by Chloe Cox
It cracked like a whip across her heart anyway.
For a second, her body forgot to breathe. She had to think about it—in, out. In, out.
Get the facts. Maybe it’s not…
“We can’t continue what?” she said.
Gavin looked at her, his dark eyes soft and sad, and then, suddenly, the light was out. Hard. Cold.
“Olivia,” he said. “We can’t continue this arrangement. I can’t be your Dom.”
Olivia just shook her head, over and over, like she must have misheard. Like somebody had just stated an obviously incorrect fact, like she could argue this and win.
“Why?” she demanded.
He walked forward, and leaned against the railing, his big back stretching the fabric of his shirt, the muscles under there roiling while his face stayed blank.
He said, “It’s outside my control.”
“Is this about Gabby? Simone told me about her sister. I didn’t ask, I didn’t… I don’t know what happened, Gavin, but it was an accident. Even Simone knows it was an accident.”
He turned around, stood up straight.
“She surprised me with something, and it went bad,” he said. “We were young, and new to BDSM. There wasn’t anyone to teach it, or…doesn’t matter. She was fine, in the end. No nerve damage. But she never did safe word out.”
“How is that your—”
“I ended it,” he said, cutting her off again. “Probably not well, because I was young and stupid. And she spun out, getting drunk and doing everything she could to get back at me, and then she died.”
Olivia stared at him, not knowing what to say. He turned back around to his railing, putting his big hands on it, nearly wrapping them around it.
“That doesn’t have anything to do with us,” she said.
Gavin shook his head.
Dully, he said, “I made a promise.”
“To who?” Olivia said. “She’s gone, Gavin.”
“To myself.”
“Does this have anything to do with Daniel Delavigne?” she said, feeling a pang of self-righteousness and leaning into it, because it was about a million times better than everything else she was feeling. “I saw him leave here, and if he—”
She stopped. Daniel Delavigne had lost a daughter. He might not have been a nice person before that, either, but that kind of pain could almost excuse anything.
Gavin looked back at her, and smiled slightly. “He was just a reminder, Liv.”
They were silent, for a moment.
“Gavin,” she said. “Please don’t do this. I just…I just found this. Please.”
“I’m sorry, Liv,” he said. And he looked down at his hands, gripping the railing so hard it looked like it might snap.
She blinked.
No.
“You don’t get to do this,” she said. “You don’t get to…”
Olivia stopped just short, the way you do when you just catch yourself at the edge of a cliff. It was a terrifying moment. But her heart was already pretty much broken, and she was wide open for more, so she might as well tell the damn truth.
“I was there last night, Gavin. I know we agreed that this was an arrangement, that no one was going to catch feelings, but guess what? Life happens, and feelings happen, and now I have them. For you.”
Olivia stopped to take a big breath. She was so scared she was pretty sure this was about to be an out-of-body experience.
“Actually, I love you. I think I’m in love for the first time in my life, and it’s with you. And it’s the worst. I hate feeling slightly nauseous when I don’t know what’s going on, or anxious because I think I’ve hurt you, or…all of the other things I never let myself feel before because I didn’t think I deserved it.
“And I know—” She stopped, swallowed. Got angry. “I know this was real, and I know what I saw, and I know what you are. You think you’re not capable of love, but you’ve loved me. It’s a verb, Gavin, and you’ve been doing it. That’s who you are, too. And you have to get right with that. You have to grab it with both hands, and…”
He hadn’t moved. He’d just turned to stone, rigid, unmoving, his knuckles white on the railing.
“Please get right with that,” she whispered.
Like cracked stone, he said, “I made a promise.”
In the space of one infinite breath, Olivia reached out and touched his hand.
She saw the current shoot through Gavin’s body with a shock that propelled him off of that railing, alive again, vital and strong, and before she could speak he’d pulled her into his chest, wrapped her in those big arms. She was surrounded by him, his scent, his body, and for a second she melted, gladly melted, happy to be there for the rest of her life.
And then slowly, painfully, he began to pull away.
It was like having a piece of her heart ripped out at the root.
And then, to keep from crying, she had to laugh.
“Did I just get dumped by my fake boyfriend?” she said. “Again?”
The shattered, sad smile on his face broke her heart all over again.
“Not fake,” he said. “Just not possible.”
“Because you made a promise.”
Gavin looked at her for a moment. Then he turned back to that railing, and Olivia knew he had nothing else to say.
She turned, and started to walk, then run, down those steps and across the drive back to her dumb new rental car, while the air turned heavy and suffocating, and her whole body threatened to collapse into a puddle of tears.
She had to go. She had to go somewhere.
And while she sat in the car, trying to remember where she’d put her tissues and her sunglasses because she couldn’t freaking see through the stupid, useless tears, her phone rang.
“Hello?” she sobbed.
“Honey? You ok?” Adra said, far away in Los Angeles, another world entirely.
“Allergies,” she said, and wiped at her ruined face again.
“Well, ok, listen, if you want different kinds of work, I can do that. I wasn’t sure what sort of strategy you wanted to go with, but there’s actually something I think might be great for you. Doesn’t pay a lot, but could re-establish you on a different path, kind of re-brand you for the long game, if that’s what you want?”
“Uh-huh,” Olivia said, because that was all she could manage. She’d only just barely got the keys in the ignition.
“The only thing is the audition is on the twelfth, and today is already—oh God, it’s the tenth already? How did that happen? You’d have to get back here right away so I could give you—”
“What’s today’s date?” Olivia said.
Her voice was flat, even. Everything had just come to a stop.
“The tenth.”
Olivia stopped crying and calmly put the car in gear. She knew there had been something she’d been neglecting, she knew if she let herself get distracted everything would fall apart, and now she’d missed the anniversary. Her father and brother were all alone, together, on the anniversary. And all she had to show for it was a dumpster fire of a career and a broken heart.
“Liv, what’s going on?”
“I’m on my way to the airport.”
Thirty-Five
“What the hell did you do?” Charlene demanded.
Gavin was still sitting on the porch. It was night. Usually after something tough but necessary, he gave himself the time to sit with it, get right with it. He’d been sitting there all damn day.
“What I had to,” he said.
He couldn’t get the look on her face off his mind. The way she’d looked after she’d performed, glowing and goddamn happy. And then the look on her face when he’d told her he’d made a promise.
“You are going to have to get a whole lot more specific than that, Colson,” Charlene said. “You know I don’t pull this card often, but I’m going to use it if I have to.”
“Charlie, please. I’m not in the mood.”
“Screw your mood!
Your mood is probably what got you into this mess!”
Gavin’s phone was ringing. He ignored it.
“Daniel Delavigne came by,” he said.
Charlene sighed, deflated. “Damn,” she said. “How’d that go?”
“He made a bunch of threats. Wants me to leave, wants me to close the club.”
“What’d you tell him?”
“Told him I couldn’t do it,” Gavin said. “Told him I’d made a promise, and this was part of it. You know people need the club, Charlie. You know we all needed it back then.”
“So what’s he going to do?”
Gavin stared out into the failing light, his head pounding. He’d had subs begin to cross that line with him before, but when he’d had to end things, it had never felt like tearing out his own heart.
Had he gone too far?
No.
“I did what I had to do so he’d think the threat was meaningless, no point in going through with it,” he said. “I can’t leave, Charlie. I have to keep this place open, to try to make amends.”
His phone rang again, and Gavin silenced it without looking. Every ring, every carried voice, every flash of light or buzz of a cicada knifed through him. It was like there was a part of him that had been asleep for a long time, and now the blood was rushing back in on a tide of pain.
He hadn’t thought he could fall in love again. He had no idea how it had happened. He’d been made of stone for a long time. Becoming flesh again hurt.
“Gavin.”
He looked up—behind Charlie stood Holt. He’d forgotten about that. He’d said something earlier about Simone, needed to talk.
“What happened?” Gavin said. “Keep it short.”
Holt nodded.
“It’s not real complicated,” he said. “Simone had it out with her father, then fell off the wagon hard. I had to kick her out. Talked it through with her this afternoon, though, so don’t worry about that.”
“You talked it through?”
“Just told her the policy—she slipped up, she’s out. Told her we could revisit eventually, if she could stay sober. Told her I would help, but…” Holt shrugged.
“But she told you to get bent.”
“How’d you know?”
Gavin laughed joylessly. “Just a hunch,” he said.
“All right, just wanted to tell you before I leave,” Holt said, and tipped his hat to Charlene as he walked down the steps. “It’s good to see you around, Charlene. Come back soon.”
Charlene watched Holt walk away, waited for him to be out of earshot. Gavin always did appreciate that about her.
“Gavin, you want to tell me about that threat?” she said.
“Nope,” he said.
His phone started to ring again. Charlene looked at it, buzzing across the railing.
“I also got a phone call from Olivia at the airport earlier today,” she said. “You want to tell me what that’s about?”
Gavin looked at her.
He answered the phone.
“Thanks for picking me up,” Olivia said.
Adra smiled tentatively. “No problem,” she said. “I brought the sides for the audition, figured you could get a head start.”
Olivia nodded. She’d given up on just not crying, and bought a pair of giant sunglasses at the airport instead.
“No bags?”
“No, just my purse.”
Adra unlocked her crazy new car—a Maserati—from twenty feet away, and gave an apologetic look when it played the first few bars of “La Cucaracha” instead of chirping.
“My nephew,” she said. “Still don’t know how he did it.”
Olivia smiled as best she could, but knew it didn’t quite take.
“You live in Silver Lake, right?” Adra said.
Olivia took a deep breath, and ducked into the car.
“Do you think you could actually take me somewhere else?” she said.
Adra buckled herself in and looked across at Olivia.
“This isn’t about the audition, is it?” she said.
“No,” Olivia managed. “It’s not.”
“I’ll take you anywhere you want to go, Liv. Just tell my little GPS butler guy where you want to go, and then try to get some sleep.”
For the first time in what felt like a long time, Olivia smiled.
“There is literally no chance that I’m sleeping.”
“This it?” Adra said.
It looked exactly the same. The same dust, the same dry brush, the same low, angled roof giving the only shade within fifty yards of the ranch house. Not exactly the same junk cars up on blocks in the yard, but close enough.
“This is it,” Olivia said. The closer they got the more anxious she was, like sheer proximity reminded her brain of all the things she might find in that house. By the time they pulled up she was practically fidgeting.
Neither of them had answered their phones. It was the first time she’d called her father in years. She’d barely recognized his voice on the voicemail.
“Thank you,” she said. “I promise to call you later, Adra, but I swear to God if I don’t get in there I’m going to lose my mind.”
“Go!” Adra called after her.
Olivia was already closing the door, running up the walk, fumbling for the keys she never used.
Slowing down as she got to the door, seeing a few things not quite right—new welcome mat, new mailbox.
Same locks.
She took a deep, deep breath, squared her shoulders, and opened the door.
It was dark. She steeled herself for a musty smell that never came. Her eyes adjusted and she stepped further inside, her eyes searching out the kitchen.
“Jack?” she called out.
All the possibilities of what might have happened fluttered up in her mind, clouding her thinking. It felt like an emergency, but she tried to be rational. Probably they were fine. It was just one day.
Of course they were fine.
She shut her mind up by focusing on her surroundings. The place was still, but…fresh. She didn’t know how to describe it. The countertops were new, unblemished by coffee stains and tiny, jagged scars. There was a bread box. And a stand mixer. A red Kitchen-Aid stand mixer.
Olivia looked around in bewilderment. On impulse she turned on the light, thinking the otherworldly sense of weirdness was just the California light cutting in, setting the place aglow.
Nope. Still weird. Still just different enough to be totally alien, but just the same enough to be…home. Sort of.
She walked hurriedly across the tile floor, her heels click-clacking in a way that felt strange, in this house—she hadn’t been back much since she’d started wearing heels—avoided the living room, yelled up the stairs.
“Jack? You up there?”
Silence. Enough time for her to notice what it was, about the light—it was that it no longer illuminated a secret current of dust, always swirling anytime anyone moved in the house, a sign that something was stirring. The dust was gone.
Olivia pressed her lips together, and turned towards the living room.
“Dad?” she said.
The chair. Still maroon, still angled towards the television, back facing where she was at the foot of the stairs. There was a new couch. New end table. New television.
New upholstery.
The chair had been upholstered. Her dad’s chair, the ugly maroon Barcalounger recliner monstrosity, with its wood-paneled reclining lever and its familiar stains and scruffs, the place where she would always know to find him. The chair he never left, except sometimes to go to the bathroom, sometimes to drink, but mostly just sitting there in a zombie trance, watching football. That chair.
Was reupholstered.
“Dad?” she yelled, and ran forward, even though she knew what she would find.
He wasn’t there. No one was there.
Olivia ran back to the kitchen and grabbed every set of car keys hanging from the pegs on the back of the door. They were alway
s working on a few. One of them would probably last long enough to get her to where she needed to go.
Thirty-Six
“How’s your shoulder?” Charlene asked.
“Fine.”
“Seriously? That was a big door.”
Gavin rose, towering over the too small metal chairs someone had thought to put in a hospital waiting room, and started to pace again.
“I have a big shoulder,” he said.
Charlene leaned back and rested her head on the wall. Gavin had forgotten how she always preferred to sit in the corner.
“Well, she’s lucky you do,” she said.
“Did you call him?”
“He’s on his way.”
With her head leaning back like that, Charlene looked like she was inspecting him for something. Gavin grinned, as much as he could under the circumstances. She was kind of like that big sister who kept you in line.
“He told me you were leaving town again,” she said.
“He’s wrong.”
“Uh-huh. But does that have anything to do with why Olivia ran back to L.A. without even a freaking suitcase?”
Gavin held open the door just beyond the waiting room’s borders to peer a short way down a long hallway, at one private room in particular. Nothing. He let the door swing shut before the nurse who spotted him could be bothered to yell at him one more time.
“I made a mistake,” he said, and went back to his laps around a fluorescently clean cage.
“You? Mr. Knows All Things All The Time?”
He glared at her. If Charlie could raise her eyebrows above her head, she would have done it.
He said, “I let it get…”
“Real?”
“Involved. And—”
“You made a promise, I know. You know promises are bullshit when you don’t have the power to keep them, right?”
Gavin stopped pacing.
“Jesus, Charlie. Stand down.”
“No. I’m sorry, Gavin, but no. I have spent too long watching you be unhappy, and now I have to watch Olivia be unhappy, all because of the same dumb promise.”
They’d had this conversation before, some version of it. Gavin snorted and started moving again, working it out of his system. She was getting to him.
