but that doesn’t mean I’m not self-aware. I know I come with baggage. I just didn’t feel the need to force you to carry it, too.”
Her expression softens. Just a fraction. But I see it.
“It’s almost enough to make me forget my original point,” she murmurs.
Then her hand goes to her stomach—protective, instinctive—and I know she’s pulled herself back from whatever cliff I almost talked her off.
“I appreciate the gesture. I do. But I deserve to know what I’m getting myself into.” She sounds calmer now. The worst of it has passed us. “If we’re going to co-parent this child, I need to know who you really are. All of it. Not just the parts you think I can handle.”
She’s right. I know she’s right.
I just wish she wasn’t.
“You’re right. I’ll tell you everything. Whatever you want to know.”
“Right now?”
“No. This is hardly the time or the place to have this conversation.” I gesture at the car, the road, the whole fucking universe conspiring against us. “We can have a frank, open discussion over dinner. Tomorrow?”
Suspicion floods her face immediately. “You’re using this as a pretense to wrangle me into a date.”
“I said dinner. It doesn’t have to be a date.”
“What’s the difference?”
I can’t help the smile that tugs at my lips. “A date implies that there might be sex afterwards. And I don’t expect anything from you. Unless of course, you expect something from me.”
“There will be no sex. Under any circumstances.”
“So even if you beg, I have to say no?”
She glares at me, but there’s heat behind it. Heat that has nothing to do with anger and everything to do with the magnetic pull between us. The thing we both keep trying to deny and failing spectacularly at.
