17. Olivia #2
His hand found her leg through the blanket. A grip, not a touch.
"Mark, I don't want this. Please go inside."
"You're still my wife, and I want us close tonight." He moved closer, pressing her back toward the headboard, closing off her space with his body.
"Mark. Get away from me."
He pulled the blankets away.
Olivia screamed.
He lunged—his hands grabbing her shoulders, trying to pin her down. She hit him hard across the face without thinking, the sound sharp in the small room.
"I'm calling the police."
He didn't stop. His hands closed around her wrists. His weight came down on top of her.
"Mark, this is rape."
He struggled against her. Her T-shirt tore—the fabric giving way suddenly, exposing her chest in the dim light. His hand reached for her.
Olivia swung with everything she had.
Her fist landed hard.
He stopped.
The shock of it seemed to cut through the alcohol—his eyes clearing slightly, focusing on her face as if he'd only just registered where he was and what he was doing.
She looked at him with the steadiest voice she had left. "Get out of here. Get away from me. You need help."
He stood without a word.
He walked out and pulled the door closed behind him.
Olivia sat alone in the dark, her hands shaking so much she tucked them under her arms to calm them. She put her shirt back on. She sat for a long time without moving, listening to the house settle, making sure the sounds told her what she needed to know.
At 2:00 AM, she realized she'd spent a full hour staring at the door.
She thought about the police. A husband and wife—the grayest area the law offered. She thought about Lauren. Her sister. Nicholas. She thought about what came next, what it would cost her, and what it would cost her to stay.
She stayed in the guest room.
She woke at ten to hard sunlight, dressed quickly, and went downstairs with the deliberate calm of a woman who had made her peace with something overnight.
Mark was in the kitchen. She didn't look at him. She walked straight to the counter.
"Do you want coffee?"
"Yes, but I'll get it myself."
"Okay." He kept his head down.
She made her coffee. The silence between them felt different from last night—flatter, almost tired. Then Mark spoke.
"I'm sorry about last night. It was the liquor."
Olivia turned.
She looked at him directly, with no performance, no practiced smile, and no careful management of his feelings over her own. There was only ice in her gaze, clear and steady, where fear used to be.
"You're always sorry. This is the second time. The next time, I'm calling the police. And then you can deal with them."
"It won't happen again."
She held his gaze for one more second, just long enough to make sure he understood she meant it, then turned back to her coffee.
The morning was bright and surprisingly beautiful. Olivia carried her cup to the deck, sat with her iPad in her lap and her phone in her hand, and let the sun do what it could.
Mark left for golf. "Giving her space," he said.
She nodded once. She didn't care where he went.
She called her sister first. Then Lauren.
"Stay with me," Julia said immediately. "Just for a few days, until you arrange an apartment."
"He'll behave," Olivia said. She didn't fully believe it. But she needed the illusion of agency in her own house, at least for now.
Lauren was practical, as always. "I'll find out about the condo tomorrow."
"Fingers crossed," Olivia whispered.
She set the phone down and looked out at the yard without really seeing it.
Nicholas was there instead, just as he always was now when she let her mind settle.
She could see him as clearly as if he were standing in the garden: his quiet confidence, the way a room changed when he entered, and the steady warmth of his attention when it was focused on her.
He was magnetic, powerful, and wealthy beyond anything she'd ever been close to.
He could be with anyone.
And then there was her.
She was about to be divorced. No money. No safety net.
She was taking apart her life with her own hands and had no clear plan for what came next.
She wondered how complicated her life must look from the outside—the mess, the moving parts, the husband who broke locks with a screwdriver at two in the morning.
Why did he pick her?
The question had no clean answer, and she knew it.
Maybe she was a fling—something interesting and temporary that would resolve itself naturally once the novelty faded.
Maybe he would look at the full picture of her life and decide it was more than he wanted to carry.
Maybe she would never hear from him again, except in the polite, distant way that men closed doors they'd opened without quite meaning to.
The thought sat in her chest, cold.
But then she remembered how he listened to her.
He really listened, not just waiting for his turn to speak, not managing her, not looking past her for something easier.
She remembered the way he looked at her across the dinner table, as if she were the only interesting thing in the room.
The way he held her afterward, his arm over her shoulder, steady and sure.
It wasn't just the sex. Though God, she pressed her legs together just thinking about it. It was unlike anything she'd ever experienced, anything she thought was only possible in the books she'd read for years, like stories from a place she'd never visit.
It was everything.
The chemistry. The connection. The terrifying, specific feeling of being seen by someone who had no reason to look that carefully.
She thought about Mark. About every man before Mark. None of them had ever made her feel like a whole person. To all of them, she had been a prize, a possession, something to be acquired and managed, and occasionally shown off.
Nicholas had shown her a door she hadn't known existed.
The divorce would be brutal. She had no illusions about that. Mark would take the house, drain what he could, and leave her exactly what the prenup entitled her to—which was nothing. She would start from zero. From less than zero, maybe.
She looked down at the book on her lap, which was on her iPad. The cover showed two people holding each other—the hero's arms around the heroine, her face tipped up toward his, the genre's particular promise written into every detail of the image.
Happily ever after.
She used to read those stories for pure escape, beautiful lies she chose because the alternative was lying awake in the dark next to a man who had stopped seeing her years ago.
But someone had written those stories. Someone had believed in them enough to put them on paper. Which meant somewhere in the world, for someone, they were true.
She looked out at the bright, ordinary Sunday morning around her.
Why couldn't it be her?