Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
Oliver
“Hey,” I say, closing the door behind me.
My brothers sit somber-faced around a square coffee table. The lights are low. It creates a chill, mellow ambiance that is probably good for writing music. Which is exactly what Coy uses the space for.
I’ve only seen the inside of Coy’s studio once before, and that was in the building stage. It looks markedly different now, but I’m too fucked up to really appreciate Wade’s design.
I sit in a leather chair next to Wade.
My head hurts. My heart hurts doubly bad. I think something broke inside me this evening, but I can’t put my finger on what. People say that breakups break their heart, but this feels infinitely worse than that. It’s like it broke my soul. Like it broke me.
I don’t know what I expected to happen. I’m not sure why I allowed myself to get this far into Shaye. It’s like I was falling off a ledge and I knew what hitting the bottom was like, but I chose to fall anyway.
The ground is harder and sharper than I ever imagined.
“Mom called,” Holt says. “She’s dropping Dad off at the treatment center now.”
I nod. “That’s good.”
“What the fuck happened, anyway?” Coy asks.
I take a deep breath. The burden of having to unload my conversation with our father onto my brothers is miserable. In a perfect world, we could all have joined together and had a family chat about it. Hearing this from his mouth would’ve been the best-case scenario. It just wasn’t meant to be.
“He came to see me,” I tell them. “I feel like he was probably at his breaking point, and I was probably the closest to wherever he was at that moment.”
I don’t think that’s necessarily true, but I don’t want to tell them he specifically sought me out. There’s enough pain to navigate without adding more potentially hurt feelings to the mix.
“He, uh, he basically said he had a problem and that he needed help,” I say, simplifying the situation. “He was worried he’d really screwed up with you guys and Mom … and me, for that matter. But he expressed an interest in fixing things so what was I supposed to do?”
“You called Mom?” Boone asks.
I nod. “They’re still married. And I knew she’d want to help him.”
Wade clears his throat. “How’d she take it?”
“Like Mom takes everything—with grace.” I shrug. “I called her and told her what was going on. She told me to bring him home. I guess he hadn’t been home in a couple of days.”
Coy’s face falls. He begins to tap out a rhythm on the coffee table. “Man.”
“I drove Dad over, and Mom told me she’d take care of it,” I say. “I offered to stay, but I think they had some things to say to each other.”
My head falls forward as I replay the scene in my head. The way my parents stood on the porch and looked at each other for a long two minutes. And then Mom opened her arms, and Dad fell into them, and Mom waved me off.
It’s a moment I’ll never forget. And a day I wish I could.
The drive from Mom’s to The Gold Room took entirely too long. I just wanted to see Shaye, to tell her how much I loved her. To tell her that I would be there, that I believed in us.
Where would we be if I were ten minutes earlier?
I rub my jaw. I’d be in a relationship with a liar.
The statement is technically true—she omitted a serious fucking piece of information. Omissions are lies. But even though I try desperately to make myself believe it, to sit on the truth and get comfortable in it, I can’t.
It was too reminiscent of Kendra. When I walked into Picante for a business dinner and saw Kendra sitting with Charles Gamby’s hand around her shoulders and his lips pressed against her cheek, my faith in relationships imploded.
Yet that was nothing compared to today.
Literally nothing.
I got to my car after seeing Shaye with Marius and vomited. It hurt so fucking much. It was a punch in the gut that I didn’t see coming.
“You okay?” Wade leans over, his hand covering his mouth. He glances at me out of the corner of his eyes as if he thinks I’m not okay and he doesn’t want to put me on the spot.
Who knew? Wade does have a heart.
“Yeah.” I tap my shoe against the concrete floor.
“Ollie?” Boone says my name like a little kid would call to his older brother. “What’s wrong?”
I look at the ceiling. The inevitable is here.
Coy stops working out whatever rhythm he was using as a coping mechanism. He licks his lips. “Is there something else you need to tell us?”
“I know that look.” Holt stretches his legs out in front of him. “That look has nothing to do with Dad. Or Mom.”
“Shaye,” Boone whispers.
Four sets of eyes are on me—three-and-a-half. Wade isn’t all-in. He pulls out his phone and pretends to be absorbed with something on the screen.
It’s uncomfortable to have so many people in your business but, then again, it helps. It helps to know that I’m not alone. That I have people on my side.
“What happened?” Coy asks.
“I went by to see her at work.”
“You work there too, so …” Coy looks at me confused.
“She has a second job,” I tell him.
He seems satisfied with this answer.
“Anyway, I go in there, and Marius Blast is there. Kissing her fucking cheek.”
Just saying the words out loud, hearing them float across Coy’s studio, is enough to infuriate me again. I shift in my seat in hopes it’ll make sitting and not punching something a little easier.
“Blast? How the hell does she know that motherfucker?” Holt asks.
“Landry Gala.” I lift a brow as a look of understanding crosses Holt’s face. “Apparently, he also sent her a bunch of flowers, and she didn’t tell me. She says she sent them home with someone else.”
“Ouch.” Coy grimaces.
“What’s Blast doing sending flowers to our girl—your girl?” Boone holds his hands up. “Sorry. Your girl. Misspoke.”
“She’s not my girl anymore.”
That admission floats nowhere. Instead, it sinks between us.
My brothers sit quietly, something that’s uncommon. They probably know that I need a few minutes to gather my thoughts before I just bleed out on the floor in front of them.
They’ve all been in my shoes to some degree. They all, except for Wade, have a woman they love. I’m sure they’re imagining how I feel.
Like shit.
Used.
Like a fucking joke.
“I’m going out on a limb here and saying that this situation sliced through your trust issues, right?” Holt asks.
“Oh, a little.”
“But …” Boone points a finger at me and then reads my face and puts it back on his leg. “But what did she say? I know Shaye, and I’m sure she has an explanation.”
“Yeah. What did she say?” Coy asks.
“I don’t know.” I rub my forehead, my headache intensifying. “I just … she said the usual. She didn’t want to upset me by telling me. That it didn’t matter.”
That she loved me.
My stomach recoils. I’m sure it would spew the contents if it hadn’t already emptied them.
That sentence is what haunts me. “If omitting things is a lie, and we’re coming clean, then just know that today, when you told me you loved me? I hadn’t realized at that moment, but I did later. I love you too. Loved you too.”
Did she love me? Does she love me? Does it make a difference?
“I wasn’t there, but I see her point,” Coy says.
I fire him a look.
“Think about it,” he says. “So some fuckhead sent her flowers. So what? That says a lot more about Blast than it does Shaye.”
“How do you figure?” Boone asks.
“Well, Blast isn’t stupid. Anyone who’s been around Oliver lately knows he’s different. I’d imagine that if Oliver was with Shaye at the gala, then Blast knew Shaye was Ollie’s girl.” Coy looks at me. “Blast wasn’t fucking with Shaye. He was fucking with you.”
“Why would he do that? I don’t have shit to do with Blast.”
“Because he’s a male, primarily.” Wade’s voice is resigned. He doesn’t want to have this conversation any more than I do. “Look, I’m only sharing my opinion in hopes it puts this situation to bed, and we can all get on with our lives.”
“This has nothing to do with you,” I tell him.
He sighs. “Oh, but it does. Because when one of us is fucked up, we all pay the price.”
My brothers mumble their agreement.
“Blast is used to getting what he wants,” Wade says.
“I’m sure it was a shock to his system for Shaye to turn him down.
Because that’s what she did.” He watches me to see if what he’s saying is sinking in.
“If she didn’t turn him down, she wouldn’t have been with you every day since, now would she? ”
He has a point.
“Look at this logically,” Wade continues. “He wanted her at the gala. She said no. He sent her flowers. She ignored them. So, he shows up to make a face-to-face play for her. Why? Because he isn’t getting anywhere.”
“I love when Wade gets all smart,” Boone says.
“I’m always smart.” He raises a brow at Boone. “You do what you want, Oliver. But I think you’re making a huge mistake.”
The room grows quiet again.
Wade has a point. He always has a point. But I don’t know if it’s enough.
Whether she wants Marius or not, she didn’t tell me. I have to trust her. Relationships are built on that foundation.
Our foundation is cracked, and we haven’t started building yet. It seems to me that the temple we were hoping to construct was doomed from the start. Because as I sadly know all too well, if the foundations are not solid, dug deep enough, then the building won’t ever weather the storm.