Chapter 43
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
LEXI
Oliver’s kiss catches me by such surprise that I haven’t even had time to react when he peels his lips from mine.
He pulls back and looks at me with the green eyes I’m sure would never fail to make that love-at-first-sight thrill run through me no matter how many times I gaze into them.
I know now that’s what it was—that moment when he opened his apartment door to me—it was love at first sight.
But that doesn’t mean it’s possible to make this work. Not after the shitty way he ended it without actually ending it.
I lean back because the only thing that will stop me from grabbing his face and kissing it right off is being too far away to do it.
“You can’t send me a text saying you need time to think, then vanish, then show up here a month later saying you want to be with me again.
What kind of emotional boomerang is that?
It sure as hell is no way to treat someone you claim you care about.
And it’s certainly not a way I want to be treated. ”
“You’re right. I’m a shit. I know I’m a shit.” He rises from his crouch and slides onto the seat next to me, reaching for my hands. I let him take them, and a warm, calm sensation spreads through me from his reassuring, firm touch.
But I’m not letting him off the hook. No way is he getting away without a better explanation for that pathetic breakup text.
“You just apologized for not throwing me off the plane to Scotland, for not coming with me when I left Scotland, and for how rude your parents were to me while I was there. But you didn’t say a single word about the only actual bad thing you did, which was how you non-ended things.”
“It was a non-ending because I didn’t want to end it.” His grip on my hands tightens at the same time as deep, troubled furrows appear in his brow. “It was the absolute last thing I wanted to do.”
That, I can accept. Not least because of the sincerely remorseful look that racks his beautiful features.
But I’ve thought about this over and over, and come to the conclusion that the speed with which he went from saying we’d sort everything out when he got back to New York, to calling it off the next day, means something must have happened.
And I’m sure as hell not kissing him again until I know what that was. “Then why did you do it?”
He leans forward and pulls my hands to his heart, where it beats against them. “I did it for you. I’m so sorry I hurt you, but I promise I did it for you.”
It would be so easy to fold and give in to the pleading look in his eyes. But I’ve spent years not taking no for an answer in my work, and today I’m not taking no for an answer on my own behalf.
“Oliver, will you please explain to me what the hell that means?”
“This is the part I’m dreading telling you. The part where I explain why the book got scrapped.”
“I wondered about that. But I couldn’t get any answers.” Julian told me he had no idea, and everyone I spoke with at the publisher’s gave me fudged nonanswers. “But what has the book being scrapped got to do with you ghosting me like a total ass?”
Oliver looks down at our hands and laces his fingers through mine, like he’s locking us together. It sparks a bloom of heat across my chest that I could do without right now while I’m trying to make rational decisions.
He chews his bottom lip for a moment before speaking.
“This is the thing that could send you running from the plane and never wanting to see me ever again.” His gaze slowly lifts until his troubled eyes are locked with mine. “You might hate me for it. But if this is the start of a future together, I’m not going to keep any secrets from you.”
“No secrets is good.” But his words make my heart race with the fear and dread of how awful what he’s about to tell me might be. “Go on.”
Still looking right into me, Oliver takes a deep breath, and I swear his hands tremble a little against mine. “My parents and Giles told me that if I agreed to not do the book, they would make sure you got a new job to replace the one in Eastern Europe that you lost to that useless rich kid.”
I stare at him blankly for the fraction of a second it takes me to process what he’s said.
Then a hot flash of anger, hurt, frustration, and crushing disappointment that he can’t possibly know me as well as I thought he did makes me snatch my hands from his and jump to my feet.
“Seriously?” Rushing, pulsing blood pounds in my ears. “After everything I’ve told you? After everything you know about me? You pulled strings to get me a job?”
I turn away from him, pressing my eyes tight shut. Maybe if I shake my head hard enough, this won’t be true. “So I’m not even here, in this job, on my own merit?”
Tears of frustration burn my eyes. I’ve worked my ass off for this, and my biggest achievement wasn’t even my own. It came from a person born to influence getting it for me.
How could he let this happen when he knows how much I’d hate it?
“Of course you are.” He rises to stand behind me and tries to turn me to face him. My effort to pull from his grip is half-hearted and, after a moment of resistance, I allow his guiding hands move me.
“They told me what the woman at The Sentinel is like,” he says. “And I researched her before I agreed, read a bunch of interviews with her, and I’m certain she would never have given you this job as a favor.”
He brushes a strand of disheveled hair out of my face.
“She’s someone who appoints people on nothing but their talent and skill and passion and drive.
The only thing you got through my family was an introduction.
That was all. After that, it was you who got yourself this job.
Amanda wouldn’t have given it to you if she didn’t think you were the best person.
And the only reason she didn’t think that before the introduction was because she hadn’t met you. ”
His rambling answer sounds panicked, like he’s worried his fear has come true and I might be about to run off the plane and vanish into the desert heat.
But the logical, unemotional part of me knows he’s right. Amanda’s reputation is legendary. And I’m even more certain after dealing with her these last few weeks that she would never give me, or anyone else, an assignment based on anything other than merit.
And the fact that Oliver took the time to find out what she was like before agreeing to the plan shows how much he cared that I’d hate the idea of anyone in his position giving me a leg up the career ladder. It shows how much he knows me.
Oliver rests his hands on my shoulders and the tension that had gripped my body eases. “Amanda is a total hard-ass. I know she wouldn’t do anything unless it was her own decision.”
“Thank fucking God.” He blows out a long, relieved breath and takes my hands again.
He holds them more gently this time, less like he’s clinging on for dear life, and strokes me with his thumbs in a way that makes my chest ache and tears prick my eyes.
“But you gave up the book for me, Oliver. You really needed that book. And the documentary.”
He had a choice between himself and me, and he chose me.
And I didn’t even know it.
My heart doesn’t know what to do with itself, whether to explode with love and gratitude or to be furious with him for not taking care of himself first, for not doing what he needed to do to secure his own livelihood.
He dismisses this monumental sacrifice with a half-smile and a one-shouldered shrug as if it’s nothing, as if it’s an everyday thing to throw away your future so someone else can have theirs.
And, oh my God, I have never loved this beautiful, selfless man more.
Nor despised his parents more for manipulating him like that, out of their own overriding desire for the public to never know anything about how it really is inside the royal family.
“But your parents threatened you, Oliver.” How can they keep treating him like this? “They used me to threaten you. To get you to do what they wanted. That’s not an okay thing for someone’s family to do to them.”
“I know. I know my life is not like yours,” he says. “But I think inside we’re the same. And you’re the inspiration for an idea for a new job that excites me more than I ever thought possible.”
A smile breaks out on his face that lights it up like a ray of hopeful sunshine.
“You suddenly look more positive than I’ve ever seen you.” I squeeze his hands. “When I left you at the church, I was worried all the family bullshit might send you into a tailspin.”
“I did nosedive for a bit. But the other day I called the guy at the streaming service who’d pulled the plug on the documentary when the book was scrapped.”
They must have offered him another project. I can only hope to God it isn’t something horribly embarrassing that he’s taken because he needs the income, like a reality show that has him locked inside a house for a month with a bunch of has-been celebrities.
He leads back to sit and puts an arm around my waist as he slides against me, pressing our hips and thighs together.
“I told him about an idea I had for a documentary series about hidden social issues that never make the news because they are so embedded in our culture they barely seem newsworthy anymore, because we don’t really see them.
Like homelessness. And parents who work three jobs but still struggle to pay the bills and put food on the table.
And families like Kirsty and her dad who face traumatic illnesses and even lose a kid but still somehow go to work to pay the bills and just get on with their lives.
I mean, how the fuck do people do that?”
Okay, I didn’t see that coming. The gears of my mind shift into reverse as they recalibrate and try to process this unexpected statement.
“I think that’s…yeah…that’s a truly genius idea.” His eyes sparkle at my reaction, and my brain starts firing on all cylinders. “And you could do comparisons of how different countries, and people in different cultures, deal with each of those issues.”