Chapter Eight
Not His Victim Anymore
Darren
Some days, the world tilts and dares you to stay upright. Today, I bare my teeth and dare it back.
Olivia sits beside me in the passenger seat of my truck, shoulders squared like a soldier walking toward something she’s terrified of but refuses to avoid. She keeps one hand clenched in her lap. The other is in mine.
I didn’t ask. I just offered and she took it.
The fire station and police department share a municipal lot with Kidds Beach budget reality, and the familiarity of the place should be comforting. It isn’t. Tension hums under my skin. My protective instincts are pacing like caged animals.
I park and kill the engine before I look at her.
“You good?” I ask.
“No,” she says honestly. Then she lifts her chin. “But I’m going in anyway.”
Pride hits me like a punch.
We walk inside together. Fluorescent lights buzz. Paper smells mix with burnt coffee. The front desk officer, Constable Meyer, recognizes me instantly and nods, then clocks Olivia’s expression and sobers.
“I need to report contact from a restrained party,” she says before I can open my mouth.
Her voice is steady. She is fierce and determined and, goddamn, if that isn’t sexy as hell.
Meyer gets the detective on the arson case. Statements. Forms. Recorded notes. Olivia recounts the phone call, the words he used, his casual confession threaded through cruelty. I sit there useless and vibrating while she relives every syllable.
When she falters, I squeeze her knee under the table.
When she finishes, there’s a beat of silence. The detective nods, his voice measured and careful. They talk about the next steps—warrant applications, temporary protection orders, flagging patrols near where she’s staying.
I hear it all like noise under water because I’m watching her. She’s exhausted but unbroken. And when we finally step back out into sunlight, she exhales like she’s been underwater for years.
“I want a burger,” she says.
I bark out a laugh. “Yeah?”
“Greasy,” she adds. “Immoral. With cheese that doesn’t legally qualify as cheese.”
“I know a place.”
I take her to a dive where the napkins are translucent, and the lettuce is purely decorative. She eats like a woman reclaiming territory in her own life, making little hums of pleasure that make it stupidly hard to concentrate on anything else.
Her phone buzzes once on the table. Unknown number again.
Every muscle in my body locks. She looks at it, looks at me, and then flips it face down.
“He doesn’t get lunch,” she says lightly.
And I fall harder.
****
The day doesn’t explode the way I half-expect it to. There is no dramatic movie showdown in the parking lot. No sudden screaming. It’s almost worse—the quiet, the waiting, the storm pressure without the release.
We go back to Aunt Dee’s.
Paperwork fatigue hits Olivia like a wall. She dozes off on the couch, head tipping onto my shoulder without ceremony. I don’t move. I won’t risk waking her. There’s something sacred about the trust of sleep.
Aunt Dee catches my eye from the kitchen, gives me that look again—break her heart and die. I nod. Message received.
Evening settles, golden and slow. Olivia wakes on a breath and looks embarrassed. I kiss her temple before she can apologize for something she doesn’t need to.
Then the knock comes. Not timid. Not hesitant. But three ugly pounds of entitlement.
Every hair on my body stands up and Olivia freezes.
“I’ve got it,” I say softly.
She grabs my wrist. “Don’t...”
“I’ve got it,” I repeat, gentler but firm. “Stay here with Aunt Dee.”
I step onto the porch and close the door behind me so Olivia doesn’t have to see what I already know will be waiting.
Of course it’s him. The ex. The asshole who tried to kill the woman I am already in love with even if I know it is too fast. He’s exactly the type I pictured, average height, average build, wearing resentment like cologne and smugness curdled by fear he won’t name.
Blue eyes that catalog weaknesses first.
He looks me up and down, assessing me and finding that he isn’t impressed. Not that I give a flying fuck about his opinion of me.
“The fire boy,” he sneers.
“The asshole ex,” I reply.
“You’ve been answering her phone.”
“No,” I say. “I’ve been ending your access.”
He scoffs. “Cute. Now move the fuck out of my way.”
“No.” The single, simple word falls like lead between us.
He laughs, like I’m a joke. “This is between me and my wife.”
“Ex-wife,” I correct easily. “And there is no ‘between’ you and her. There’s a restraining order application in motion and a recorded confession downtown with your name on it. So, you’re going to leave.”
His jaw ticks. His irritation impossible to deny.
“She ruined my life,” he spits. “Do you know what people are saying about me? Arson. Attempted murder. She’s making me sound like some monster.”
“If the label fits,” I say mildly.
Rage flashes so fast he doesn’t even try to hide it. He steps closer, his chest puffed out, trying to loom over me and intimidate the way he does with everyone else.
Bad idea. I don’t move, I just stare him down. I’m not afraid of him and I’m not a woman he can intimidate with his size and bravado.
“You think because you’re young and built you can play hero?” he snarls. “She’ll chew you up. She’s lazy and needs constant attention. She’s always crying, always wanting. She’ll balloon the second you relax. You like curves now? Wait two years...”
My vision goes red around the edges. “You don’t get to talk about her body,” I say very quietly. “You don’t have the right.”
He blinks. I step into his space now, not touching, just towering over him. There’s no yelling in me. No wild swinging. Just cold, focused fury that tastes like metal.
“She carried herself out of hell,” I continue, voice a blade. “You set the fire. You tried to make her believe she deserved it. She didn’t. She doesn’t. And she never will.”
He tries to laugh it off and fails. “She told you her sob story. Of course she did.”
“No,” I say. “I was there when the walls fell. I walked through the flames and carried her out. I witnessed firsthand what you did.”
My words land. He sneers again because that’s all he’s got. “You’re a kid.”
“I’m the man standing between you and her,” I reply. “And this is me being polite.”
He leans, crowding me. “What if I don’t respect polite?”
Behind me, the door opens a crack. I don’t need to look to know Olivia is there, I hear her breath. The ex hears it too.
He smiles. The kind of smile that made her small for years.
“There you are, Livvy,” he purrs, trying to look around me. “Come out. We can talk like adults.”
“No,” she says from behind the door.
Her words are not quiet, not shaking, just final. He flinches like she hit him and pride surges in my chest so hard it almost chokes me.
“You don’t get to...” he starts.
“I do get to. I don’t owe you anything,” she cuts in. “Not my time. Not my fear. Not my body. Not my life.”
He stares at the door like it betrayed him. Then he snaps.
It’s always small, the thing that breaks a man like him. A single word. A look he doesn’t like. Losing control of a narrative they thought was theirs.
He lunges. Not at her, at me. He grabs my shirt and tries to drag me closer to him. Big mistake. My training kicks in. Not firehouse training. The kind you learn after your sister dies—how to end things fast without escalating beyond what the law will tolerate.
I break his grip, twist his arm, and plant him face-first against the porch post with just enough pressure to make the message sink through his thick skull without actually injuring him.
He yells, half in pain, but mostly outrage. “Get your hands off me! I’ll have you arrested!”
“Please,” I sigh. “I love paperwork.”
I lean in, my voice soft and for him alone.
“This is the part where you listen very carefully,” I murmur.
“There are witnesses inside this house and a doorcam across the street because the neighbor’s paranoid about raccoons.
You put your hands on me first. You showed up here uninvited to harass a woman who has already reported you.
Leave. Now. Or we escalate this legally, publicly, and permanently. ”
I let him go. He stumbles before he whirls, his face red with fury and humiliation.
“I’m not done,” he snarls at the house. “This is not over.”
“Yes,” Olivia says from behind me, voice ringing like a bell. “It is.”
He looks between us, her refusal and my stance, and understands something fundamental has shifted that he can’t undo. Fear flickers, ugly and brief before he covers it with venom.
“You’ll regret this,” he spits at her.
I step forward, blocking his line of sight entirely. “Go.”
He does. It’s not far, and it’s not fast—he needs the last word, the last glare—but he goes. His car peels away with unnecessary revving because small men love loud engines.
Silence slams down after his car disappears around the corner and I turn around.
Olivia stands in the doorway like she’s made of glass and iron at the same time. Her hands are trembling, but her chin is high and her eyes burning too bright to be safe.
Our gazes lock and the brave front shatters but I’m already moving.
She breaks against me with a choked sound that tears straight through my chest, and I wrap her up hard, one hand in her hair, the other spread low on her back like I can hold her together if I just want it enough.
“I’ve got you,” I murmur into the soft place beneath her ear. My voice is steady even if I’m not. “I’ve got you, Olivia.”
“I said no,” she whispers, fierce and stunned and shaking. “He looked at me and I said no.”
I close my eyes. Jesus. “Yeah,” I say, throat thick. “You did.”
Aunt Dee materializes like divine retribution in slippers and an apron, muttering about skillets and buried bodies. I mouth later. She presses her lips together and nods once, a commander dismissing herself from the field.