Chapter 15 Dancing with the Devil
dancing with the devil
A storm raged outside when Olivia sat curled up on her couch, reading.
She’d been meaning to check out this book forever but hadn’t been in the right headspace before. She’d returned to losing herself in fiction, steadfastly ignoring anything related to non-fiction, especially philosophy.
Still, some lines, like how loneliness didn’t imply longing for company, and instead expressed a yearning to be around your kind of people, remained lodged in her mind.
She had loved the book Jaime had given her at the fair all those months ago, along with their discussions—utter disagreements, in part—that sometimes still played in Olivia’s mind.
She’d introduced Jaime to a novel she’d liked. Her heart had swelled, leaving her momentarily speechless, but she’d felt like she was walking on air for a while after.
Yet at this point—while Olivia overall felt more settled and at ease—too many memories still clouded her hard-fought return to normal.
For a while, she’d even driven to another park to run, not because she feared Jaime would show up again, but because she couldn’t handle the disappointment that she wouldn’t.
Work had been…acceptable. It kept her busy, and while she no longer went out of her way to avoid Jaime, she still hadn’t run into her. She supposed it would happen at some point, and by then, hopefully, her scabbed-over wounds would remain closed.
She experienced some moments of weakness, especially late at night, alone in bed (not that Jaime had ever spent the night or been in her home, aside from the first time after the gala).
Her idle mind would drift, trying to seek slumber, and often ran into Jaime instead—her smile, the way her voice dropped when she teased Olivia, her random acts of kindness she’d always brush off like they were nothing, and the sadness in her gaze in moments when she thought Olivia was too distracted to notice.
Yet Olivia had noticed everything about Jaime, and perhaps that was why her mind struggled to let go—hyper-fixation wasn’t easy to drop.
But she’d get there, eventually. Time would take care of it. And in the meantime, well, she had her family and her job to keep her busy.
Olivia closed her book and rose to make herself a cup of tea when a loud, repeated knock rattled her door. She jumped.
“What the hell?” She stared at the door for a moment, but when the knock came again, she rushed forward, peering through the door viewer. Then she flung the door open and froze at the sight of a rain-soaked, out-of-breath Jaime.
“You’re home,” Jaime croaked, her hands tightening and releasing at her sides.
“You’re drenched. Are you all right?”
“Can we talk?”
“After you take a shower and put on some dry clothes, yes. You’ll catch your death walking around like this. Come on in.” Olivia waved her inside, a part of her wondering if she was dreaming, still caught in the haze of her book.
“I’m fine. I prefer to talk, and—”
“There are a lot of things I would have preferred, yet here we are.” Olivia spun around, stalking to her linen closet. She grabbed a set of towels and pressed them into Jaime’s hands.
Jaime clutched the towels, her fingers tightening on the fabric as she blinked. “Olivia, I really think—”
“Don’t,” Olivia snapped, her heart hammering in her chest. She couldn’t handle this now. She needed to think.
They were roughly the same height and build, so her clothes would fit Jaime. Olivia disappeared into her bedroom, pulling out a pair of yoga pants and a sweatshirt—hesitating briefly before deciding against panties and a bra.
Jaime would have to manage without. Not like Olivia’s bras would fit her anyway, and she wasn’t about to hand over her underwear.
Joining Jaime once again, she shoved the clothes at her. “Go, through there. Shower. You can leave your wet clothes on the floor. I will get them later and throw them in the washer.”
Jaime held Olivia’s gaze, trembling from the cold with raindrops still affixed to her long lashes. She opened her mouth as if to protest, but Olivia’s glare must have finally convinced her because she nodded and headed toward the guest bathroom.
Once the door fell shut behind her, Olivia started to pace. So, it wasn’t a dream. Jaime was here, in her home. But to talk about what? The case?
Knowing Jaime, it likely related to something with work. Then again, their lives didn’t intersect there anymore—not that they did so anywhere.
Olivia frowned, and her heart grew heavy. God, she had just started to make progress, and now this… Should she ask Jaime to leave? Olivia snorted.
Right, like she’d cause such a self-inflicted wound. No, she needed to know what Jaime wanted. Maybe she’d changed her mind and—
No! That way lay madness, and Olivia refused to fall into the trap. But Jaime had looked so...lost. So utterly heartbroken.
No, no. Don’t. You’re projecting. Jaime didn’t want the same things—she’d said so herself. Olivia needed to remember that.
The low creak of the door opening froze Olivia in place.
Jaime emerged, dressed in Olivia’s clothes—likely without underwear. Not offering her an undergarment now felt like a grave lapse in judgment.
Olivia swallowed hard, unable to look away or quiet the drumming of her heart.
Jaime was in her home, wearing her clothes, barefoot and closing the distance between them.
Jaime cleared her throat. “Hey. Uh, thank you. I… guess I needed that shower.”
Olivia managed a dumb nod.
“So, can we talk now?”
“Yes,” Olivia rasped, pointing at the couch, and they both sat down across from each other. Olivia didn’t trust herself to be within touching distance of Jaime.
Jaime rubbed her hands over her pants legs, staring at the floor.
After a couple of silent minutes ticked by, and before Olivia snapped and started shouting, she said, “So.”
Jaime’s gaze flew up. “Why did you drop out of the Cain case?”
“Excuse me?” Anger and disappointment crashed through Olivia, battling for supremacy. Of course Jaime was here to talk shop. She hadn’t meant to hope, yet it was clear she had.
“I just… You were assigned the case, and then someone else took over. You weren’t sick.”
“Are you seriously here to discuss a case that ended several weeks ago?”
Jaime sighed. “No.”
“Then what do you want?”
“I’m not sure.” She frowned.
“Then why were you knocking at my door like the police at nine in the evening on a Saturday night? In the middle of a thunderstorm.”
Jaime licked her lips. “My routines no longer work.”
Olivia did a double take. As non sequiturs went, this was up there. “Come again?”
“I don’t like how we left things, and… I may have been rash in ending things between us.”
Olivia’s eyes widened, but she remained silent.
“We had a good thing going, didn’t we?”
“I don’t know where you live.”
“What?” Jaime’s brows furrowed.
“What we had was…fleeting. A secret tryst kept separate from everything else, from anything real.”
“I thought… I thought you enjoyed the time we spent together.”
“I did. But you had a point in ending things. What we had wasn’t sustainable.”
“Because you don’t know where I live?”
“That’s a symptom.”
“Are you sure you don’t know? I told you, like when we went to neverending pages and—”
“No. You only said you live close by.”
Jaime released a long sigh. “So, this is it, then?”
“I still don’t know what you want.”
“To continue where we left off.”
“I can’t.”
“You found someone else? I get it.” Jaime made to rise.
“No. Sit,” Olivia almost snarled, and Jaime immediately dropped back down. “You can’t just end things and then come back months later and expect everything to go back to how it was.”
“Why not? If we both enjoyed it?”
“I don’t know where you live!”
Jaime raised her hands, then dropped them. “So what? If I give you my address, you’ll agree to—”
“To what, Jaime? What even were we?”
Jaime only stared at her.
Olivia sighed. “Look, it’s not easy for me either, and all of this is…somewhat unfamiliar territory for me, too. Just so we’re clear, I’m not looking for a wife.”
Jaime’s eyebrows rose.
“But I want more than random hookups in hotel rooms. I deserve more than that.”
“I see.” Jaime nodded. “I’m not sure I can be what you need.”
“Because you know what I need?” Olivia asked.
Jaime shook her head. “I hate compromises.”
Olivia snorted. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
Jaime held her gaze, as if weighing her next words. “My mother is a bat. Bats are reservoirs for rabies, so while they may spread the disease to other living beings they encounter, it doesn’t affect them.”
Olivia didn’t dare move for fear of pulling Jaime out of the trance she seemed to have fallen into.
“My mother is a reservoir for darkness, desolation, and despair. The first two verses of The Sound of Silence are, or should be, her anthem. The person who brought me into this world is an energy vampire who sucks the joy and life out of anyone she meets. Not all the time, but enough to form an utterly draining pattern.” Jaime grimaced.
Still Olivia remained silent.
“I watched a video about energy vampires a while ago. There are people we interact with who give us more energy. After we spend time with them, we feel refreshed and overall happier than we did before.
“There are neutral people, too. After being in their presence, we feel the same way as before. Then there are energy vampires.” She sighed.
“Five minutes with such a person often feel like an hour of seemingly never-ending torment. After we leave an energy vampire, we feel drained, hopeless, frustrated, angry, or sad.” Jaime’s gaze found Olivia’s.
“Do you have any idea how it feels when your mother is like that? Your only living relative.”
Olivia shook her head.
“I don’t…You need to ward yourself, cut yourself off because the person you want to love most in the world makes it almost impossible.
She wasn’t always so extreme, but… I don’t know what changed.
In the end, I just… I don’t… It’s a nightmare to look at the person you love—the one you’re supposed to love—and feel almost nothing but resentment. ” Jaime grimaced. “Love falls apart.”
“It can, yes, but it doesn’t have to.”
“I don’t know what you have in mind, but I won’t move, and I don’t wish to live with someone else. I’m not interested in meeting your friends or family. I don’t want to travel, hit the clubs, or attend parties. And… I don’t love pets.”
“That’s quite the list,” Olivia said with a raised brow. “Do I look like I’ve got a houseful of pets?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you’re secretly waiting for the right moment to adopt a cat or a dog. What do we really know about each other?”
Olivia opened her mouth to protest, they knew stuff. There’d been moments where they’d connected aside from sex. Yet before she could say a word, Jaime raised her hand.
“Aside from knowing how to make the other come. Hard.”
Olivia shifted in her seat. So that was how Jaime wanted to play it. “Is that all you need?”
“I wanted you since the first time I saw you,” Jaime said, holding Olivia’s wide-eyed gaze.
“What? But that was…”
Jaime jutted her chin. “Almost six years ago, yes.”
“We’ve only been…meeting during the last six months. Hell, we never shared a single friendly conversation for the entire time before the bar after the conference.”
“You don’t say.”
“But then—”
“I didn’t say I was in love with you.”
“Right. Perish the thought.”
“I wanted to fuck you from the first time I saw you.” Jaime tilted her head. “No. That’s not completely accurate. I wanted you to fuck me.” She frowned. “I should have known better,” she mumbled, more to herself than anything else.
Olivia released a harsh breath. “So why are you against trying for more? We could see where it takes us.”
“Because I’m set where I am. I liked our previous arrangement.”
“You mean heated discussions and fucking.”
Jaime smiled. “Yes.”
Olivia shook her head.
“If we were to, as you’ve put it, investigate what else may lie between us, we could lose it all. What if we’re deluding ourselves and it truly is just physical? What if one of us ends up wanting more?”
“Is that why all your routines broke down? Again, I’m not proposing. I’m not even asking to date. Just to spend more time together, outside of hotel rooms. Bitch about the people we both hate. Watch some shows, have a few meals together.”
“Sex.”
Olivia chuckled. “Yes. That will always be on the menu, knowing us.”
“What about work?”
Olivia shrugged. “As we’ve been doing. I’ve already talked to my boss, and it’s been noted that due to a personal conflict of interest, I won’t appear as a lawyer in your court room again.”
Jaime’s eyes widened. “You told her about us?”
“I didn’t share any details, just that we share a personal connection, and it would be better if I don’t argue any cases in front of you.”
“Lord, that’s a good as telling her you are fucking me.”
“Well, she can make of it what she wants, and I am, in fact, no longer fucking you, so that’s moot, anyway.”
Jaime rose, drawing closer and settling next to Olivia. “Do you want to fuck me again?”
Hearing Jaime’s voice sounding so rough, almost needy, hit Olivia like a blow to her chest. She gritted her teeth, cursing the heat rampaging her system, the pressure building between her legs.
Torn between falling into old patterns or insisting on an answer, Olivia released a deep sigh.
She wanted Jaime, terribly so, but she needed an answer, too, or this might be the last time they’d ever lose themselves in each other.