After securing Ty’s promise to leave Sammi alone, Oliver’s shoulders relaxed. The traffic started moving as Oliver hung up on Sammi’s ex. To his astonishment, he felt better now that he’d come clean with Ty. It was as if by taking a positive action to undo some of the harm he’d done, he’d benefited as well. Imagine that. Oliver was grinning as the taxi pulled up to the curb in front of Sammi’s building. He paid the driver and got out.
He’d been to Sammi’s apartment often enough in the last month for the doormen to recognize him. Oliver nodded in greeting to the one currently on duty and headed for the elevator. As the car ascended, he was surprised by an eruption of butterflies in his stomach. For the last hour or so, he’d been so focused on his cathartic revelations following his visit to the prison that he hadn’t considered what he would do if her love for him was well and truly broken.
He knocked on her door and waited in a state of agitation for her to answer. It took so long that he wondered if she peered through the peephole, spied him standing outside her door and walked away. His breath hissed out in relief when he heard the lock disengage. A second later Sammi appeared in the doorway, wearing a fluttery black-and-white polka dot dress and white sneakers.
“How’d lunch with your mom go?” he asked, noting her surprise that he’d remembered.
“You didn’t come all this way to ask me that.” She scanned his face and then sighed. “It was nice. She’s really excited about her new job with the Paulson Agency.”
“Can I come in?” he asked, hoping her reluctance wouldn’t keep them apart. “I have a lot to tell you.”
“I think we said all there was to say last night.”
“Not everything,” he assured her, recognizing he had a lot of convincing to do. Oliver took her hands in his and gave her fingers a gentle squeeze. “I went to see my father today.”
Her gaze lifted to his, fingers tightening ferociously. “How did it go? Are you okay?”
“Don’t I look okay?” he teased, her concern the perfect balm for his agitated nerves. He grinned. “Are you ready to let me in so I can tell you what happened?”
She drew him into the apartment and closed the door. Although his attention was focused on her, he noticed an abundance of packing boxes scattered around.
“You’re moving?” He didn’t dare ask a destination. She’d already removed her toiletries from his bathroom, indicating she’d chosen somewhere besides his place to live.
“My thirty days is up tomorrow.” Still holding his hand, she moved into the living room. “What happened when you went to see your father?”
Oliver didn’t want to talk about visiting Vernon. He wanted to tell her everything he’d thought about her in the time since. But mostly, he wanted to speak the three words that had been living in his heart for weeks.
“I love you.”
For a long moment, she stared at him without comprehension. “What?”
“You are my everything,” he said, grabbing her shoulders in a tight grasp. With the floodgates open, declarations and promises poured out of him. “I will do anything to make you happy. Whatever it takes.” Realizing his earnest pledges weren’t swaying her, he repeated himself. “I love you.”
She bit her lip and looked equal parts hopeful and wary. “Since when?”
He wasn’t surprised at her resistance. When she’d confessed her love, he’d been unable to say it back. “Since the day you walked into the bar at the Soho Grand. Something happened to me that day, and you’ve been a part of me ever since.”
Sammi was gaping at him with such intensity it seemed as if she’d stopped breathing. He gave her a little shake. She ejected the air from her lungs in an inarticulate squeak.
“But when you asked me to marry you and I said I couldn’t unless you loved me—” she jabbed her finger at him “—you said you didn’t.”
“I never told you I didn’t love you,” he countered, regretting such foolishness. “I just never told you I did. My only excuse is that I didn’t understand what I was feeling was love.”
“But you do now?”
“When I met with my father, I realized I was no longer the child who looked up to him. You were right. Letting go of my anger and my resentment was what I needed to recognize that my happiness lies in you. And our baby. You’re all I need and want.”
Blinking rapidly, she smoothed her hands over his chest while her gaze clung to his in a desperate search for reassurance. “I want to believe that will be enough...”
“Then believe it.” Oliver covered her hand where it rested over his heart and brushed his lips over her forehead. “I don’t have anything to prove to my father, nor do I need his approval. In fact, I can’t believe I wasted so much energy resenting him.”
“But the situation with your family isn’t over,” she murmured. “There’s bound to be one event after another that brings up all the old hurts.”
“You’re right. And I can’t promise you that what comes next will be easy, but I know it will be so much harder without you in my life.”
Although these were all the things she’d been dying to hear Oliver say to her, she couldn’t quite believe that he’d arrived at such a life-changing transformation in a few short hours.
“And I will be,” she promised him. “We’re having a baby, after all.”
Oliver’s brows lowered. “You aren’t convinced.”
“I am... I mean I want to be.”
“Come with me to visit my father.” His offer was so adamant that she had no words. “Let’s go right now. Come with me and
