28. Olivia
28
OLIVIA
D eclan shoved an impatient hand through his hair. “I figured it out about a week ago, when you told me what your book with Molly was about. I realized it was the same as the one @1000words—you—were writing.”
I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to hold my world together. “You mean right after we had sex for the first time.”
At least Declan had the grace not to defend himself.
But I needed him to defend himself. I needed a reason to keep believing in him—believing in us—because right now I was coming up short.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” My voice came out jagged and sharp.
“I started to, but you kept saying that having someone you knew in real life find your blog would make you uncomfortable, and you got more and more upset the longer we talked.” He opened and closed his hand in a helpless, aborted gesture. “The last thing I wanted was to make you uncomfortable. You have to believe that, a ghrá .”
The endearment sliced my anger, leaving my heart bloody and exposed.
I’d trusted him.
I’d complained about my boss to my boss . I’d vented about my lover to my lover . I’d talked about my blog to the man who built Snug .
Now that I thought about it, every time I’d complained to @DBCoder about some glitch or bug on Snug, it had been magically fixed within a couple of days.
“Is this some weird quality control thing?” I asked, trying to make sense of things. “You befriend Snug bloggers anonymously to do some sick form of customer research?”
“ No ,” Declan said, taking a step toward me. “I have an anonymous account so that I can enjoy the site as a regular person without anyone trying to impress me, or get funding, or bitch at me. And yes, using the site as a regular person gives me insight into how to improve it. But that’s not why I do it.”
“And you just, what, stumbled across my little book blog? Out of all the way more popular blogs on Snug?” I felt a sick sort of laughter building in my chest. Rationally, I knew it was probably nothing more than coincidence. After all, I’d been chatting regularly with @DBCoder long before I’d actually come into Declan’s life. But it felt like the universe was mocking me.
“I told you how I found your blog. I was searching for books to send Catie.”
I remembered his first message, all those months ago. Hi, love the blog. Just wanted to say I bought “Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?” for my niece, and she loved it. Got any other recommendations for a little girl who’s into bugs?
I felt like I was looking at our past on a split screen. On the one side, all of my memories of striking up a friendship with a charming stranger on the internet. On the other side, Declan alone in this empty mansion, clicking through my reviews, looking for books to send Catie. Declan, one of the most powerful men in the tech universe, sending funny cat videos to cheer me up on a bad day. Declan’s online persona coaxing me through those first few bad days in Ireland, even as his real-life self made my life hellish.
Declan, asking me for advice because he liked a woman who worked for him.
I scrubbed my hands over my face. “This is too confusing.”
“Which is why I didn’t tell you,” Declan said. He closed the gap between us and gripped my shoulders. “Would it really have been better for me to dump all this on you when you were naked and vulnerable and falling asleep in my bed for the first time?”
No , I thought. Yes. Maybe.
I shoved myself out of his grasp. “That wasn’t your decision to make. I thought I could trust you, but now I don’t know if I can. I feel violated, Declan.”
“Now you know how I feel about you keeping everything Seamus said a secret,” he snapped.
“Oh, that is not the same thing.” I jabbed a finger in his chest. “I was trying to protect you. You were trying to manipulate me.”
“Damnit, I wasn’t trying to manipulate you. I was trying to control the situation.”
Angry tears snagged in my throat as I realized an uncomfortable truth.
Declan Byrne was always going to try to control every situation he was in. It was what made him formidable in business. It was what made him a rock his family could lean on. And yes, it was part of what made him so magnetic, so devastatingly hot.
But it also meant that he and I could never really meet as equals in a relationship. I couldn’t trust him not to try to control everything about our situation—including how much of myself I gave to him.
He couldn’t help it. It was how he was built.
I refused to let myself cry, so instead I placed my hands on his chest and shoved.
He didn’t move an inch.
“Damn you, Declan Byrne,” I swore.
“Stop fighting!” Catie cried from the doorway. Panic made her voice rise and break. “Stop fighting right now!”
Declan and I sprang apart. We exchanged a guilty glance before we both shifted into problem-solving mode.
Declan sank to his knees in front of Catie. “It’s all right, love. Sometimes adults fight. But we still respect and care about each other.”
Do we? I thought peevishly, even though I knew he was right. I pulled a few tissues from the tissue box and joined Declan on the ground so I could wipe at Catie’s welling tears.
“He’s right, hon. Everything’s okay.”
“B-but the last time you fought he, he fired you and you left ,” Catie said, stumbling over her words in her distress.
Declan grimaced. “That was pretty shit of me, wasn’t it?”
“You said a bad word,” Catie said, wide-eyed.
“Well, I did a bad thing,” Declan said. He met my eyes, and some sort of apology passed between us.
“I did too,” I said. “That time, I walked away, instead of taking some calming breaths and getting more information about the situation.”
Catie chewed her lip.
“I know it can feel scary when adults fight.” I tucked a piece of Catie’s hair behind her ear. “But sometimes adult fights are just about us saying difficult, scary things, so that we can get on the same page again. So in a way, this fight was a good thing.”
Declan cocked an eyebrow at that, as if to say, Aren’t you laying it on a bit too thick?
I sent him back a pointed look, trying to communicate, She’s crying and she’s six. There’s no such thing as too much reassurance.
Declan cleared his throat and tugged Catie in for a gentle hug. “The point is, I’m not firing Miss Olivia, and she’s not leaving. She’s staying with us until your Mom comes to pick you up. I promise.”
Catie hugged him back tightly. She turned her head to look at me. “What were you guys fighting over?”
Shit.
“Um. Well. You know the saying, ‘Secrets, secrets are no fun, keeping secrets hurts someone?’” I said. “Well, we forgot that advice and kept some secrets, and we accidentally hurt each other. But now we told each other the secrets, so it’s going to be okay.”
It sounded so simple when I said it like that.
The problem was, I didn’t know what “okay” would look like for us going forward. Could we get past this as a couple? As friends? Or would we fall back into being polite and professional strangers living in the same house, the way we had in the beginning?
My heart ached at the thought.
“What were the secrets?” Catie asked, curious.
“Hey, I have an idea!” Declan interrupted with phony cheer. “Let’s call your grandma and see if she wants to come over for dinner.”
Ten minutes later, Catie was sitting in the other room, chattering away happily with her grandma.
Declan returned to the kitchen somewhat sheepishly, his hands in his pockets.
“I know you prefer telling the kids the truth, but the thing about Seamus…” He trailed off, keeping his voice low and quiet.
I nodded. I personally thought Catie should know about her biological dad. But that wasn’t my decision to make, and blurting it out in the middle of Declan’s kitchen while Catie’s mom was an ocean away seemed like a mildly traumatizing way to handle the situation.
Maybe Declan was rubbing off on me.
Or maybe he was used to living with darker secrets than I was.
“I am sorry,” I said softly. “For not being open with you. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you either,” he said. “Trust me, that was the last thing I wanted.” It wasn’t exactly an apology, but his voice was broken enough that I knew how badly he meant those words.
“Going forward we can…” I said at the same time he said, “Maybe we should…”
We laughed weakly. But it was something. “Go ahead,” I said. “What were you going to say?”
Declan closed his eyes briefly, like even he didn’t like what he was about to say. “Maybe we should take a break from…from being anything more than two people working together to care for a child. Maybe we should focus on looking after Catie and figuring out what we both want going forward.”
I felt like he’d knocked the wind out of me. I eased backward, gripping the counter for support.
“I promised you something light and fun. Not…this mess,” he said.
I wanted to say that this mess had been inevitable the moment I started falling for him. I wanted to say that a “break” wouldn’t fix what was wrong with us. Either we trusted each other, or we didn’t. Either we wanted the same things, or we didn’t.
If I were braver, more honest, I would have told him that even with the tangled emotional mess between us, and all the pain we’d caused each other, he was still the best thing I’d ever had. I would tell him to walk with me, not away from me.
If I were kinder, I would have told him we should just end it now. There was no future for us here. Even if we managed to patch things up between us for the time being, we would just be delaying the inevitable. We were just too different…I wanted to look forward, to shine a light on what might lie ahead, but Declan was too guarded, too consumed by the shadows of his past. In the end, we would just hurt each other.
As hard as it was to accept, even if this felt right, it wasn’t necessarily right. For God’s sake, this was the second time Catie had caught us arguing, and that wasn’t something I wanted to happen for a third time. Better to make a clean break now—or as clean of a break as we could make, with my heart beating raw on the floor between us.
Instead, I was selfish enough to want more time with him, and cowardly enough to want to protect my heart. So I made myself say, “Sure. Maybe a step back is for the best.”
Was it my imagination, or did he look disappointed?
If he did, he covered it up quickly. “It’s my fault,” he said. “I let it get too intense, too quickly. For both of us.”
My heart leapt. It had been intense for him too?
Declan looked away. “I should go talk to my mum and Catie.” He turned and left.
Hope, I decided, was a painful, foolish thing.