The Billionaire's Baby Negotiation

Love.

Oh, how she loved him.

As her body began to quake with pleasure, as she began to shatter in his arms, she whispered those words.

The words that she had been too afraid to speak all this time. “I love you.”

He growled, his climax overtaking him, and she felt his surrender, and for just that moment, she let it shine within her like lights in the northern sky.

I love you.

No. This could not be borne. This could not be.

I love you.

It brought back with scalding clarity words within him that he had not thought of for years. Words that no one had said to him in so long...

I love you.

He gritted his teeth. “Let us go back to the house,” he said.

“Is that all you have to say?”

“It is all there is to be said.”

“That isn’t true. And you know that. I said that I loved you, Gunnar, and now you’re telling me you want to go back to the house. The appropriate answer is to either say that you love me in return, or tell me that you don’t, but acting like the words were never spoken feels a bit like a lie.”

“In all things, I have never been a liar. That is you.”

“Well, that suits your narrative right now, doesn’t it? That somehow what I have to say to you isn’t true. But I love you. And you are being a coward.”

“I don’t love, I told you that.”

“Why. Why? Look, I know what it’s like to be hurt by the person who’s supposed to love you, but during this time, these past couple months, I’ve been rebuilding myself. And with that, came the realization that the company isn’t the most important thing to me. Not anymore. I don’t want to raise our child in an environment where love is conditional. Where performance is the only thing that matters. I can’t deal with that. Live like that. I want love. I’ve never been loved before. Not really. And I want a life, a house, a world that is filled with love. I don’t think that’s wrong. Is it wrong? I would hope that it’s not. I would hope that it is entirely understandable that what I want is... What I want is to be cared for. But I’ve done all this work to break down the barriers in my soul, and I want you to do it too. I wanted to come out here. Because I know this is your heart. I want you to tell me. I want you to tell me.”

“Enough,” he said.

“No. I’m not going to be afraid. You married me. You’re stuck with me. What are you going to do? Stay married to me for a week? Deny me, divorce me, just because I’m not doing everything that you want? I don’t think that is a very reasonable move. I simply don’t. So, here’s what I think. I’m going to push. Because that’s who I am. But you know what else... Love isn’t a contract negotiation. There isn’t a winner and a loser. And there are no prizes for a grudging acceptance. I want you to love me. I want you to love me because you have no other choice.”

“Let me tell you what you don’t know about my life,” he said. “Until I was twelve I was raised here. I never left Iceland. I never left the country. I never knew my mother, she left when I was a baby. But I lived with my grandparents. Her parents. We lived in a small house out in the middle of nowhere. I spent all my days in the snow. In the wilderness. I would come home to warm dinner, and people who were there for me. Who cared. They taught me to love this land. They taught me what mattered. But I was enamored of a man who had never even come to visit me. Enamored of his money, his power. He took me and he tried to...to bend me into his image. To break me into it. Before he died, I told him that he had failed.” And suddenly, his soul felt as cold as the world around him. “But he didn’t. He stripped something from me that I will never be able to get back. He stole the only warmth, the only love that I ever knew.”

He thought of when he’d tried to go back. He thought of it, but he could not bring himself to walk through the memory. Not now.

“Gunnar,” she said. “I want that house that you’re talking about. I want that love. I want to be that thing for our child. I want simple and beautiful and ours. I want it to be home. I want it to be filled with love. Your father didn’t win unless you allow him to. A man chooses his own steps. I know that you believe that. You took what your grandparents taught you, and you made your company focus on the planet. Because you loved the wilderness that you grew up in. Because you took that love and you carried it out with you. It isn’t gone. It had to take a different shape.”

“You don’t know, Olive,” he said. “It does not matter. This. We have passion. And that is enough.”

She shook her head. “It matters to me. It matters to me, and I cannot live in a place where I am not loved. Not again. Not ever again. Gunnar, I want our life to be different. Wholly different. I want it to be everything that we could’ve ever dreamed of. When we were children, when we believed everything was possible. Not now. Not as cynical adults, taking what we’ve been told we’re allowed.

“No. What I want is a miracle. And I don’t see why we can’t have it.”

“Because there are no miracles left in this world.”

He thought of the empty cabin.

The pipe, sitting cold on the counter.

Never to be smoked again.