CHAPTER 13 #2
“Yes.”
“What stopped you?”
“You were laughing through the window with friends. You looked free.”
“And you thought your presence would take that away.”
“I thought I had already taken enough.”
The answer did not excuse him. It complicated the image of three years spent watching without understanding.
Olivia kissed his chest, then his mouth.
“This cannot be the only way we tell the truth,” she said.
“It won’t be.”
“You cannot use sex to make me forgive you.”
“I won’t.”
“And I cannot use it to avoid deciding what trust requires.”
“No.”
They made the promises quietly, without pretending desire could repair everything. The night remained imperfect and therefore real.
When Olivia finally relaxed against him, Alex held her only after she moved into his arms.
Afterward, he brought water without being asked and returned with a warm cloth. He checked the bandage on her foot, now nearly healed, and pressed a kiss beside it.
The intimacy of that small gesture nearly undid her more than anything before it.
“You are staring,” he said.
“You are kneeling beside my bed.”
“I have been in more compromising positions tonight.”
She laughed, surprised by the sound.
Alex climbed beside her. He did not pull her against him immediately. He waited.
Olivia moved first, resting her head against his chest.
His arm closed around her.
For several minutes, neither spoke.
His heartbeat slowed beneath her ear. Outside, traffic moved along the river. The city continued as if nothing fundamental had shifted.
“Tell me what this is,” she whispered.
Alex’s fingers moved through her hair.
“The one thing I cannot control.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the most honest one I have.”
She lifted her head. “Do you love me?”
The question startled him.
Olivia immediately wished she could pull it back—not because she feared the answer, but because she had asked before deciding what she wanted to do with it.
Alex looked at her for a long time.
“I do not know how to say what I feel without making it sound like a threat,” he said.
“Try.”
“I think about whether you are safe before I know I am awake. Every room changes when you enter it. I hate anyone who believes they can hurt you, use you, or choose for you.” His mouth tightened. “The problem is that I included myself in the last category for too long.”
Olivia’s chest ached.
“That still is not the word.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because if I say it tonight, it may feel like a price attached to what you gave me.”
She understood.
The refusal was its own confession.
Olivia kissed him once, softer than before, and returned her head to his chest.
She woke before dawn to an empty space beside her.
For one panicked moment, she thought he had left.
Then she heard movement in the living room.
Alex stood near the sofa wearing only his trousers, reading a document pulled from beneath the bottom drawer of the repaired cabinet.
“What is that?” she asked.
He turned.
Guilt arrived too quickly.
Olivia crossed the room and took the page from him.
It was a memorandum dated three years earlier.
TO: ALEX MORGANFROM: ROBERT CARTERSUBJECT: OLIVIA CARTER SECURITY MONITORING
The first paragraphs authorized surveillance following threats connected to Richard Parker. The final section carried Alex’s signature.
Maintain access to Olivia through any available personal relationship. If necessary, use emotional or romantic contact to prevent her from communicating with Parker or investigating foundation matters.
Olivia read the sentence twice.
The room seemed to lose sound.
“That was not in the archive you sent me,” she said.
“I have never seen that version.”
“Your signature is on it.”
“The first page I signed authorized security monitoring. This section was not attached.”
“How did it get inside my cabinet?”
“I do not know.”
She looked toward the bedroom.
At the clothes on the floor. The rumpled bed. The glass of water he had brought her.
The timing was too perfect.
A document proving he had been instructed to use intimacy, discovered hours after she chose him.
“Olivia,” Alex said.
She stepped back.
“Did my father ever tell you to get close to me?”
“He told me to maintain access. I refused anything romantic.”
“But you stayed close.”
“Yes.”
“Did you know I was investigating the foundation when we kissed?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know I could access records you could not?”
His silence lasted only a second.
It was enough.
Olivia returned to the bedroom and dressed.
Alex stopped at the doorway. He did not enter.
“The document was planted,” he said.
“Probably.”
“You believe me?”
“I believe someone wants me to think you used me.”
“And do you?”
She looked at him.
“I do not know which parts of us were ever free from someone else’s plan.”
Pain crossed his face.
She picked up her coat and laptop.
“Where are you going?”
“To a place you will not follow.”
His hands closed at his sides.
The old Alex would have blocked the door.
This one moved away from it.
Olivia left.
In the elevator, her phone buzzed.
An unknown number had sent a photograph taken through her bedroom window.
Alex lay beside her in the dark, his arm around her.
Beneath it:
HE DID EXACTLY WHAT ROBERT PAID HIM TO DO.