When we were done, he laid me out on the bed and curled up with me.
“I love you,” he whispered.
“I love you too.” I struggled to get the words out past the lump in my throat. The night had been so much…everything.
“I know I’ve been gone a lot, and that has been affecting us, but I hope tonight reminds you that there are no lengths I wouldn’t go to to make you happy.”
“Kent…” I breathed, tears prickling the backs of my eyes.
“And whatever you’re going through, I want you to know I’ll always be here. You’re not alone, Olivia.”
“I kn—” My throat closed around the emotions, and the first tear fell. “I know that. I’m so so sorry for ever making you worry.” I barely got the words out before the tears took over. I burrowed myself against his chest and sank into the comfort I should have reached for at the very beginning.
He brushed my hair and rubbed my back, trying to soothe me through my release. When I finally got my tears under control, I pulled back but couldn’t bring myself to meet his gaze. Instead, I studied each silvery and black piece of stubble along his strong jaw.
“I don’t know if I can get pregnant,” I confessed. Laying my biggest fear out in the open for the first time, I realized how big it was—how much space it took up inside me. For the first time in months, I could breathe. Somehow, exposing it to others lifted a weight from my chest when this whole time, I thought it would only add the weight of others pity.
“Olivia…”
“We’ve been trying for almost a year, and month after month, I get my period. And it has just made me feel…so fucking much that I didn’t know what to do with it all,” I admitted through clenched teeth. “I’d never felt so much anger and sadness, and I didn’t know what to do with it. And not knowing only made it so much worse. I mean, Kent…what if I can’t get pregnant? What if we can’t have a baby? What if I let you down?”
“Olivia,” he said harder, pulling me back from my spiral.
Hesitantly, I lifted my eyes to his. The firm stare calmed down enough to find the love pouring off him.
“I have you, and as long as I do, you will not let me down. If we have a baby, then great. If not, then great. Because I have you, and that is all I need. Everything else is a bonus.”
“But you said you wanted kids.”
“Sure, I’d love to have kids because I’d have you by my side. It was never a life-long goal of mine that I strived for. I mean, shit, if that were the case, then I probably should have started earlier,” he laughed. “I’m in my forties. There’s a chance that you didn’t get pregnant because of me. Would you be let down if something was wrong on my end?”
“No,” I denied vehemently.
“Exactly.”
I glared at his gloating smile.
“This isn’t solely on you. I don’t know if anyone ever had the conversation with you,” he said, using a gentle tone like he was talking to a child. “But it takes two people to make a baby.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re so funny.”
“Listen, Olivia. If you want answers to why we haven’t gotten pregnant, then we’ll get all the tests.”
“And what if we find something wrong that says we can’t.”
“Then we can try invitro. We can do a surrogate. We can adopt. There are a million other options, and I’m willing to try every single one until we get the result we want.”
More tears slid down, but this time they were happy tears.
This was an emotion I could handle.
“I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you.”
“It’s okay. We’ve got a lot of years together ahead of us. We’re going to make the wrong decisions and falter, but we’ll always get back up. I’ll be happy to keep reminding you that I adore you, and there isn’t a damn thing you could do to make me think otherwise.”
“I love you too.”
“Now,” he started. “Let’s get some rest because I don’t know if you heard the rest of the baby-making story, but it takes lots and lots and lots of sex.”
“Really?” I mock gasped with wide eyes.
“Oh, yeah. C’mere,” he said, pulling my back to his front. “Let me tell you a bedtime story in great detail about how babies are made.”
With his lips against my neck, he explained with the filthiest words imaginable how he planned to get me pregnant.
Epilogue
Olivia
“So, how did the event go last night?” I heard Daniel ask just as I walked in.
“Kent just got here a couple minutes before you,” Hanna explained, leading me toward the voices.
Oaklyn tried to hug me but ended up bumping me with her belly first. “Look at you,” I gushed.