Round 49
ROUND FORTY-NINE
OLLIE
“I have a headache.” Hours after we stepped into the police station, Rose settles her elbows on our kitchen counter and massages her temple with the tips of her fingers. “I’m not sure I’ve ever been so freakin’ tired in my entire life.”
I take out my plastic first aid kit and set it on the counter, then I open the lid and peruse its contents until I find a packet of ibuprofen.
What the fuck do I say? What can I do to make any of this better?
Literally nothing. So I keep my trap shut, pop a couple of pills from the packet, then I snag a glass from the cabinet and fill it with water. “Here.” I slide both across the stone countertop and eye my phone, black screened and un-ringing.
Billy said he would call the cops over in Seattle and see what they have to say about Darcy’s story. If he’s telling the truth, we run the risk of being stonewalled. And if they tell us he’s a crazy son of a bitch liar, are they being honest… or are they protecting Liam, the nephew of a colleague?
“I dreamed of Liam after I came here.” Rose straightens out just long enough to choke down the pills and chase them with a little water. Then she goes back to slumping. Groaning. Staring at the shiny diamond ring Darcy insisted she have.
There it fucking sits, on my counter, glinting under the overhead lights in my kitchen.
“You remember I dreamed and thought he was my friend, right? And then I dreamed that he… He…”
She whimpers.
He stabbed me to death.
Yeah. I remember.
“Everything he says fits with what I remembered.” She lays her head on her arm, closing her eyes as Poopy scampers across the stone and bats her cheek with her paws. “He’s telling the truth.”
I turn to the fridge and take out a loaf of bread.
Cheese. Slices of ham. Butter. It’s too late for lunch and too early for dinner.
I’m not sure either of us is hungry, but not eating is Rose’s go-to when she’s stressed.
Scared. Tired. Fuck, it’s her go-to always, unless I’m the one serving her a meal.
So I get to work constructing a sandwich and switching the stove on.
“Ollie?”
“Mm.” Don’t fuckin’ ask me to weigh in. I beg you. “What do you think you’ll do about all this?”
“I don’t know.”
I glance over my shoulder and catch her tapping the ring with the tip of her pointer finger. Tap. Tap. Tap.
“I kinda wanna hit pause on existing for a while.” Tap, tap, tap. “Ignore Darcy. Ignore the Liam stuff.”
Ignore me?
“Try not to focus on the very real fact that I may be a dirty slut.”
I turn and scowl. “What?”
“Engaged to one man. Living with and sleeping with another. And then there’s Liam, the one I possibly…
maybe… probably led on, to the point I either ran away with him, or I was abducted by him.
That’s three.” She flashes three fingers, tears welling in her eyes and falling sideways to roll across the bridge of her nose.
“Can’t explain any of that away without accepting first and foremost that I’m the common denominator. I’m the problem.”
“Coming to conclusions based on information provided by one guy and your faulty dreams is how shit gets wonky.” I go back to the stove, slathering butter onto the bread and slapping cheese and ham between both slices.
“The only common denominator I’ll accept right now is your habit of assuming the worst about yourself.
That’s that trauma brain, determined to tear you down.
If your brain were a guy, I’d kick his ass. ”
She snickers and chokes. Whimpers and moans.
“God. This is all such a mess. And the worst part is, I just…” Hiccupping, she straightens on her stool.
“I just want you to hug me. I want everything to go back to where I could tell you I love you and think those words were special and real, like I’d never said them to anyone else.
But now… Now, it feels cheap and fake. Like maybe I say that to everyone and none of it is real.
That makes me a horrible, hideous person who never deserved your kindness.
But still,” she cries. “I just want you to hold me.”
I cut the heat on the stove and stalk around the counter.
Grabbing her shoulders and spinning her on the stool, I step between her legs and wrap her up tight.
“You are not a horrible person, Rose. You’re not hideous or fake or cheap or any other nasty thing you said about yourself.
” I stroke her hair flat and press a kiss to the top of her head.
“It’s possible to love more than one person in this lifetime. ”
God. Fuck. Shut up.
“And it’s possible to experience the kind of trauma you did and come out the other side a different person.
So maybe you loved Darcy. Maybe you said yes when he asked you to marry him, and maybe you made that decision fully intending to follow through.
And then Barbara happened, and we met. You love me, too.
You said yes to being with me. And that’s okay.
Darcy’s existence doesn’t mean you lied to me.
It doesn’t mean you lied to him. It just means you have this amazing capacity to love.
” I push her back, uncovering her devastated eyes, soaked in heartache.
“If your biggest flaw is love, then anyone who knows you is better for it. We’re lucky to experience it. ”
“But what am I supposed to do with it? The person I used to be and the person I am now have collided. No matter what happens now, no matter what I choose, I’ll be responsible for hurting someone.” She slips between my hands and presses her face to my chest. “What if he’s just like you?”
My heart thunders cruelly against my diaphragm, bruising me on the inside and battering against my lungs. “Darcy?”
“Yes. What if he’s as amazing and kind and sweet and selfless as you? What if the men I choose are the same? So there’s a man out there right now, alone and broken because of what I did to him. To damage someone as amazing as you? To forget him?” She sobs. “That’s unforgivable.”
She didn’t eat. She didn’t even pick at her food. And aside from the mouthful of water she had with the headache pills, I haven’t seen her drink anything all damn day besides her coffee with breakfast.
“How is she, Ol?” Raquel’s gentle voice is almost enough to erase the sting of Rose asleep on the very opposite end of the couch. Rolled into a ball, with her legs tucked against her chest and her arms circling her knees.
“Not great.” I sit forward on the couch, my feet on the floor and my elbows on my knees.
I hold the phone to my ear with one hand and press my face into the other.
“She was given a lot of information today. Way more than anyone should ever have to carry. Now she just…” I loathe the words trekking across my tongue.
“She hates herself. She’s so focused on what she thinks she did wrong, she can’t even hear the rest.”
“Eliza said she’s engaged.”
“Mmhm.” I scratch my face. My hair. The back of my neck. “Yep.”
What the hell else am I supposed to say about that?
“I don’t even…” She exhales a noisy, heavy sigh. “Jesus. I don’t know what to say. How do I make this better?”
“Wish I knew.” I hate that my voice crackles. I detest how fucking much it hurts. All of it. “I’m gonna lose her,” I groan. “He’s claiming her, Raquel. And she’ll go, because it’ll make her feel bad to tell him no.”
“And what about you?” she demands savagely. “You’ll just stand there with your hand on your heart, sacrificing yourself for what you think is best for her?”
“Yep.” I drag my fingertips across my scalp, crushing my eyes closed as I search for something, anything other than the ache I feel in my soul. “Without even thinking about it.”
“Ollie!”
“She’ll stay if I tell her to.”
“Exactly! She will. That’s the whole damn point!”
“She’ll stay because I told her to. Guilt will make her obedient. But she’ll forever long to fix the man she left behind.” My lungs rattle and shake as I exhale. “The least I can do is let her go without forcing her to carry the burden of my feelings on top of everything else.”
“This is the door, Ollie! This is Jack sacrificing himself to the ocean to save Rose.”
“If that’s how it has to go, then—”
“No!” Her voice breaks with the ferociousness of her temper. “There was enough room on the door for both of them. Everyone knows that!”
“That’s not true.” I sigh, dropping my head and letting it dangle between my shoulders. “Him climbing up put her at risk, remember?”
“You’re infuriating! You’re not even trying. She loves you, Ollie! It doesn’t matter who she loved before, because that doesn’t exist anymore. It doesn’t matter if she agreed to marry him, because that woman, the one who said yes and accepted his ring, she doesn’t exist anymore.”
“Raquel—”
“She’s not in love with him! But she needs your help to work through this. She needs to know you want her, too.”
“Stop.” Groaning, I glance right and watch helplessly as Rose whimpers in her sleep. As she drags her legs higher, tighter against her chest, and Poopy shifts in the small space before she’s crushed. “I won’t hurt her, Raquel. I won’t be a regret she carries for the next seventy years.
“You’re choosing wrong!” She slams a door on her end of the line. “You’re putting too much stock in this dude like he’s a current man in her life.”
“He’s her fiancé!”
“Was her fiancé! We have no clue what happened in the months between October—when they got engaged—and February—when she turned up in Plainview. We don’t know if this dude is telling the truth, or if she ran with that other guy, or if he took her.
But we know she was free of Liam in February, and she didn’t run toward Seattle.
She had a chance to call home, to tell Darcy she was okay and ask him to come get her.
But she didn’t. Now she’s here, and she chose you. She loves you.”
Rose releases her legs, extending them along the couch and grumbling under her breath. Her thighs flex with the stretch, her toes lengthening. But the second the heels of her feet touch my leg, she springs back into a ball.
I sit back against the cushions and tilt my head toward the ceiling.
“I’ve already lost her,” I rasp, pinching the bridge of my nose.
Anything to stop the hurt. “She lost her parents, her grandpa, her career, this guy she was friends with, and her entire life, all in the space of an hour. Her grandma isn’t her grandma anymore, and fuck knows how long she’s got left.
Her fiancé has an entire lifetime of memories that include her, and dammit, Raquel, she deserves to remember them.
She was happy before. She can have that back again. ”
“That woman I met, Ol? The one I spent a couple of days with? She was happy, too. She was feisty and had a spine. She was intelligent and witty. She was scared, too, but she was ready to fight for you. And ya know what I saw that night at Tommy’s?
” She exhales a noisy, irritated breath.
“She lit up when you walked in to save her. She went from brave and witty and silly and fun to a damn supernova, bursting with light. She needs you to be truly happy, and you need her, too.”
“She’s perfect as she is.” I swallow the ache in my throat. The nasty lump of dread. The pain. “She’s whole and fulfilled and pure and amazing. She doesn’t need anyone.”
“So maybe it’s you who needs her? I’m afraid of what’ll be left once she’s gone, Ollie. I’m afraid you won’t be whole and perfect anymore, because you handed her pieces of you these last few months, and you’re too friggin’ proud to ask for them back.”
“It’s not about pride.”
She sighs. “Too selfless, then. Too noble. But there’s no trophy at the end of this life.
We just have our time here on Earth, and if we’re lucky, we find the right people to spend it with.
She found you. She chose you. But instead of honoring those choices, you’re tossing yourself overboard, like you think one less body on the ship will mean she’s guaranteed a safety raft. ”
“Can you quit with the Titanic references?” I massage the bridge of my nose. “It’s getting old.”
“Why would I? It was the unsinkable ship. And yet…”
And yet…
“Men!” she snarls. “Fucking useless.”
And then she hangs up.