A Price to Pay

by Alice Raine

  A rasping breath caught painfully in my throat as I suddenly remembered Marcus and his bombshell about Oliver.

  It’s Oliver. He’s not coming.

  Pain so excruciating that it almost blinded me erupted in my chest, scorching through my veins and making my head pound in agony. Every attempt at a breath felt like my lungs were trying to claw their way out of my chest, and my eyes started to burn as tears blurred my vision. My skin tingled with panic, sweat burst on my brow, and my chest still wouldn’t relax.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  Oh Jesus. I really couldn’t breathe.

  ‘Robyn? Fuck!’ Hands gripped my shoulders and shook, and I just about managed to make out the image of Sasha as she stood before me looking pale and stressed. ‘Breathe, Robyn. Take a fucking breath for fuck’s sake.’

  Oliver was gone. He didn’t want me.

  Another ripping, sawing half-breath dragged its way from my lungs and I folded forwards in agony as I desperately tried to get some oxygen into my system and calm the devastating panic that had me in its grasp.

  Gradually I managed to relax my cramping lungs and pull in some cool, much-needed air.

  ‘Here, drink this.’

  I stared at the water glass in Sasha’s hand for a few moments, focusing my foggy attention on watching a droplet work its way down the side of the glass and then drip from the bottom and plop onto the carpet.

  It was our wedding day, but Oliver wasn’t coming?

  It made no sense to me at all, and my brain felt fuzzy from the stress of repeating it over and over again and still not managing to understand it. It was like some sick, surreal nightmare.

  As my brain finally clicked back on and everything started to come into focus once more, I pushed away the aching pain of my devastation and leaped to my feet. Finally, I felt some composure returning.

  Pushing the glass away, I shook my head. ‘I don’t need a drink.’

  There was an insistent knocking at the door and Sasha glanced at it before looking at me. ‘That’ll be your mum again. Shall I let her in?’

  Seeing Mum when I was so heartbreakingly confused would no doubt make me cry, so I shook my head. ‘No. I don’t want to see anyone. Just tell me what the hell’s going on.’

  Sasha took a nervous step backwards and glanced at the paper in Marcus’s hands before heading to the door to speak to my mum.

  Marcus shifted on the spot looking anxious and then stepped forward to speak. ‘I was waiting with Oliver for things to get going, but then he got an email through to his phone. He said he wondered if it was from you, so he checked it and then said he needed to make a call. He… er…’ He paused as Sasha returned. His eyes wavered between her and me before he averted his gaze altogether. ‘He never came back, but he sent me a text asking me to pick up a note from the kitchen and give it to you.’ He fidgeted on the spot. ‘I tried calling you, but your phone was off, and then I tried Sasha, but you weren’t answering my calls, either.’

  With that statement he flashed her a glare which could have melted plastic with its ferocity. The two of them shared a heated stare, but when Sasha’s lips tightened as she prepared a comeback my eyes dropped to the paper.

  They could argue about their stupid standoff for as long as they wanted; all I was concerned about was finding out what the hell was going on and what had spooked Oliver.

  My stomach plummeted. What if something hadn’t spooked him and he had genuinely changed his mind? Fear-laced pain stabbed at my chest and I sucked in a sharp breath at that idea before adamantly shaking my head.

  No. I knew Oliver loved me, and I knew he wanted to marry me. I’d seen it in his eyes yesterday at the dinner with his parents. That kind of love couldn’t be faked. Could it? I refused to entertain the idea that Oliver had changed his mind; something must have happened in that phone call he’d taken, that had to be it, but what could be bad enough to make him walk away from me?

  Outside my confused bubble of thought the argument between Marcus and Sasha continued to rage. ‘It’s my best mate’s wedding day. That’s why I didn’t answer your call! What’s your excuse for not answering my calls yesterday? Or your door this morning!’ Sasha spat, frustration obvious in her tone.

  ‘I didn’t answer my door because I’d hate for you to regret anything you said or did again!’ Marcus replied in a near yell.

  Looking up at them I could practically see the bristling tension arcing between them; both their backs had straightened, they were glaring at each other, and their mouths had popped open as if preparing to respond.

  For fuck’s sake. I needed to think this through in peace and quiet! I did not have time to deal with their shit right now, so I stepped between them and threw them both a savage glare.

  ‘Jesus Christ! Shut up, both of you! You may not have noticed, but it’s supposed to be my fucking wedding day and Oliver has disappeared! Sort your fucking sex life out later, not now!’

  Marcus and Sasha both froze at my words. They looked suitably contrite as they flashed each other a wary glance and nodded rapidly.

  ‘Sorry, Robyn. Here, you’ll want to read this,’ Marcus mumbled apologetically, before holding out the paper.

  Looking again at the note in his hand, I tried to steady my composure, but I still felt a slight tremble in my fingers as I reached out and took it. It was slightly scrunched from where Marcus had been holding it, but other than that it was just a normal piece of printer paper. It was hard to believe that something so innocuous could hold my entire future.

  I opened up the paper and my chest tightened as I saw Oliver’s familiar slanted writing. Taking a deep breath, I began to read.

  Robyn,

  I apologise that this is last minute, but I just can’t go through with it. I don’t want to marry you. I’ve changed my mind. Don’t look for me or contact me.

  Oliver

  The note didn’t contain any of his customary kisses that he always used at the end of text messages or emails, and there was none of his teasing flirtatious humour showing through, either. It was just blunt, clear-cut, and straight to the point.

  He couldn’t go through with it.

  He didn’t want to marry me.

  A scraping noise sounded through the room and as I bent forwards and clutched at my stomach I realised that it was a rasping breath trying to tear its way from my lungs. I felt like I’d been punched in the gut and winded, and my legs folded beneath me as I sank down onto the nearest armchair, still clutching the note in my hand.

  After five minutes of sitting there rocking in shock while Sasha nervously hovered around me I stood up and drew in a long breath. None of it made sense – we’d been blissfully happy just yesterday – so instead of sitting here crying like an injured child I needed to think. It was time to get to the bottom of all this.

  There was one clear option which would give me the best chance of finding out answers – the man himself – so I dragged my phone from the small clutch bag, pulled up Oliver’s details, and pressed “dial”.

  The phone rang, and rang, and then went through to voicemail. So he wasn’t even man enough to speak to me? Shaking my head in irritation, I redialled, only to have it ring out again.

  God fucking damn it! I stabbed at the cancel button with my finger and immediately hit “redial” again. Fine. I’d just keep calling, then. I’d phone him until he picked up, or his bloody battery ran out.

  Which is exactly what I did. Marcus left Sasha and me alone, no doubt keen to escape the tension hanging in the room, and even though I was getting no answer I kept routinely calling Oliver’s number, cancelling it when it went to voicemail and then hitting redial.

  It was a seemingly pointless task, but in all honesty, I didn’t know what else to do. I was just thinking that perhaps I should give up, when suddenly, to my surprise, I heard the call connect and I pressed the phone to my ear, straining to hear something.

  ‘Hello? Oliver?’

  The pause that followed felt like it last
ed an hour but was in reality probably no more than a few seconds.

  ‘I told you not to call me.’ The ice in Oliver’s voice chilled me to my very core and sent a shudder of goose pimples across my skin. He hadn’t even said hello. I’d literally never heard him sound so blank and emotionless, and it caused a crippling pain to erupt in my chest that almost prevented me from speaking.

  ‘We need to talk,’ I rasped, my strained voice barely even sounding like me.

  ‘We have nothing to talk about, Robyn. Like I said in my note, it’s over.’ He sounded robotic. There was nothing in his voice that I recognised, not one part of it sounded like the passionate, intense man I knew and loved. It was like listening to a complete stranger, and as stupid as it was, I found myself numbly checking the phone screen to make sure I had dialled the right number.

  Dragging up some grit, I took in a deep breath, stood taller, and shook my head as anger began to replace my fear. How bloody dare he do this to me?

  ‘You don’t get to just dump me at the altar on our fucking wedding day and then not explain yourself!’

  There was a moment of silence as if my outburst had shocked him, but then his strangely mechanical voice sounded down the line again. ‘It’s over. I had a long think about things and we won’t work in the long run.’

  The harshness to his words made me dizzy, but I just about managed to stumble out a reply. ‘Why not? Things… things have been going so well.’ I knew I was starting to sound desperate, but what else could I do? We’d been blissfully happy until about four hours ago. Or at least I’d thought we had.

  ‘There are things I need, Robyn. Sexually. Things you would hate. I thought I’d suppressed my desires.’ He paused, his words hanging in the air incomplete, and my stomach knotted as I waited for whatever he was going to say next. ‘But it turns out I want them more than I want you.’

  I choked on my breath as his wounding words sunk in. Them? He wanted them more than he wanted me? Was he talking about sexual acts, or other women? My brain spun as I tried to comprehend what the hell he could be talking about. ‘What type of things? You know I’m open to exploring new stuff… we could talk about it…’

  ‘No.’ His retort was immediate and cripplingly final.

  ‘Is it another woman… or women?’ I croaked, feeling precariously close to throwing up.

  As if he wanted to really make me suffer, Oliver let out a short, humourless laugh before adding his final nail in the coffin of our broken relationship.

  ‘I miss the mindless sex I indulged in before I met you. I fucked hundreds of women, did you know that? Hundreds. You could never satisfy a man like me.’

  A pained cry left my lips at the hurtful finality in his statement. When I realised that the line was now dead because he’d hung up on me, I allowed my grief to overwhelm me as I sunk to the floor sobbing and clutching at my tear-soaked face.

  ‘That motherfucker!’ Sasha spat, coming straight to my side. The call hadn’t been on speaker, but the room was quiet enough that she must have heard most of it, and she bundled my numb body up into her comforting arms and rocked me.

  But nothing could comfort me. Not now that my heart had been ripped out from my chest and my life left in tatters.

  I felt like my entire world had just come to a sickening halt. I’d had everything planned out in my mind, every forwards step – marriage, new house, a dog, and perhaps even kids – and they all included Oliver.

  Now there was nothing.

  No Oliver, no wedding, no future.

  He’d become everything to me so quickly, and I’d thought that I was his everything, too. It might sound dramatic, but at this moment in time I literally couldn’t see how I’d ever manage to pull myself together and carry on.

  So I didn’t.

  I sat surrounded by the deflated meringue of my wedding dress and cried on Sasha’s chest. I cried until I could feel her dress was soaked with my grief, and my body was so exhausted that it fell into a disturbed sleep right there in the middle of the floor.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Oliver

  I pressed the “end call” button to hang up the phone and took a deep, unsteady breath. The utter craziness of all this was dizzying, and my stomach reeled with sickness at the horrific words I’d just uttered to the woman I loved more than life itself.

  I stared across at Alexandra where she was reclining on the bed grinning like a Cheshire cat. She pouted at me, and then casually began undoing another button on her shirt to reveal more of her pale white cleavage.

  The sight revolted me to my core, and I turned away, scowling and looking down at the piece of paper in my hand. It was the script of what I’d just said to Robyn, the hideous, hurtful words written by Alex and handed to me so I could say them when Robyn called back.

  Frustration made me clench my jaw until it squeaked. Why had Robyn been so insistent and kept calling me? If I could have had just a few more hours I might have managed to sort out this fucking nightmare without having to say those unbelievably hurtful words to her.

  Fuck me, I’d be lucky if she’d ever speak to me again after the things I’d said to her.

  Mind you, if the tables had been turned and she had walked away from me, I would have been just as persistent with my phone calls. I’d have turned heaven and earth upside down to find her, so I couldn’t really blame Robyn for her actions.

  My stomach was churning violently, and I wanted to throw up, but I swallowed down the sickly bile that kept rising in my throat and stood tall. I had to stay strong; I couldn’t let Alex see me so weak.

  Don’t believe those words, cariño, trust in me. I’ll sort this out, I thought over and over, but the agonising cry of pain I’d heard Robyn give out over the phone would haunt me forever. She had believed every word.

  She’d had to, though. With Alex here threatening me I’d had to make Robyn believe me; it was the only way I could progress and try to sort this mess out.

  I also wanted to try to keep hold of this phone. It felt like a lifeline to me. Perhaps if Alex was distracted enough I could slip it into my pocket and manage to send a text to Robyn later.

  Cupping my hand around the mobile, I lowered my arm, trying to keep my movements casual and sending up prayers to whichever god might be listening. When I reached my trouser pocket, I loosened off my fingers and felt a swell of hope erupt in my chest as the phone slid into my pocket unnoticed by Alex.

  As I looked back at her, every muscle in my body tensed and I only just held myself back from leaping across the room and strangling her. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t, because not only did she have her sick threat hanging over me, she also had a gun in her hand.

  She’d pulled the weapon out shortly after I’d met up with her, and although I didn’t know much about guns, I was informed enough to know that she had definitely loaded it and cocked it with apparent proficiency, making it seem real, and not a fake as I had first hoped.

  I needed to distract her from thinking about the phone, so I decided to try to strike up a conversation.

  ‘Happy now?’ I murmured, only just managing to keep the hatred from my voice.

  ‘Hmm. Yes, that speech was very good. You’re quite the actor, Oliven.’ Alex uncurled herself from the bed and strutted towards me, a smile of pure wickedness spreading on her face and the gun glinting in the sunlight.

  She walked with a swagger, her shirt almost completely unbuttoned now, so I suspected she was trying to be seductive, but all I could see was the evil bitch who had arrived five hours ago and blackmailed me into cancelling my wedding.

  Alex reached my side, ran her knuckles down the buttons of my shirt, and then hooked one finger into the buckle of my belt and tugged gently.

  She was almost acting flirtatiously, and I was momentarily convinced that my trick with the phone had worked, but my heart sunk as she traced the belt around to my pocket and dipped her hand inside.

  For a second, she deliberately avoided the phone and tried to te
ase my cock with her fingertips, but when I made no outward response to her move she retrieved the mobile. ‘I think I’ll keep hold of this for the time being,’ she whispered, giving an over the top flutter of her eyelashes. She slid the phone inside her bra cup before lowering her hand again and cupping my groin.

  My teeth clenched at her gesture, but my cock stayed as limp as a lettuce leaf – not that Alex seemed to care. I stood as still as a marble statue as she gave me a squeeze and fondled my balls.

  ‘I’m sure I can change this with a few of my tricks,’ Alex purred. She gripped me harder and I winced, glad that her continued caressing wasn’t having any effect on my soft dick.

  She lifted her gun-wielding hand, the cool metal of the barrel chilling along my neck before she rested it on my shoulder and rolled onto her tiptoes so her mouth was beside my ear. ‘I’ll get you harder than you’ve ever been,’ she promised thickly. ‘I still remember all the kink you liked in my bed, Oliver.’

  I’m not sure what she thought she was remembering, because we’d only shared one night together, and while we might both have gotten off in the end, it had been blatantly obvious throughout that we were incompatible. We were both too dominant and unwilling to compromise; it could never have worked between us.

  ‘The only thing I like in my bed these days is Robyn,’ I stated blandly, not caring if it pissed her off. Thank fuck it worked – for now, anyway – and Alex dropped her hand away as she made a noise of disgust.

  I felt a cool touch to my neck as Alex ran the nub of the gun around my skin and then down my chest and over the buttons on my shirt. ‘Careful, Oliver, it’s not too late for me to carry out my threat, you know.’

  Gritting my teeth, I let out a sigh of exasperation. ‘What exactly do you hope to gain from this?’

  Alex smiled and threw her head back to let out a single bark of laughter.

  ‘You, Oliver, that’s what. It’s simple, I want you.’ Poking me in the chest with the gun, she giggled, but to me it just looked like the actions of a madwoman. ‘You might think you love that naïve little bitch, but she could never satisfy you the way I can.’