What was he doing? He had no right to tell her that. Olivia was someone who would always see the good in people, who would always give them a second chance. In fact, his own fate depended on the fact that she was who she was. It was both her strength and weakness, and if he wanted to spend his life with her, if he had any hope of keeping his sanity while doing that, he had to accept that, even if it tore him to see her hurt.
He pressed a kiss on her head, and breathed deeply. The scent of her calmed him and derailed him at the same moment. “You’re not a fool, Liv. Jeremiah is. You’re the most generous, most giving woman I’ve ever met and it’s his misfortune that he can’t see that.”
She jerked back from him, her gaze sweeping over him in confusion and pain. “Why are you here, Alexander?”
He wanted to say the one thing that was tugging at him the most but fear stopped him. It felt as if his whole life was hanging by a thread, and it scared the hell out of him to bare it all in front of her. “I wanted to thank you for what you did for Emily. Isabella said she wasn’t going to sue and I told her she could see Emily.”
Olivia smiled through the tears pooling in her eyes. She wanted to throw her arms around him and hold on for as long as she could, so much that it was a physical ache in her stomach. “I didn’t do it just for her. I did it for you.”
He tugged her toward him, his palms moving up and down her arms. “For me?”
“I didn’t want that tiny part of you that still feels something to be crushed completely. Because that’s what would have happened if Isabella sued you. You would have closed yourself off.” And she wouldn’t have been able to reach him in this lifetime. Because the hope that he would change his mind if not now, then sometime in the future, was the only thing that was keeping her going. Really it had been a purely selfish move on her part.
His gaze filled with such tenderness, such humility that Olivia wanted to hug him and kiss him. She even jerked up from the bed, only to fall back on her knees. She couldn’t bear it if he pushed her away again.
“Don’t do that, Liv. Don’t give up on me now,” he said, his words vibrating with pain. “I’ve been going out of my mind for three days,” he said, moving his mouth to her temple, breathing his words into her skin.
She hugged herself, feeling frayed along the edges, battered, as if a wound she’d thought healed kept opening again and again. “You can’t do this. You can’t just come back into my life whenever you want, dictate your own set of rules and then walk away. I won’t let you. I won’t let you take away what little I have left.”
He tugged her hands into his. “No, I know. I promised myself I wouldn’t even touch you until I said what I want to.” His voice was gruff. “I have never let myself feel so much that it’s a giant ball of ache in my gut. And a part of me flinches and just wants to shut down. I want to do this, I want to tell you how I feel but opening up myself, it’s the scariest thing I’ve done since I walked out on my parents.”
His eyelids flickered down for a second, hiding his expression from her. He touched his forehead to hers, and sighed. “I’m in love with you, Liv, and it terrifies the hell out of me. I missed you so much that there should be a gaping hole inside me. I need you to tell me that I haven’t blown my chance with you, that you haven’t given up on me.”
“I do love you, Alexander. Nothing in this world is going to change that.”
His heart beat normally for the first time in three days. “Will you forgive me for leaving you like that?”
A soft smile curved her mouth. “You’re forgiven,” she said quietly.
He couldn’t go another moment without touching her, without kissing her. He pulled her up for a thorough kiss that breathed new life into his blood. He didn’t want to wait another minute to make her his. His heart felt too big for the excitement drumming through him.
He shifted her hair from her shoulder and pressed a kiss. “Will you marry me, Olivia?”
Her quiet smile slipped. He turned her toward him, uncertainty skewering him. “I don’t have a ring because I know you hate diamonds.”
Olivia took a deep breath, hating what she had to say. “I—”
A shadow loomed over Alexander’s face. He ran a hand over his nape, his mouth a rigid line of pain. “So you have changed your mind.”
She scooted from his lap, to the edge of the bed. She cupped his jaw and held fast as he tried to move away. “I want to be with you so much that it’s a constant ache in my heart, Alexander,” she said, pulling his hand to her heart which thundered at his touch. “But these past three days, they have made me doubt everything.”