49. Forever Down The Driveway #2
My throat squeezes as I keep my gaze trained on my hands in my lap. This was our secret and I thought it’d always remain that way. “Pictures of her. Of…us…”
“Oh fuck.” Emmett drops his face to his hands as Cara gasps.
“Tell me you didn’t keep them on your phone,” Adam pleads with me.
My defeated expression tells them everything they need to know.
I kept the photos on my phone. The password I chose to lock the folder was fucking stupid.
1022 . Olivia’s birthday. Too predictable, and a simple Google search tells you that answer.
It wouldn’t be for an average person, but being with me put her in the limelight, which meant the world knew more about her than they needed to. My fault.
These are all the things Courtney reminded me of when she dangled my phone in front of my face, a picture of my beautiful girlfriend peering up at me from the screen, when I knew I’d do whatever it took to protect Olivia.
* * *
I make it one hour on Monday.
One hour until I know she’s alone in that house after she gets home from work.
One hour longer than my body tells me it can wait, but it does, somehow.
One hour until my feet are pounding up that staircase, opening every spare bedroom, stopping when I get to the last door on the left.
I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing here. I don’t have the words, and I sure as fuck still don’t have the answers. All I know is I have nothing without her, not a damn thing, not even my heart, and I won’t survive this without her.
The bag she packed this morning sits on the floor, the bed a rumpled mess, the bedside table littered with tissues. The adjoining bathroom door is cracked, light seeping through the opening, the sound of the shower running.
Blood drums in my ear and my heart tries to leap up my throat when the water stops, engulfing the room in silence.
For only the briefest moment.
Olivia’s soft, quiet cries pierce the air, the sound painful and beautiful all at once. I fucking hate it.
All logic leaves me as I move toward the sound, toward my girl. I can’t remember what I came here to say, only that I love her, so fucking much, that I’m sorry, that I can’t be without her.
That I need her to come home .
I push into the bathroom and my heart shatters at the sight before me: Olivia, wrapped in a towel, her hair drenched and nearly black from the shower, splattered across her shoulders as she sits on the bathroom floor with her face in her hands and cries.
I sink to my knees in front of her, my fingers wrapping around her forearms, and her head whips up with a choked gasp. She leaps to her feet, clutching her towel to her chest, and slaps furiously at the tears streaming down her cheeks. It’s no use; she sobs harder, louder, and I swear I’m dying.
I reach for her, because I need to hold her, but she slips beneath my arm and dashes into the bedroom, cowering in the corner, shaking, like she’s afraid of me.
“Ollie,” I plead. “Come here, baby.”
She covers her face, head whipping back and forth, and when I whisper her name once more, her eyes flip open. There’s no anger there, and fuck, what I wouldn’t kill for that. There’s just brokenness. Shattered pieces of her heart reflected right there in her gaze.
Her trembling arm lifts as she points at the door. “You need to…you need to go.” Her eyes squeeze shut as tears drench her face. “Please, Carter.”
“Hey.” Another fissure in my heart at the way she tries to smoosh herself into the corner when I approach her, like she’s damn near trying to disappear right into the wall.
I’ve earned this, the fear that comes with being too close to me, like I might break her further, but I step forward anyway, taking her face in my hands.
I’m not fucking perfect, that much is clear.
I make mistakes all the time and she always loves me through them.
I’m going to be better, for me and for her.
I’m going to fix this, even if it’s not right this moment. “Listen to me. Please.”
Her lower lip trembles and her teeth descend, a weak attempt at quelling the quiver as her gaze swims with heartache. Her chest rises and falls in rhythm with mine, both of us battling for air, trying and failing to fill our lungs.
“I’m sorry, Olivia.”
Her eyes fall shut, tears that were clinging to her lashes falling now, and I swipe at her delicate, raw skin, coaxing her gaze back open.
“I’m sorry that I can’t see through this right now. I’m sorry that I couldn’t talk yesterday, that I still can’t find the words to explain this all to you. I’m sorry that my silence spoke words that weren’t and aren’t true.”
“Aren’t they?” she whispers. “Because your silence made me feel like I wasn’t enough, Carter.
It perpetuated a feeling that we worked so hard to get rid of, but one that came roaring back this morning with those pictures, those articles.
” Her eyes rise to the ceiling before floating back down to me, and the pain that swims behind them twists in my stomach like a knife.
“You know what they’re saying, don’t you?
They’re saying the verdict is out. Olivia Parker is not enough for Carter Beckett.
They’re saying I should’ve known, the way they knew all along. ”
She shifts my hands off her face, making to move by me.
My hand shoots out, wrapping around her arm, bringing her back to me.
Mocha eyes widen as they peer up at me, and when I push her against the wall, her breath catches in her throat, and I watch that pulse point in her neck thrum.
I’m as gentle as I can be with her right now but something inside me flips like a switch at her words.
“You have always been enough. Always . You’re so fucking enough, it’s ridiculous.”
“That’s not at all how I feel right now. I feel worthless, Carter. Worthless and so fucking empty.” She looks away. “Shattered. You built me up, but you’re also the person who tore me down.”
Her lips part as tears tip over the edge of my eyes, clinging to my lower lashes. I blink, and they fall without permission. With them, Olivia’s tears fall harder, faster.
“I will build you back up, Olivia. I promise you.”
“How?” The whispered word is strangled with a strange mix of hope and disbelief.
“With the truth. With answers. With love.” I touch her bottom lip. “I know everything is broken right now. I know it all hurts. But I would never cheat on you. There’s nobody else for me, not for one night, and not for a lifetime.”
The way she stares up at me tells me she wants to believe me. Tells me she would’ve believed me, trusted me without a single doubt if I had only talked to her when she asked. The pain in her eyes tells me she doesn’t know anymore.
“You can’t give up on me. You can’t, Ollie, because I’m trying so fucking hard not to give up on myself right now.
I know it feels like I am, like I’m giving up on us.
I don’t have the words you need right now, the ones you want, all the answers you deserve, but that doesn’t mean I’m not trying to find them.
None of this makes sense right now and I fucking hate myself because I’m hurting you.
But I’m asking you to trust me. I’m asking you to give me a little bit of time, time to figure this out, to fix it. I will, Olivia. I will fix this.”
Her gaze wavers but never drops. “What if it can’t be fixed?”
“That’s not possible.” I rest my forehead against hers, my eyes shutting as I hold her face, brushing my thumbs over her cheekbones, over and over again, feeling her warm, damp skin.
“There is no me without you, and I won’t stop until it’s fixed.
” I mean every bit of those words, but there’s something dark and daunting in them, something that whispers that I can only do so much, that she has to want to take me back, that she can…
that she can say no. I gather her wet curls in my hand and stroke my fingers down the side of her face in case it’s the last time I ever get to touch her, to feel her below me. “Do you still love me?”
“I told you,” Olivia whispers, placing her hand on top of mine. “I’ll always love you, Carter.”
“Then please,” I beg. “Please, hang on. Wait for me. Give me a chance. I promise, Olivia, I won’t let you down. Not again.”
There’s a hesitancy that flickers in her eyes, and before it can steal her, I press my lips to hers.
She opens for me without a second thought, sinking into my touch, and I wind my arms around her, pulling her close, until there’s nowhere left for us to go.
I memorize the feel of her body against mine, the way I can swallow her whole, the way her skin lights mine ablaze, and I cling to that feeling, the never-ending love, my forever .
“I love you, Olivia. So fucking much.”
She pulls back, my face in her hands as her heartbreaking gaze holds mine. “I love you, too, Carter, but for right now, you need to leave.” Pressing up on her toes, she touches her lips once more to mine, letting them linger for a long moment before she slips out of my hold.
I don’t want that to be my answer, not her walking away.
Just as the last of my heart shatters, she pauses in the doorway of the bathroom. “I’m not going anywhere, Carter. If you come back to me, I’ll be here, but I need you to come back with answers.”
* * *
I sit around all night. I sit at the kitchen island with my head in my hand.
I sit on the bench in the shower while the water beats down on me.
I sit on the balcony where I fell in love with Olivia, where she looked at the view while I looked at her.
And I sit at my dad’s grave. I sit there and ask for guidance, for answers, for a way out, for a strength I didn’t know I’d ever need.
Until finally I find myself standing for the first time in hours, looking up at a building that’s much quieter now the sun has gone down.
A police officer looks up from behind the front desk, smiling at me as I stand in the doorway with my hands in my pockets.
“Can I help you?”
My pulse thunders in my ears. “I need to make a police report.”