Epilogue
HOLLAND
I don’t really know how it happened that I agreed to live with Oliver. Somewhere in the fog and stress of that last week of pregnancy, I just lost the motivation to struggle against the things I really want in life, the things that feel good and right despite the way they might look on the outside. I was already having the CEO’s baby. How much worse could it be to live with him, too? And at some point—maybe about the time my water broke and I let him know we needed to head to the hospital—everything stopped being about what other people might think or feel, and started being about us. About my family.
“Do you put this shirt in the dryer?” Oliver stood in the doorway of the nursery, holding a gauzy blouse I’d worn the night before and looking adorably confused.
I was sitting on the glider, nursing, which was something I felt like I’d spent most of my life doing since our son was born. “Oliver.” I smiled. “Just let Brenda do the laundry when she comes this afternoon.”
Oliver stood in the door a minute longer, watching me, a dreamy grin on his face that I’d seen a lot in the months that followed the birth. It was an astounding transformation, really. The arrogant, out-of-control man I’d seen throwing potted plants around Cody Tech and screaming at people was now doing laundry and goggling a baby. I’d worry that he’d become over-domesticated if not for the way those dark eyes still burned when we were able to find time alone together. “She has enough to do. I can help,” he said, putting the shirt aside with a shrug.
The baby had nursed himself to sleep, so I stood and put him into his crib, and Oliver stepped to my side to gaze down at our son.
“Sleep tight, tiny Adam,” he crooned, and I turned to look at the man beside me. He was still steel and strength, the brutal jawline and sable eyes catching me off guard with their intensity. But Oliver’s fire had been tempered and controlled by fatherhood. He was no less masculine or sexy, but I no longer felt that vibrating tension around him, that silent warning that he might explode. Instead, Oliver had become a steady column of power, one I could draw from when I needed support. He surprised me constantly, not just with spontaneous gifts or with his actions, but with his capacity to love, and to forgive. He’d let go of the anger surrounding his parents’ death—naming our son after his father had been his suggestion—and he’d found some peace in the knowledge of his roots. Though he still didn’t know who his biological father was, he seemed content not to have that piece of the genetic puzzle to fit into place.
“Adam was my father,” he explained to me soon after the baby was born. “The rest is just molecular, insignificant unless you’re a scientist. Adam was the role model I’ll work to emulate, he was the man who loved and raised me. That’s what matters.”
I was happy to see Oliver at peace, and it made the home we shared that much more peaceful.
My own life had settled into a steady rhythm as I got used to having Adam to care for. It was demanding and terrifying being responsible for another life, but it also felt like the job I’d been searching for all along, the place I fit best. I had taken some time off from work when the baby was born, and now was starting to work from home, taking calls and meetings from the office Oliver and I shared. One of the responsibilities I’d taken on after Adam’s birth was an effort to make Cody a more female-friendly company—something Oliver had asked for and had coordinated with the HR department. We were beginning with family-leave policies and flexible work arrangements, but hiring practices and promotion criteria were on our long-term agenda as well. In the meantime, a crackerjack statistician had been brought in from the master’s program at UCLA while I’d been out—a woman who was already shaking things up at Cody.
With Adam sleeping, Oliver and I had a few moments to spend together, and we settled on the couch in the living room in front of the window facing the pool. Winter had come to Los Angeles, such as it was, and while the air outside wasn’t exactly cold, it did carry an edge of chill that made me want to wrap up in warm sweaters and make soup.
“Cold?” Oliver asked, pulling me into his chest as I shivered with the thought of winter.
“Not really,” I said, snuggling close.
Oliver’s hands rand down my back and he reclined until we were lying side by side, the blue sky visible above us out the window. His fingers traced patterns on my back, drawing out the tension and fatigue that came with sleepless nights and worry over small things, and as his hands moved over my body, I felt an entirely different tension coiling inside me.
I turned in his arms, pressing our chests together and sliding myself higher so I could meet his eye. There was a question there—a hesitation that came with knowing how tired we both were, how different things might be now that we had a baby to think of. I answered it by taking his lower lip between my teeth gently, and was rewarded with a low groan and a growing stiffness against my thigh. I released Oliver’s lip and slanted my mouth to his, dropping the tip of my tongue between his lips, teasing. His tongue met mine, and the kiss deepened until our tongues slid together, reaching and grasping as our heart rates increased. Oliver’s hands found the hem of my jeans and pushed them from my hips easily as I lifted myself to help him remove his.
Our mouths still connected, I found his hardness with my hands and grasped him gently in a fist, stroking along his length as my body slid along the hard planes of Oliver’s.
“God,” he moaned into my mouth.
It was all the encouragement I needed, and I used my hand to guide him to my wet entrance, leading him home and finally breaking contact with his mouth as I arched up to feel him deep inside me. Whatever chill I’d felt was gone, and I pulled the thick sweater from my body, sitting astride Oliver in front of the soaring window. His hands found my hips and we worked together to find a steady rhythm, my clit pressing against the base of him with each thrust until I felt I would spiral out of control. I leaned back as the orgasm hit me, reaching for his legs behind me, to brace me as every ounce of tension inside me released and I flew for a minute, color and time and place swirling around me.
Oliver watched, and I opened my eyes to find his face suffused with passion, the eyes burning and his mouth open slightly. “You’re so fucking hot,” he said, his voice hoarse.
His hands began to guide me again, up and down along his length. I let him direct me, but dropped one hand behind me again, cupping his balls against my ass with a steady pressure at the base of his length.
“Fuck,” he breathed, the edge of a growl in his voice. “Fuck,” he said again, more urgently.
He was thrusting harder now, closer to the edge of control, and his breath was ragged. I watched him as the orgasm hit, his eyes shutting and his chin jutting forward as I felt him release inside me and heard a rumbling groan fly from his open mouth. When he’d finished, I stretched out my length on top of him and closed my eyes.
This, I thought, was exactly where I wanted to be—where I wanted to stay. Connected in every sense of the word—connected to a man I loved, to the family we’d created, to a world I was shaping. This, I realized, was exactly what I’d been searching for, planning for. I thought of the list in my notebook, every item now checked off, and for a moment I felt unmoored. The plan had defined me for so long, directed my choices and my path. But the best things in my life hadn’t been planned at all. Maybe it was time for a new plan.
I decided it was time to plan not to plan. As I lay there, cocooned in the life that had happened to me, that had been so completely unintended, I decided to take things as they came, to enjoy what life had to offer and to stop worrying so much. And in that single decision, I felt truly happy.