“I loved you.”

My heart ached. It should have been one of the happiest moments of my life. But, she wasn’t telling me because she wanted to. She was telling me to hurt me. Because she thought I did something to hurt her.

I heard my mother’s words, about her being too broken. Everything shifted in that moment. I wish it hadn’t, but it did. I couldn’t fix her. I couldn’t love her enough to chip away at the calcified hurt that was affecting everything she did. My thoughts about our life together went from a house in the sunshine and a yard full of children to Olivia crying in a corner, blaming me for rushing her into something she wasn’t ready for.

Then she accused me of being like her father.

The hurt was profound. Especially since I’d spent the last year and a half trying to show her I was nothing like him. When she ran out of my office, thinking that I cheated on her, I didn’t stop her.

I stood frozen, the ring box pressing against my thigh, the room swinging around me.

I leaned both hands on my desk and squeezed my eyes closed, breathing through my mouth. Five minutes. My whole life just changed in five minutes.

She only wanted to see the bad. Maybe it was for the best. Maybe all I saw was my love and I hadn’t weighed the consequences of that love.

Steve walked into my office and stopped short.

“Did I just see Olivia?”

I looked up at him, my eyes burning. He must have seen something on my face.

“What happened?” He pulled the door closed and took a step toward me. I held up a hand to stop him and dropped my head.

“She saw me in here with Sidney. She assumed…”

“Caleb,” Steve said. “Go after her.”

My head snapped up. That’s the last thing I expected to hear. Especially since I wasn’t sure how much my mother had turned him.

“She wants out,” I said. “Since we first got together. She’s always finding a reason for us not to be together. What kind of life can we have if she does that?”

Steve shook his head. “Some people take more work than others. You fell in love with a really complicated woman. You can weigh how hard things can and will be for the two of you, but what you really need to consider is if you can live without her.”

I was out the door a second later. No. No, I couldn’t live without her.

I took the stairs. She’d made a left out of my office instead of going to the elevators. I took them two at a time. By the time I burst through the exit doors, it was dark outside. God, how had I let this day get away from me? If I’d just left when I was supposed to…

Her car was gone. I had to go back upstairs to get my keys. She probably wasn’t going to let me explain. If I went to her apartment while she was like this, she wouldn’t even open the door. But, if I let the idea that I was cheating sit in her head for too long, it would solidify. She’d believe it, and that would be that. So, what could I do? How did I handle this situation? I paced my office. She wasn’t like other women. I couldn’t show up and talk her out of her thoughts.

Fuck. This was bad. I had to figure out a way to reach her.

Cammie.

“She’s with me,” Cammie said, when I called her.

“Let me talk to her, Cammie. Please.”

“No, she doesn’t want to talk to you. You need to let her cool off.”

I’d hung up, thinking that was what I was going to do. But, after a few hours, I was driving to Cammie’s. When I got there and didn’t see Olivia’s car, I knew she’d been lying to me. So I went to the hotel.

Chapter Thirteen

It’s all shadows without Olivia. I feel myself constantly wanting for her light. I haven’t heard from her since I left her condo the night she told me about Noah. It’s been a month, and I don’t know what she’s decided. I know what I’ve decided.

I send her a text.

Divorced?

Her text comes back almost immediately.

O: Fuck off.

You at work?

O: Yes!

I’ll be there in ten

O: No!

I turn my phone off and wait. I was already in the parking lot when I sent the first text. I linger in my car for a minute, running my finger over my bottom lip. I know what she’s going to do next, so when I see her walking quickly out of the building, I smirk. She’s trying to leave before I show up. I jump out of the car and walk toward her. She doesn’t see me until the last minute. She has her car keys out and her heels are snapping on the concrete as she tries to make her escape.

“Going somewhere?”

Her shoulders jerk and she spins around.

“Why are you always so goddamn early?”

“Why are you trying to run away?”

She gives me a dirty look, her eyes darting left and right, as if she’s trying to find a way to escape me.

I hold out my hand. “Come on, Duchess.”

She tosses a quick glance over her shoulder before she places her hand in mine. I pull her toward me and her little birdlike steps skip to keep up with mine. I don’t let go of her hand, and she doesn’t try to pull away. When I look down at her, she’s biting her lip. She looks terrified. She should.

I stop to open her door then shoot around to mine. She’s wearing a red dress with white polka dots. The neckline dips low. She hasn’t looked at me since she got in the car; instead she’s focused on her feet. Red stilettos, red toenails peeking through. Nice. Her style is a combination of Jacqueline Kennedy and a gypsy — my beautiful contradiction. Her hair is twisted up in a bun, and there is a pen holding it in place. I reach over and slip the pen out. Her hair tumbles around her like black water.

She doesn’t ask where we are going. I drive to the beach and pull into a spot a block away. She waits until I walk around to open her door and takes my hand as I help her out. We walk connected, until we reach the sand. She stops there to slip off her shoes, using my shoulder to keep balance. They dangle on the tips of her fingers as she reaches for me with her free hand. I take it and we lace fingers. It is considered winter in Florida, so there is only a handful of sunbathers, most of them from the North and with white hair. The area of beach we are on belongs to a hotel. There are canvas-covered gazebos with lawn chairs underneath them. We find an empty one and I sit down and stretch out my legs. Olivia makes to take the one next to me, but I pull her on my chair. She sits between my legs and leans back against my chest. I put one arm around her and sling the other on top of my head. My heart is racing. I haven’t had her in my arms in a long time. It feels so natural to be like this with her. I say her name just to see how it sounds. She jabs me in the ribs with her elbow.

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?” I say into her ear.

“Well, talk in that voice for one.”

I force myself not to laugh. I can see the goose bumps on her exposed skin. Obviously, my old tricks still work.

“So, you have a hand fetish and you get turned on by the sound of my voice?”

“I never said I had a hand fetish!”

“Really? So you just get turned on by the sound of my voice?”

She wiggles to get away from me, and I have to use both arms to hold her in place while I laugh.

When she finally relaxes again, I gather her hair and swipe it over her left shoulder. I kiss the exposed skin on her neck, and she shivers. I kiss an inch above it and her head tilts to give me better access.

“You shouldn’t — we-” Her voice trails off.

“I love you,” I say into her ear. She tries to jerk away, but my arms are still wrapped around her.

“Don’t, Caleb…”

She’s suddenly snapped out of her little daze. Her shapely legs are struggling to gain leverage so she can get away from me.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not right.”

“It’s not right for me to love you? Or it’s not right for you to love me back?”

She is crying, I hear her sniffle.

“Neither.” Her voice, which is high on emotion, cracks. Cracks my reserve, cracks my game, cracks my heart.

When I speak, my voice is husky. I stare out at the water. “I can’t stay away from you. I’ve been trying for ten years.”

She sobs and drops her head. She is not trying to get away from me anymore, but she’s trying to put distance between us. She leans forward and immediately I feel a loss. I’ve gone so many years without her, I refuse to allow her to try to space me out. I have her trapped and I’m going to take advantage. I wrap my hands in her hair, winding it around my fist, and then I gently pull back until her head is resting against my chest. She allows me to do all of this and doesn’t seem to mind the bondage.

Bondage. I’d love to give the love of my life a well-deserved flogging.

I kiss her temple, which is the only thing I can reach, and entwine our fingers, wrapping my arms around her. She snuggles against me and that familiar ache starts in my chest.

“Peter Pan,” I say.

There is five seconds of silence before she says, “When I’m with you, every emotion I can possibly feel comes spilling out. I drown in them. I want to run to you, and I want to run away.”

“Don’t … don’t run away. We can do this.”

“We don’t know how to love each other the right way.”

“Bullshit,” I say against her ear. “You’re full of love that you can’t get out. You can’t say some things. I’m okay with that now. I know it’s there. We’ve hurt each other. But, we’re not kids anymore, Olivia. I want you.” I let her go and spin her around so she’s kneeling between my spread legs.

I cup her face with my hands, threading my fingers into her hair and laying them flat behind her head. She can’t look away from me now.

“I want you.” I’ve said it before, but she’s not getting it. She still thinks I’ll leave her. Like I did.

Her bottom lip quivers.

“I want your babies, and your anger, and your cold blue eyes … “ I choke on my words and I am the one to look away. I bring my gaze back to her face and realize that if I can’t convince her now, I’m never going to be able to. “I want to go on anniversary dinners with you, I want to wrap Christmas presents with you. I want to fight with you about stupid things and then hold you down in my bed and make it up to you. I want to have more cake batter fights and camping trips. I want your future, Olivia. Please come back to me.”

Her whole body is shaking. A tear spills down her cheek and I catch it with my thumb.

I grab the back of her neck and pull her toward me so that our foreheads are touching. I run my hands up and down her back.

Her lips are moving, she’s trying to formulate words — and by the look on her face I can’t tell if I want to hear them. Our noses are parallel, if I bump my head half an inch forward — we’d be kissing. I wait for her.

Our breath mingles. She has my shirt in a vice grip between her fists. I understand her need to clutch something. It is taking every ounce of my self-control to keep from crushing us together.

Both of our chests are rising and falling like the waves. I nudge her nose with mine, and that seems to break her reserve. She wraps her arms around my neck, opens her mouth, and kisses me.

I haven’t kissed my girl in months. It feels like the first time. She’s up on her knees, leaning over me so that I have to tilt my head back to reach her lips. My hands are under her dress on the back of her thighs. I can feel the material of her panties on my fingertips, but I keep my hands still.

We kiss slowly, just with our lips. We keep pulling back to look each other in the eyes. Her hair creates a curtain between us and the world. We kiss behind it, as it falls around our faces, blocking everything out but each other.

“I love you,” she says into my mouth. I smile so big I have to pause in our kissing to recompose my lips. When we start using our tongues, things get heated fast. Olivia likes to bite when she kisses. It really, really does something for me.

My heart is in my throat, my brain is in my pants, my hands are up her dress. She pushes away from me and stands up.

“Not until the divorce is finalized,” she says. “Take me back.”

I stand up and pull her toward me. “All I heard was take me.”

She laces her arms around my neck, her teeth latching onto her bottom lip. I study her face.

“Why don’t you blush? No matter what I say — you never blush.”

She smirks. “Because, I’m a f**king badass.”

“Yeah, you are,” I say softly. I kiss the tip of her nose.

We make our way back to my car. As soon as we shut our doors, Olivia’s phone pings.

She lifts it out of her purse, and immediately her face darkens.

“What is it?” I ask.

She looks away from me, her hand frozen midair, still clutching the phone.

“It’s Noah. He wants to talk.”

Chapter Fourteen

I spin my wedding band on the sticky countertop. It becomes a blur of gold and then does a little dance before falling flat. I pick it up and do it again. The bartender at the shitty dive I wandered into looks at me with his dead eyes before sliding another beer in front of me. I didn’t ask, but a good bartender can read his patrons. I pick up the ring, put it in my pocket and take a long drag of my beer.

She doesn’t know I’m back in town. I don’t know if I’m ready to tell her. I checked into a hotel near the airport four days ago and have been slumming around at the local bars since. He’s back in the picture. I know she’s seeing him. I’m not even mad. I left her. What did I expect? It started out slowly. I contracted more and more jobs overseas, leaving for huge chunks at a time. It was financially good for us. But, then I was gone for her birthday, gone for our first anniversary, gone for Thanksgiving. I didn’t know that being gone would put such a strain on our relationship. Absence was supposed to make the heart grow fonder. Isn’t that what they said? Olivia never complained. She never complained about anything. She was the strongest, most self-reliant person I’d ever met. Despite all my gone-ness, the kicker to her was when I missed the verdict at Dobson’s trial.