Page 93 of Love Expert
“I don’t have a choice, Oliver! She walked away from me. She’s literally got me dressing up for another woman right now, and in ten minutes, I’m supposed to climb into my car and head out to dinner with Luciana Reeves. You remember her, right?”
“Luciana?” he exhales. “Seriously?”
“What?” Rose comes closer to the phone. “Who is Luciana Reeves? Why is she important?”
“You remember that Giselle supermodel you were so worried I’d fall in love with?” Ollie presses a comforting kiss to Rose’s lips.I assume. Could be her ass, I suppose. “Luciana is Giselle in this situation. She was Ms. Teen County. Ms. State. Ms. Universe, maybe. I dunno. She’s a model, like… an actual model in magazines and shit.”
“Really?” Rose’s voice rises an octave. “So you think she’s beautiful, Doctor Douchebag?”
He barks out a laugh. “I’m not even playing this game! You asked, I answered.”
“She’s not just a Paris Fashion Week model either,” I cut in. “She’s a lingerie catalog model. Theclassycatalogs. Maggie’s setting me up to fail with this shit. She’s settingusup to completely fucking explode.”
“Why must her beauty dictate the success or failure of your relationship?” Rose snarls. “Are you saying that if she were ugly, you’d be less likely to blow shit up?”
“No! I’m saying Maggie already lit the fuse, because she’s done with this. She doesn’t want us. She doesn’t wantme.”
“Just don’t go,” Ollie groans. “Tell her no. It’s really that simple. If she told me I had to dress up and hit the town with Giselle tonight, I would literally say no. I already know who I love.”
“Ollie—”
“So you say the same damn thing. Even if she doesn’t want you, even if she refuses to give you the time of day, you still say no. What part of all this is confusing to you?”
“She’s already dating someone else!” I drop my head back and pinch the bridge of my nose. “She’s had the same fucking guy in her home the last three nights, Oliver.”
“You don’t know if she’s dating?—”
“She told me to my fucking face! She said she needed to focus on finding her match.”
“And you… what? You’re cool with it? You’ll sit inside your house and let her fall in love with someone else?”
“Oh, right! Like how you dressed Rose up, patted her ass, and sent her off to date that other prick?”
“That’s different,” Rose counters. “That was?—”
“It wasn’t different! It’s literally a case of trying to minimize the fucking damage we inflict on these women we love. Rose needed to explore the Darcy thing, so you let it happen. Maggie needs to find a man who fucking deserves her, so?—”
“You deserve her!” Ollie booms. “There’s no one on this planet who deserves her more.”
“There is, actually.” I pick up my phone and wander to my closed window, glancing into my yard to where Maggie and Jeremy sit together at the boundary garden. He sprawls across her lap, and she strokes his hair. He laughs, his mouth wide open and his chest bouncing with the movement, while she snickers and says whatever sweet, beautiful, selfless, intelligent things she says. “Jeremy deserves her.” I swallow the aching truth before it chokes me. “He deserves to have a relationship with her that isn’t dependent on my relationship with her. One that won’t come and go, depending on how fucking far into my mouth I shove my foot. One that doesn’t turn frosty when I try to force her to love me back, even knowing I can’t give her what she wants.”
“What?” Ollie grunts. “What is it she wants so badly that you can’t give her?”
“Babies,” Rose sighs sadly. “She wants babies.”
“Jesus, Billy. You’re not fucking sterile! It’s not a matter ofcan’t. It’s a matter ofwon’t.”
“I won’t risk her life.” I run my free hand through my hair and tug just hard enough to make it sting. “I can’t lose her like I lost Aria.”
“So you think every woman is destined to die in childbirth, huh? Seriously? You’re more intelligent than that, dickhead.”
“Ollie—”
“I literally deliver babies for a living, Billy! In all my years at the hospital, I’ve only ever lost one. One! Are you expecting Fox to keel over when her baby is due?”
“No, I?—”
“Because you probably should tell Chris. Ya know, so he can prepare for his impending loss. Alana’s probably gearing up for a third now thatshe’s all healed after Hazel. You don’t see the way she stares at Tommy while he’s holding her? It’s a cornucopia of hormones andcome do me, Daddy.”
