Chapter 28 #2
I had seen Olivia angry. I had seen her furious at delayed flights, incompetent executives, hotel rooms with no working heat, her brother borrowing money he didn’t intend to repay.
I had seen her cry at her grandmother’s funeral and when we packed our first apartment because I had been traded and she had pretended not to mind leaving another city.
This was different.
This was quiet damage.
She straightened and wiped under one eye with the side of her finger before any tear could fall.
“Is it serious?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Her laugh came out small and wounded. “You didn’t even hesitate.”
“I won’t insult you by pretending it isn’t.”
“Lucky me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Stop saying that for a minute.”
I stopped.
She crossed her arms, then uncrossed them immediately, as if even that felt too defensive. “Do you love her?”
There it was. The question I had not let myself answer in full, because answering meant responsibility. It meant admitting that what I felt for Jace had moved past need, past hunger, past the structure that had first made sense of us.
It had become the thing I thought about when a room went quiet.
It had become the person I fed before dawn.
It had become the future pressing against my ribs even when I was trying to do the right thing far too late.
“I don’t know how to say it cleanly,” I said.
“That sounds like yes.”
I looked at her. “Yes.”
She absorbed it without blinking.
Then she nodded, slow and devastated. “Okay.”
Nothing about it was okay.
She moved to the living room and sat on the edge of the couch. Not back against the cushions. Not comfortable. A visitor in her own house. Tiny followed and put the duck on her lap with solemn optimism.
Olivia looked down at him, and a tear finally slipped free.
“Oh, buddy,” she whispered. “You have terrible timing.”
Tiny rested his head on her knee.
I stayed by the kitchen because the distance felt deserved.
After a minute, she said, “Are you leaving?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“I can go tonight if you want.”
Her head came up fast. “Don’t make me decide that right now.”
“All right.”
“I mean it. Don’t hand me the logistics like a consolation prize.”
“I won’t.”
She stroked Tiny’s head, fingers moving automatically through the loose skin between his ears. “I thought we were tired.”
I swallowed.
“I thought we were in a bad season,” she said. “A long one. But still a season.”
“So did I for a while.”
“And then?”
“And then I stopped believing we were going to find our way back by accident.”
She nodded, looking at the dog instead of me. “And you found someone on purpose?”
“No.”
Her eyes lifted.
I held them. “No. Not on purpose. But after I knew, I still chose. That part is on me.”
Her face tightened.
She looked away again. “I appreciate the honesty. I also hate it.”
“I know.”
“I said stop.”
“Right.”
A long silence followed. It wasn’t peaceful, but it was real. For the first time in longer than I wanted to admit, neither of us filled the space with schedules or travel or work. We sat inside the ruin and let it be ruin.
Finally, she asked, “Do they know about me?”
“Yes.”
“Do they know you’re telling me tonight?”
“Yes.”
“That must be nice,” she said, and this time there was bitterness in it. Earned. “Being the person who gets prepared for.”
I had no defense.
Olivia’s hand stilled on Tiny’s head. “I’m not going to ask you to make me feel better about this.”
“I wouldn’t know how.”
“No,” she said. “You wouldn’t.”
She leaned back slightly, exhausted all at once. Her eyes moved around the living room, the bookshelves, the framed photo from our wedding on the side table, the blanket she had bought in Portland folded over the chair.
Then her gaze returned to me.
“Is it someone I know?”
Everything in me went cold and alert.
Not because I wanted to lie.
Because the truth had more lives attached to it than mine.
Jace in the locker room, trying to keep his words careful.
Jace at my kitchen island, eating toast because I told him half.
Jace with his bright, overwhelmed eyes and his fear of being too much for anyone to stay.
Jace, who had ended his own relationship and was still learning how to stand in the open without bolting.
Olivia deserved honesty.
She did not deserve a name used as a weapon in the first minute of impact.
I walked into the living room slowly and stopped near the chair, leaving space between us.
“I’m not going to answer that tonight,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed with hurt, not confusion. She understood exactly what my refusal meant and what it didn’t.
“That’s an answer,” she said.
“It’s the only one I can give you without making this worse for reasons that aren’t about protecting myself.”
She stared at me for a long time.
Tiny, sensing no one was going to throw the duck, sighed and settled his chin more heavily on her lap.
Olivia looked down at him, then back at me. The tears were there now, held by stubbornness and pride and pain.
“I don’t know if I respect that,” she said.
“I understand.”
“But I believe you mean it.”
That was more mercy than I deserved.
She stood carefully, moving Tiny’s head from her lap. “I’m going to sleep in the guest room.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.” She picked up her water glass from the coffee table, though I didn’t remember her bringing it there. “I want a door tonight.”
I nodded.
At the hallway entrance, she stopped without turning around.
“Declan.”
“Yeah.”
“If you’re trying to be decent now, be all the way decent. No more half-truths unless they’re protecting someone who didn’t ask to be dragged into my marriage tonight.”
My throat closed.
“Okay,” I said.
She disappeared down the hall.
A moment later, the guest room door shut.
Tiny looked from the hallway to me, distressed by the separation of his household. He picked up the duck, carried it halfway after Olivia, then stopped and came back to stand in front of me.
I sank into the chair.
He dropped the duck at my feet.
I bent forward, elbows on my knees, and put a hand on his broad head.
The house was no longer quiet because nothing was happening.
It was quiet because something had finally broken out loud.