Chapter 24 #2
I stay quiet not saying anything, not sure what to say or how to feel about it.
I zone out the conversation happening around me, to focus on my body to stay the fuck where it is and not get up and walk to the window. Wondering if she’s still behind the bar, hoping no man is talking to her.
Who’s sending her the notes, is Leo really that stupid?
Yet I wonder why I should care, I shouldn’t but if I can’t have her, then no one can.
My body betrays me and I’m walking to the window, where I watch her laughing with a man. The laugh I used to know better than my own name and the next second my body has decided my brain hasn't caught up with yet and I'm walking, out of the office and down the stairs.
Power walking through the crowd, pushing people out of my way, so I can get faster. My eyes still locked on her giggling away with the asshole.
Why the fuck do I care?
I reach her before she sees me coming.
My hand closes around her upper arm and I pull her away from the bar without a word, not rough enough to hurt her, but rough enough that she has absolutely no choice.
"Hayden—"
I keep walking, steering her toward the side corridor, away from the bar, away from him, away from the music and everyone watching.
"Hayden, what are you—"
I push through the side door and we're in the corridor and I let go of her arm and she spins to face me, and her eyes are wide and something in her face is doing that thing it used to do, that thing I told myself I'd forgotten but haven't.
"What is wrong with you?" she says. "You're hurting me—"
"I’m hurting you!" It comes out loud. "I’m hurting you, Olivia?"
She blinks. "Yes, you—"
"Nowhere close to how you fucking hurt me! Nowhere even in the same world of how you hurt me. You hurt me in so many ways that I still live with that pain. Everything that happened, it was your fault, you fucked me up, and you’ve come back here like it meant fucking nothing!
” I punch the wall so hard it breaks the plaster.
Olivia screams, her eyes wide, I can see her body shaking, but she hasn’t seen the fucking scars, she didn’t have to fucking sleep with one eye open, she’s got her whole life thrown upside down. She did all that to me.
She goes quiet.
Good.
I take a step back because I need the distance, need something between me and the way she's looking at me right now, it’s taking everything in me to keep myself together.
I drag a hand through my hair and try to find the version of myself that doesn't care about any of this, and I can't find him anywhere.
"Who is he?" I ask.
"Who is—" She stops. Something shifts in her face.
"Who. Is. He?"
"He's nobody, he's just someone who came up to the bar—"
"You were laughing."
"I was doing my job, Hayden—"
"You were laughing," I say again, and I hate how it sounds. I hate every single thing about the way it sounds, but I can't stop it. "Like it was easy. Like everything is just fine. Like you didn't—"
I stop.
My jaw tightens so hard I feel it in my temples.
She's looking at me with those beautiful eyes and I want her to stop, I need her to stop, because the way she's looking at me is the same way she used to look at me and that was before, that was when I thought I knew who she was and I was wrong, I was completely wrong, and I have the scars to prove it.
"Like I didn't what?" she says quietly. She knows what she did, and she’s asking to punish herself.
"Like you didn't destroy my life." The words come out low and even and they carry everything I've been holding since the moment she walked back into this city. "You took away time of my life. You did it because of whatever the hell you decided I was worth to you."
Her face crumples at the edges. "Hayden—"
"Don't." I hold up a hand. "Don't do the face. Don't stand there and look at me like that."
"I'm not—"
"Is that what I was?" I ask. The question has been sitting in me since the night Miles told me about the note and I've been refusing to look at it and here it is, out in the corridor, ugly and lit up.
"Is that what the whole thing was? You needed someone to make you look good, someone useful, someone you could throw away when you were done with it? "
"That’s not—"
"Because from where I'm standing that's exactly what it looks like." My voice is quiet, but it is absolutely not calm. "I was your best friend. I was… I gave you everything. And you looked me in the eye and you—"
I turn away from her, my hand on the wall, and I breathe through my nose, and I wait for the thing in my chest to go back down to wherever it came from.
The corridor is quiet. I can hear the muffled bass of the music through the door.
"You don't get to laugh like that," I say finally to the wall. "Not here. Not in front of me."
Silence.
Then her voice, very small: "Hayden."
"Go back to work."
"Please just let me—"
"Go back to work, Olivia."
A long pause.
Then I hear her exhale. Slow and shaking, then the sound of the door, and she's gone.
I stay facing the wall for a long moment.
My hand is pressed flat against the plaster, and my jaw is set and somewhere in the room on the other side of that door she is walking back to the bar, back to the lights, back to whatever version of fine she's been performing since she got here.
I push off the wall. I go back upstairs, slamming the door as I ignore them all.
“Did you fuck your anger out?” Mason asks, and Declan and Miles both start laughing, but I ignore them both.
How does she do it, why can I not hate her, why can I not forget her?
Cain’s voice pulls me from my thoughts. “Hayden.”
I blink, forcing myself to look at him. He slides something across the desk, the envelope. The family envelope. My heart taps against my ribs when I see it. Another hit, I can’t help but smile.
Cain leans back in his chair, watching me with that unreadable expression of his. “Time to finish the story.”
I stare at the envelope. I know how it works; there’s never a name. You log in, go through a whole system, layers of encrypted crap until the story is laid out for you. The location, the task, the reason. But this time, Cain’s comment hangs in the air. Finish the story.
Who could be the final part of my hell? The last thread of the life I never asked for, and despite myself, one name crawls to the surface like a parasite.
Leo.
He’s the only one playing games. The notes to Olivia, I think it’s him. The way he makes sure I see him talking to her, and then there's the whole picture. He’s the one who raped her and got away with it.
I start to open the envelope, but stop when I see Cain stiffen, a subtle shift which if you didn’t know him, you’d never see. He’s not looking at me anymore, he’s listening, his earpiece catching something I can’t hear.
“What?” I ask, voice low.
He lifts a hand, silencing me, turning his head slightly like he’s catching every word. He’s speaking to Lincoln.
“When? ...Does she need someone to drive her? No, tell her to leave. Make sure she doesn’t need a ride. I’ll get someone if she does.” He finally glances at me, and I’m already standing. I don’t need to ask who he’s talking about.
I step to the window, my gaze moving through the club. There. By the entrance. Olivia is standing with Lincoln. Her arms are crossed tightly over her chest, like she’s holding herself together. Her expression, fuck. It’s not just sadness.
She’s scared.
Tears run down her cheeks and she wipes them quickly, like she’s embarrassed anyone might see. But I see them, I always fucking see.
“Cain?” My voice cracks slightly, and I hate how much I feel.
He moves next to me, his tone steady. “Her parents got in a car accident.” My body tenses up, and I walk away from the window.
“She's alone,” Cain says behind me.
“Not my fucking problem,” I snap, but even I can hear the lie in my voice.