by Hadley Quinn
“Well if we keep it, we’re naming it Olivia,” Tyse said, giving the dog’s head a soft scratch behind her ears. He looked at Sarah’s sister and could tell she caught the smugness in his voice instantly.
“Fine by me,” Olivia shrugged. “I’ll take it as a compliment. She’s a sexy bitch. How can I argue that?”
“I’m not naming it after my sister,” Sarah told him. But she kissed Tyse on the cheek and said, “But you can still get her a playmate for Christmas.”
He lifted an eyebrow with surprise. “What? How did you…?”
“Oh come on, it was so obvious,” Sarah laughed. “Let’s wait a couple weeks? Where does that fall? Duh, Christmas.”
“You’re an ungrateful, surprise spoiler,” he shook his head, feigning seriousness. “And because you are, it won’t be a surprise that I’m getting the sexy little bitch a big, badass Rottweiler as a playmate. See how you like that!”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “Fine, but only if it’s a girl. I don’t want any weird puppies later on.”
“Fine,” he agreed.
Sarah sat down on the couch across from Olivia, so Tyse sat next to her. Normally he would have let the sisters have the time together, but when he and Sarah had discussed Olivia’s visit, Sarah had insisted that he be there with her. She was thrilled that Tyse had convinced Olivia to come, but she was also nervous about seeing her sister and didn’t know what to expect.
“Your house is cute,” Olivia stated, glancing around.
“Thank you,” Sarah replied.
“I’m not good at small talk. I’m here because he asked me to be,” she motioned to Tyse. “I’m sure he told you I wasn’t too keen on talking to him. I knew who he was.”
“Yeah, he told me,” Sarah nodded.
“I was a bitch, to be honest. I’m surprised you still want me in your house,” she told Tyse.
“Look, I don’t have anything against you just like you shouldn’t have anything against me, either. I just want some things cleared up so that we can all have some closure.”
“You mean about your family?” she asked directly. “You want to know what their deal is and all that?”
“Meaning?” Tyse questioned.
With a sigh, Olivia shook her head. “Look, I have an arrangement with them, okay? I keep my end of it, they keep theirs, and quite frankly, I really don’t want to be pulled back into this. I’m happy where I am, away from it all. The problem is, I’m kind of pissed off about what I’ve heard. If that’s really the truth,” she looked at Tyse warily.
“Whatever he told you is the truth,” Sarah said. “I know you don’t trust him because he’s a McCallan, but I swear to you, Liv… He’s on our side.”
“Mmhmm, and why should I believe that?” she asked Tyse directly. “I mean you guys pit against each other like dogs. Isn’t the family pretty much split in half? You’re the new guy. Have you found your place yet? And with which pack?”
Tyse didn’t really care for her bitchy attitude, but who was he to judge? She totally had a point.
“My place is with Sarah,” he answered. “She’s all that matters to me right now.”
“And what about your brother and sister?”
“What about them?”
Olivia paused, seeming to search for words. “Are you guys close?”
Tyse took a moment to contemplate. He didn’t need the time to form an answer, but he wondered what she was getting at.
“Actually, yes,” he replied. “We’re very close. They’re both amazing people, and nothing like the rest of the family.”
“And Teague?”
Tyse studied her curiously for a second. Where the hell was she going with this? “Yes, Teague is a good guy. He’s nothing like his brother.”
She paused again. “You had to know… When you tracked me down to talk to me, it was pretty risky of you.”
Tyse slowly nodded his understanding. “I don’t care about what people think of me,” he shrugged. “Finding you was more important. And as for Kellie, Teague, and Jay… They’re the only ones I associate with in the family now.”
“Hmm,” was all she said.
“Look, I get that you don’t trust any of us. I don’t know what to do to convince you that I’m not the bad guy here. I only want to do what’s right, and I want what’s best for Sarah. And right now I think that consists of you telling her what the hell went on with the McCallans. Everything. I’ll even leave the house if you want. I just want you,” he pointed to Liv, “to sit here and talk to her.” He finished by motioning to Sarah.
“Pushy, aren’t we?” Olivia smirked. “Demanding, egotistical, and self righteous? Such powerful McCallan traits.”
“He’s none of those things,” Sarah shook her head with disappointment. “And if you’re going to come into my house and sit there berating him, you can just leave. I don’t need closure from you; I don’t need answers. Not if it means disrespecting both of us in the process. Olivia,” she sighed, shaking her head again in thought. “You’re my sister. During everything that happened, I still don’t understand why you shut me out. All I want is to understand, but if you can’t give me that, then I don’t know what else to say. I’m sorry for everything that happened, I truly am. But I wish I could help make things right again.”
“There’s nothing you can do to make anything right,” Olivia answered. “All of this is in the past for me. You need to at least understand that. I don’t want to relive any of it. But I can see where you’re coming from, and especially because you’ve got…this going on.” She motioned between Sarah and Tyse. “The odds of this completely baffle me.”
“Us meeting each other?” Sarah asked with a smile. She squeezed Tyse’s hand tightly. “Yeah, it’s pretty crazy. But I’m glad. I’ve never been happier.”
Olivia seemed to look her over for a second, and then she looked at Tyse. After a long moment of consideration, she sighed.
“Look, here’s the thing. I really do have an agreement with Craig McCallan but… If you really want to hear the truth, I’m willing to break that agreement if it can stay between us, okay? If they find out I told you… I just don’t want to start this all over again. I really don’t. I’m happy with my life right now. A lot of things in the past still hurt, but there’s nothing I can do about it now.”
Sarah barely nodded. “I understand that. But anything you tell us will stay here. I promise, Liv. Just tell me the truth.”
Olivia took a deep breath. “Okay, but you might be surprised.”
“Hit me with it,” Sarah shrugged. “I don’t think anything would surprise me.”
“Okay,” Olivia nodded. “Well, Max and I were actually engaged to be married back then.”
Well, even Tyse was shocked with that one. He glanced at Sarah, who was obviously stunned as well.
“Told you I could surprise you,” Olivia shrugged. “Yeah, after working together for a few weeks, we started dating. It was absolutely not a publicity stunt like the media kept questioning. We even kept that part of our relationship private.”
“You were engaged to him?” Tyse couldn’t help but ask.
“Max was a different person back then,” she explained. “I hear about stuff now and I almost can’t believe it because he was never like that with me. Honest to God, he treated me very well. It was his father that I had a problem with. I didn’t get a very good vibe from him at all. But Max truly was a gentleman with me, despite what might be said of him now.” Olivia paused for a few seconds as she stared at the floor. “I think I was the one that changed him,” she said softly, looking up at them. “I was the one that broke him to pieces.”
Tyse chanced a glimpse for Sarah’s reaction. She appeared completely taken by surprise.
“I don’t even understand,” she said. “You told me he broke your heart.”
Shaking her head, Olivia answered, “No, I never said that. I only said that I was heartbroken over it. Because I was. I felt horrible, and guilty, and I didn’t kn
ow what to do. He tried to make it up to me, tried to get me back, but… I just couldn’t do it. I wasn’t in love with him. I couldn’t marry him. He promised me the world and I couldn’t do it. I broke things off with him and he was completely crushed. I wasn’t ready to settle down that young, either, even though Max said I could take as long as I needed to.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me that?” Sarah asked quietly. “Seriously, Liv. Why all the confusion?”
“I couldn’t do that to him,” Olivia shook her head. “His career was going smoothly, and despite not wanting to marry him, I really did care about him and wished him the best. I didn’t want all of that information following him around for the rest of his life on a public level. I was trying to protect him. I felt like it was the least I could do for him after hurting him so badly. It was never my intention. I guess I got swept up in the whole first love thing, the publicity of it, and it all just got away from me. At some point, I realized the difference between loving someone and being in love with them. So did Max. The only thing was… We both felt the opposite. He was completely in love with me and never stopped telling me so.
“But I kept that secret locked away. There was no need to make the situation any worse than it was, especially because Max tried so hard to change my mind. It made me feel worse, and I became really angry with myself for causing him to feel so desperate and for how heartbroken he was. I felt like it was better for me to just disappear for a while, and since I really wanted to travel a bit, I did. But Max ended up tracking me down a couple of times to beg me for another chance. He made a trip to Florida once, and then to New York. His dad was worried that Max was going to ruin his career, so he convinced me to do a little more traveling. You know, a lot further than the East Coast.”
“He paid you to distance yourself even further,” Sarah understood.
“Yes,” Olivia answered softly. “And I know how horrible that sounds, but I was really messed up over it and didn’t know what to do. Craig McCallan convinced me that it was the best thing for Max if I really cared about him. And at the time, I had found out that Dad had made a deal with him to get me in that movie with Max in the first place. At that point, my life just seemed really…fabricated. I just needed to get away from it all and carve my own way that time, without Dad pushing me into a career I didn’t want to be in.”
Tyse didn’t know what to say. He was still taking all of the information in. It was a bit contradictory to what he’d been told, even by Sarah, but that was how gossip and hearsay worked. You don’t always get the complete facts, especially hearing it in bits and pieces here and there, and from various sources.
Life was sometimes like a giant fucking tabloid, even if you weren’t in the celebrity spotlight…
“A career you didn’t want to be in?” Sarah repeated. “Did I just hear that correctly? You loved acting, Liv.”
“Did I?” Olivia asked sullenly. “Did I love it? Or was I just really good at faking it.”
Sarah sighed and shook her head. “Well you fooled me, then. But why did you keep doing it?”
“I couldn’t say no. I didn’t want to disappoint anyone. Mom and Dad were always pushing me into different things, and after Mom died, Dad seemed like my success was making him happy. Had I known he was going to sell me to the highest bidder, I would have quit a long time ago.”
The room went silent for several seconds, except for the puppy that was now snoring on Sarah’s lap. Tyse was still trying to wrap his brain around all of this new information, but he knew that it was messing with Sarah even more. He only knew Olivia from what Sarah had told him of her. What he was hearing now didn’t sound anything like she had described before.
“I don’t even know you,” Sarah even said softly. “I thought I did, but… You lied to me, Liv.”
“No, I only kept things from you. And I don’t regret it, either. Seeing Max fall apart like that… You weren’t there, Sarah. You don’t know what that was like. To know someone so well and then realize you don’t want to spend the rest of your life with them, but they don’t feel the same way… It was hell. Absolute torture for me. I felt horrible. And to watch Max turn so bitter because of it… I knew that was my fault. I knew I had hardened him so much, he was never the same. I agreed with his dad. I felt like it was better for me to just disappear so Max could move on with his life. But, that was the one thing the McCallan money couldn’t fix…and that was a broken heart.”
Sarah sighed and stared across the room. Tyse couldn’t even guess what was going through her mind, but he was thinking about Max.
The bottom line?
Max McCallan had turned into a selfish asshole because he’d been destroyed by a woman.
“I’m sorry this isn’t what you expected to hear,” Olivia finally said.
“Well I’m certainly surprised,” Sarah agreed. “I’m still trying to make sense of it all.” She looked at Tyse and said, “They were afraid I would do the same thing to you?”
“They did allude to that, but none of us knew the real reason behind their worry.”
“That I’m a heartbreaker?” Olivia asked with a weak smile. “A soul crusher? A career destroyer? A black widow?”
“Is that what you’ve been called?” Sarah asked with wide eyes.
“From the McCallans, yes. And pretty much anything reckless or irresponsible that Max did after that, was apparently my fault. Like I said, it was really hard for me to deal with back then, and I didn’t want to be known as the girl that destroyed his heart. I already have a hard time with that just knowing it myself. I was okay with letting the public believe it was a mutual breakup—that was part of the agreement with the McCallans, and also absolutely no mention of being engaged—and Max and I were both able to save face that way. Watching him spiral was difficult, though. I tried not to pay attention to what he was doing in his life, but sometimes it was impossible.”
“His actions from that are on him,” Tyse told her. “Yeah, sometimes we do some pretty stupid things when we’ve been hurt, but that was his choice. Shit happens in life—some things we can handle well and some things we can’t—but we all have a decision to make on how we proceed from there. It’s different for everyone.”
“I understand that,” Olivia nodded. She took a deep breath and let it out. “Wow, I’m glad that’s over. And I actually feel a lot better.”
“I’m glad I at least understand a little bit more,” Sarah said.
“Yeah, me too,” Tyse shrugged. “Makes a lot more sense.”
“Again, I only told you guys because… Well, because you’re my sister, Sarah,” Olivia sighed. “I know I’ve been a shitty one in the past, and I probably always will because I have that selfish gene in me, but when I heard what’s been going on with the McCallans, I just wanted to help you out if I could.”
“Well I don’t think much will change with them, but I’m glad I understand your side of it more,” Sarah nodded. “Thank you for trusting us enough to open up. It means the world to me.”
“You’re welcome. And I see that,” Olivia smiled, glancing down at Sarah’s hand holding Tyse’s. “I’m happy for you.”
“Thank you,” Sarah nodded. “But what about you? Is there still someone in your life right now? I know you got married last year or so…”
With a huge smile, Olivia replied, “Yes, someone pretty special. I met him two years ago in London…”
Tyse quietly slipped away for the kitchen to make dinner while the sisters got reacquainted.
Chapter Thirty-Six
“No, no, no… I bet you twenty bucks he starts hitting on Kellie by the end of the night,” Teague argued.
“No way, my money is on her right there,” Jay pointed. “What was her name again?”
“Rayne,” Tyse informed him.
“I knew that,” Jay replied. “I’m terrible with names.”
“I say that neither of them are his type and he just sticks to talking with the guys or Camryn and Mel,” Tyse said.
They’d been people watching for the past ten minutes at Jay and Melanie’s engagement party that was being held in their backyard. Tyse had met Brandon before, but hadn’t spent much time around him. He’d come down to see Cade when he was born, and two other times for barbecues and then for Thanksgiving, but Tyse was still getting to know him. He did, however, feel kind of bad that they were having a little harmless fun at Brandon’s expense.
“I wonder if he’s gay,” Jay shrugged. “Has he ever had a girlfriend?” he specifically asked Teague.
“Uh, I think so. And no, he’s not gay,” he scowled at his cousin. “He’s just…reserved around females. Why do you think any guy that can’t talk to girls is gay?”
“I dunno,” Jay shrugged. “Maybe my testosterone questions it?”
“Maybe he’s just picky,” Tyse offered with a laugh, shaking his head at his brother. “It’s a good thing.”
“Yeah, I suppose. He better stay away from my sister though.” Jay took one last drink of his beer and set the empty bottle on the table. “I’m not allowed to threaten the shit out of him because he’s such a good friend of Camryn’s? That’s not going to be very fun. That’s my fucking right as Kell’s brother.”
Tyse laughed and said, “Since when do you follow the rules?”
“True,” Jay agreed with a nod.
“Nah, man, I agree,” Teague shook his head as he was heading for the house. “No giving him a hard time. He’s a good guy.”
“Hmph,” Jay grunted, grabbing another beer from the cooler. “We’ll see about that.”
“See about what?” Melanie asked, all smiles as she joined them at their table out in the grass. She sat on Jay’s lap and kissed his forehead.
“We’ll see about getting you knocked up again,” Jay answered.
“Pssh, right!” she laughed. “You see that little guy right there?” she pointed to Cade as Sarah and Camryn brought him over to join the group. “He’s a handful as it is. Give me some time to adjust. And let me get married first!” she added, playfully gripping Jay’s shirt in a fist.
