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She had—or at least she believed she had. Was she still harboring resentment? She knew he hadn’t meant the words. He had, in fact, apologized the moment he’d said them. She had been in too much pain and turmoil to listen, to forgive him then. He had apologized several times since then, but had she been holding on to the pain? Using it to keep him from hurting her again?
No. After seeing his pain, his struggle, and knowing the reasons why, she knew she had forgiven him.
“Maybe if other things hadn’t happened, we might have been able to get past it. But our old team was being targeted. Two of our team members were dead, and three others had barely escaped with their lives.
“We knew we were going to have to do something if we were going to stay alive. Our plan was simple enough. The rest of the team would go underground. Nic would fake his death and go deep cover to find out who was targeting us. It would appear to my OZ team that I was responsible.”
“I’m sure everyone was angry with you.”
That was an understatement.
“It seemed like the most sensible way to keep them from digging too deep into his death. It should have worked perfectly.”
“But it didn’t?”
“No. Nic was supposed to reach out to me, but I didn’t hear from him. No one we knew heard from him, at least that I knew. I could only assume he was dead. There was no other explanation.”
“But he came back.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve had several shocks over the last few months, haven’t you?”
More than Samara would ever know. Nic’s horrific injuries, Iris’s supposed death and then reappearance, Olivia’s own brush with death. So many things had worked against them. Tried to destroy them. But that wasn’t why she had come here today. All the other things that had happened, even as monumental as they had been, paled in comparison to her feelings for Nic and what their future held.
Olivia felt as if she’d been walking the edge of danger even before she had learned to walk. Every movement monitored, every step evaluated. It had been her life, all of her life.
She hadn’t chosen that life—it had been chosen for her. And she had gone along with it, accepted it. She had been good at it and had enjoyed many aspects of it. And if she had to do it all over again, maybe she wouldn’t change a thing.
But that wasn’t what she wanted—not anymore.
She had come to a new phase in her life. She wanted the mundane, the ordinary. She wanted what might look boring to many people. She wanted to argue about who ate the last cookie in the cookie jar or who put the empty milk carton back in the fridge. She wanted soccer matches to conflict with dance classes and homework assignments that kept everyone up all night. She wanted weekends when the kids jumped on the bed and demanded pancakes for breakfast, big dogs that slobbered all over her sneakers, and family vacations that were hectic, wild, and memorable.
She wanted a life well lived. And she wanted that life with the man she loved.
That wasn’t what he wanted, though. Nicholas Hawthorne was the very definition of a hero. Courageous, kind, ethical, and strong. She didn’t want to change him. She loved him for exactly who he was, what he was.
Whatever decisions he made, whatever changes he decided upon, if any, had to be because he wanted them. Not because she wanted them.
“Olivia!”
Jerking back from where she’d gone, she said, “Yes?”
A brilliant smile lit up Samara’s face. “Oh my gosh, you’re pregnant!”
Joy rushed through her body, flooding her with a blessed, beautiful satisfaction. “Yes,” Olivia said softly. “Nic and I took some downtime after everything was wrapped up.”
“And it happened then? But did he…”
“Yes. He knew I wasn’t on birth control.”
“He gave you what you wanted.”
“Yes.” She just wished he wanted it, too.
“That’s a step in the right direction, isn’t it?”
“That’s what I keep telling myself.”
