Chapter 16 #3
“No, don’t be ridiculous, although I knew you had one.
How do you grow up not knowing there’s a basement in your house?
” I shoved my shoulder into him, but his grip didn’t loosen, and we both stumbled.
He gave me a scowl, which I returned with one of my own.
“I meant being all sweet to Sheila and telling her to call you Liv.”
I shrugged, wondering the same. Rarely did I let people call me Liv.
Sure, when I was in college, most people called me Liv, but now it was only for family and the few friends I had.
I rubbed my nose, realizing I didn’t have any friends left.
I’d distanced myself from everyone, shutting myself into a bubble after I broke up with Hudson for fear of experiencing any more pain. “I don’t know; it just came out.”
“You’re changing,” he said, wrapping his arm around my neck and kissing my head.
I stopped and turned to him. “Do you want me to change?”
He thinned his lips, his eyes narrowing as he dragged me closer to him.
“I want you back to who you were when we were together, so yes. You've changed in the years we’ve been apart, and that person isn’t you.
I watched it every time we went on break and couldn’t see each other.
You would leave happy, relaxed, and when you returned, it was like I had to peel back layers to find you again.
” He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.
“I understand now why that happened, why you had to be someone else when you were home, but you don’t have to be that person with me, Olivia.
And I’m going to do my damnedest to remove those layers so they never return. ”
Too shaken by his words, I stood there, my mouth hanging open, my chest constricted. Those words, while offering me something I’d longed for, to be myself, the person I’d been with him, terrified me. “I can’t be that person in my life,” I said, my voice a mere whisper. “I won’t survive.”
His eyes grew so sad they cut me with their pain. “Surviving isn’t living, Olivia.” He took my face and brought it to him, kissing my forehead and murmuring, “And I want you to live again.”
A whimper clawed its way from my throat, and I swallowed back the tears that built. I wouldn’t cry again. I couldn’t. In a week, I would be home, and tears had no place in my world.
“Come on,” he said, taking my hand again, his steps jarring me from my trance as he yanked me down the sidewalk.
We stopped in different shops, meeting people I knew I would never remember because I barely heard their greetings.
All the while, Hudson’s words were like a storm barreling through my mind.
He took time to help, moving furniture or emptying shop vacs, something I had never seen nor heard of before today.
I went through the motions, and he would peek at me, his smile faltering to a grimace each time.
As I carried a stack of boxes from where they rested on the counter and placed them on a display as directed, the voice in my head that protected me reared up.
It screamed that this wasn’t something an Icinda would do.
We didn’t do manual labor. We paid people.
We didn’t do physical work. We led and directed.
My father’s voice bellowed that I was proving just why he thought I was weaker than my brother, and I fumbled, the boxes tumbling from my hand.
I stepped back, ready to throw my chin up and walk away when Hudson’s hands were on mine, steadying them.
“Olivia, look at me.”
“I can’t do this, Hudson. I’m not…this isn’t me. Let me write a check. The company can write it off as a donation. I’m sure it’s better than this.”
“You all good?” Billie, the shop owner, called, her voice booming from where she was vacuuming up water from the back of the store.
“All good. She just needs a minute.”
He pulled me over to the window and sat me down on the ledge, stooping in front of me and taking my hands.
“They don’t want your money, Olivia. We’re not doing this to make some statement or get a write-off. We’re doing this because this is what people do, especially in small towns like this.”
“But I don’t, and my father—”
“Fuck your father.”
My eyes went wide, and I gaped at him.
“I’m serious. Fuck him. He did nothing but fuck with your head for years, and you can’t get out from under his shadow. He’s not here. And it’s a good thing, or my fist would be hitting flesh if he were.”
The image made me laugh, and he grinned. “There it is, that sound I love so much.”
I dropped my eyes, looking at his hands on mine, how they protectively covered them. “I’m surprised you’re not barking at me about how ridiculous I’m being,” I said.
“Thought about it.”
My sight jumped to his, seeing how the grin had turned crooked. “But when we fight, it just makes me want to bend you over and fuck the attitude out of you, and considering where we are, I didn’t think that was a good idea.”
Mouth opening and closing, I searched for a response but came up empty-handed.
“Get up and back to helping. It doesn’t make you weak, Olivia. It doesn’t diminish your pride or your intelligence or your reputation. It makes you a better person.”
He leaned over and kissed my hand before rising. “Damn, thinking about bending you over on that counter was not a good thing,” he grumbled, adjusting himself. “It’s gonna be a long morning.”
He walked away, shaking his head and complaining about me, but his voice no longer held the hard edge it had when I first arrived. Now it was more endearing.