Come Together by Jessica Hawkins Page A

forward to spending my days learning what you love, what you don’t, and all the little details in between.”
    I blushed as I tried not to smile.
    “I want our relationship to be completely and totally open,” he continued. “Honesty, and the irony of this is not lost on me, but it’s the most important thing to me when it comes to you. No lies. No fibs. No telling me you’re goddamn fine when you’re not. Nothing.”
    I took a deep breath. It would be hard. I’d spent my life beating back the things that I didn’t want to feel. Telling Bill I was fine and having him accept that made things easy. Telling David how I really felt, whether it was mad, sad, happy, jealous – that wouldn’t always be easy.
    “Hey,” he called, and I realized I’d been staring off into space. “You hear me? No ‘fine’ bullshit.”
    “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.”
    “This is a two-way street, isn’t it?”
    “What does that mean?” he asked, raising his chin at me.
    “You haven’t exactly been a saint through all of this. Dani, Maria – 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, and it had symbolized the beginning of a new future with Bill, David hadn’t hesitated to snatch it out from under us.
    He 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, rundown 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 felt right. I remembered how deplorable 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 continued. “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, baby. I was shocked. I wasn’t going to give that dream up.” He was so beautiful when he was passionate, and I loved listening to him as much as I loved watching him. “I guess I had this idea that you and I would eventually end up together, and that sort of shattered it.”
    “You thought that?”
    “That was one time where I worried I was living in a fantasy. 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?”
    “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.”
    “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. “Thank you for the home. I don’t think I ever said thank you.”
    He caught my foot in his hand and massaged it gently. “Do you accept the terms of the honesty agreement?”
    “I do.”
    “Next, what birth control do you use?”
    I blinked at him. “The pill.”
    “We need it to be the Fort Knox of pills, considering my plans for you.”
    I nodded slowly.
    “That was a joke,” he said. “Why do you look scared?”
    “Toward the end, Bill and I fought a lot about birth control. He was pushing me to go off it.”
    “Pushing you?” he repeated. “How?”
    “He wanted kids,” I said blankly. “And he didn’t believe me when I said I wasn’t