by Ana Lewin
“More like someone that you’ve got to do,” Oscar chuckled under his breath and she glared at him, but a smile played at the corner of her lips.
“It’s not like you have anyone to do, so I think I’m winning here,” she left the room to a trio of snorts, relieved as usual that no one seemed to care about her relationship with Grant. The guys had known from the start that something was going to happen between them, and even though they hadn’t exactly had a big group discussion about it they were infinitely supportive.
She didn’t bother waiting for an answer to her knock when she went into Grant’s room, used to the deal by now. They practically lived in this room together.
But today was different. Grant was rifling through the dresser drawers, pulling out anything that belonged to her, and folding it neatly to place it on the bed. Her heart started pounding double-time in her chest as he turned around to look at her, his expression completely unreadable. “What are you doing?” she couldn’t keep the raw emotion out of her voice, even with years of training from her mother.
“We can’t do this anymore.”
With those words it felt like the house was crumbling to pieces around her, and she took a deep breath before speaking in a shaky voice. “What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said. This,” he gestured between them, “can’t continue to happen. It was a terrible idea from the start and I shouldn’t have let my physical attraction to you inform my decisions.”
He went back to pulling her clothes out of drawers and folding them and she stood there watching the motion, hypnotized by it. When he got through the last drawer and picked up a pile to bring over to her, she found her voice again. “Is that all this was to you? Physical attraction?”
She’d been sure that she’d felt more between them, but then again they’d never said the words. And that doubt came roaring back, doubt about the fact that Grant had never asked her to be his girlfriend. Maybe Maeve was wrong and that was because he’d never wanted to be attached to her in any official capacity? Their eyes met and she caught the way he set his jaw before he spoke. “Yes,” the word sounded forced, but that was likely her wishful thinking. “That’s all it was. We could never work in any real capacity. You have plans for school and a life to live and I’m fourteen years older than you, living on a ranch.”
“I… I want my plans for school to work around us.”
“No you don’t. Not really. You’re just so smitten with me that you think I’m worth working your life around. News flash: I’m not. You should go out and do what you’ve always wanted to do.”
Olivia didn’t have a clue what to say to that, so she took the pile of clothes that he held out to her, eyes wide with tears beading in the corners. The more he spoke the more she realized that he’d never wanted her anyway. At least, not in the same way that she wanted him. Here she was falling in love with the man and all he wanted to do was mess around with her heart and her head.
There was no fight left in her and she strode to the bed to pick up the rest of the clothes, not caring that the pile was threatening to fall right over and coat the floor in thrift store finds. Grant didn’t seem to have anything left to say, and she didn’t either. Instead she walked right out the door, slamming it behind her. As she made her way down the flight of stairs to the bedroom she’d originally been staying it, she realized she knew exactly what she had to do.
Chapter 11
Grant
The longer she was gone the more he paced. Back and forth. Back and forth. From window to wall and then wall to window and repeat. Grant wasn’t sure what he was expecting. It wasn’t like she was going to come back when he’d brushed her off cruelly enough to make her cry. But he couldn’t stop moving. The sun set completely and he was still pacing when his phone rang, the tone shrieking through the room. There was a crazy glimmer of hope that it might be Olivia, so he didn’t even look at the call display before answering it.
“I’m surprised you picked up,” the smooth voice on the other end of the line wasn’t Olivia. It was Bri.
He sighed, finally able to stop moving long enough to sit down. “Didn’t check the call display. What the hell do you want?”
He’d heard about her engagement falling apart, but he wasn’t enough of an asshole to bring it up. Let alone inform her that he thought she deserved exactly what she’d gotten. “I was hoping we might go out to dinner sometime.”
Snorting, the sound morphed into full-out belly laughter. “Are you asking me out? After what you did?” it took a while for him to be able to speak, all the while listening to silence on the other end of the line. He wasn’t even sure if she was still there.
“I want to apologize. There were some things that I did that… well, they were wrong.”
She sounded surprisingly sincere, but he wasn’t interested in being conned again. “You can do that on the phone. I’m listening.”
There was a pause followed by a sigh. “Fine, I get it. You’ve probably heard by now that I’ve gotten royally fucked by my fiance, and not in a good way. It kind of made me want to change my ways. Be a better person. I’m realizing as I say that how cheesy and ridiculous that sounds, but I guess I’m already on the fucking phone with you. So I’m sorry. I screwed you hard and it was wrong. I wish you and Olivia the best.”
“Olivia and I aren’t together anymore,” the words tumbled out of his mouth before he could stop them, even though she absolutely didn’t need to know that.
Another pause on the line, a clearing of a throat. “Why?”
Bri had never been all that concerned with asking personal questions of other people, so he wasn’t surprised that she asked. Even though they’d been broken up for three years and were now the rough equivalent of perfect strangers. Or worse, enemies. Grant didn’t have to tell her anything, but once again he found himself telling her before he could stop himself. As if she was some impartial party he could vent to, and maybe even get advice. Although, knowing Bri and her history, any advice she gave would have to be taken with more than a few grains of salt. “She’s too young for me. Has dreams and all that. More of a city girl than the kind of woman who’d want to live on a ranch for the rest of her life.”
“You’re grossly attached to living on that ranch,” before he could deny it she continued. There was an image in his head of her waving him off like she had back in the day. The woman was cocky enough that it was a miracle they’d lasted three years. “Yeah, yeah. I know why. Family history and all that bullshit. But it’s kind of pathetic that you’re still using the ranch as an excuse for why you’re single.”
“Excuse me?” he grit his teeth to stop himself from cussing her out.
“Grant, Olivia screams ‘little country bumpkin’ to me and everyone else that’s ever looked at her. She’s made for small-town living more than she was ever made for New York City. What kind of dreams does she have that can’t be completed while living on your little slice of horse hell? I’m willing to bet you’re just insisting that she won’t be happy here because you’re worried about her promising to stay and then leaving you. Like I did. As far as I’ve been able to gather, you’ve done something similar to every woman you’ve dated since me.”
“I wonder why?” his tone had venom, but he was sure that Brianna didn’t flinch. She was used to dealing with all sorts of conflict at this point, most of which she intentionally caused all by herself.
“Well it’s because of me, of course. That’s why I wanted to call and apologize so that maybe you could have some closure and you and Olivia would work out. Apparently, that train has already left the station. I’m a bit late.”
He didn’t know what to say to that. Brianna had never admitted that she’d been wrong before and while he supposed she hadn’t exactly admitted that she was wrong in this instance either, she’d given what felt like an honest apology. It was like he was talking to a completely different woman than the one who’d left him three years ago. “That Brandon guy really fucked you up,
didn’t he?”
This was the longest pause yet, almost long enough that he checked to see if the line had gone dead. “A lot of things have really fucked me up in the last three years. I’m not where I wanted to be or where I planned to be. Apologies are the only first step I can see to getting my life back on track and maybe getting myself some good karma for once.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in karma.”
“If you’d been fucked as hard as I have, you would have changed your mind too.”
A small part of him felt sorry for her, this woman who had messed up her life so badly that she didn’t know how to fix it. He had a feeling it wasn’t just about Brandon. Hell, he probably wasn’t even the largest motivating factor for this call. “For what it’s worth, I hope you get a chance to get what you wanted when you moved to New York.”
“And I hope you get your ass in gear and get your woman back so you can stop sabotaging your own damn love life. It’s been three years, I think it’s time for you to get over my ultimate betrayal.”
She had a point, although he hated to admit it. He’d been pushing Olivia away and hadn’t even asked her what she wanted. Just because she was young didn’t mean that she didn’t know what she wanted. “You know what, fuck you for messing me up this badly,” he didn’t sound as angry as he should.
“If it makes you feel any better, you now know that karma came around and got me back twice as hard for what I did to you. Have a good night, Grant. Thanks for taking my call.”
It sounded like she’d needed the chat too. He couldn’t hate her as much as he had before, not when he knew that she was trying to change. And especially not that he now realized everything hadn’t been here fault. She hadn’t ruined his life. That was all him because he hadn’t done the work to fully get over the betrayal. It was about damn time to do that. “Thanks for the apology,” he didn’t know whether to say ‘see you again’ because he doubted he would unless she started dating another Pelmsemet native. “Goodbye, Brianna.”
Settling on a simple goodbye, he hung up the phone and collapsed down on the bed, somehow drained from the conversation. He’d meant to head straight down to Olivia’s room to apologize for everything but before he could, he passed out right there on the bed, fully clothed and all.
***
Palms sweating, Grant knocked on Olivia’s door first thing the next morning. It was early enough that she probably wasn’t out and about yet, but not too early that she was still asleep. He’d tried to time it perfectly. He would need perfect timing if this apology was going to work out. A couple of flowers he’d cut from the front gardens nearly slipped from his sweaty palms and his nerves spiked when he didn’t get a response from inside the room. Another knock, but this time he pressed his ear to the door. Not even the rustling of blankets.
Worried now, he knocked one more time and then opened the door an inch. “Olivia, are you in there?”
The lack of an answer had him pushing the door open all the way as a whoosh of air left him.
There wasn’t a single sign of her in this room. The bed was unmade, sheets and blankets freshly laundered and folded at the foot of the bed. Every surface was clear of her things and when he stalked over to the dresser not a single item of clothing was in any of the drawers. It didn’t even smell like her anymore. It was like she’d never existed here and he’d been dating some kind of ghost. Except for the two white envelopes on the desk, the top one labeled ‘Honeydew Ranch Staff’ and the bottom one labeled ‘Grant Dewit’.
Ripping open the one with his name on it he tried to find some explanation as to why she’d fled in the middle of the night but instead he only found one piece of paper, folded so that he could see the scratched out block letters as soon as he pulled it out. ‘Fuck you.’ “Fucking hell,” he cursed, kicking the desk and immediately regretting it when his toes ached from the contact. “I can’t believe she left in the middle of the night.”
“I can,” he turned to find Levi leaning against the door to the room, cocking an eyebrow at the note. The letters were huge enough to read from across the room. “If your grumpy mood at dinner last night was any kind of a hint, I’m assuming you broke up with her with some bullshit excuse about following her dreams.”
“You know what, I already got this spiel from Bri. I don’t need it from you too.”
To his credit, Levi managed to hide his surprise at the fact that Grant had been talking to his most-hated ex-girlfriend about his current ex-girlfriend. Although… technically they’d never made it official, so she was more his ex-lover. But damn it, it felt like she had been his girlfriend. “Fine. But you need to figure out what you’re going to do because I can guarantee that you’re going to be nothing short of miserable if you don’t go after her and at least try to fix whatever mistake you made last night.”
“I already know what I’m going to do.”
He’d figured it out the second he’d realized that Olivia had taken off. Levi pushed off from the door. “And what’s that?”
“Well, I’m going to have to find out where she lives in New York. Who do you think is the best at internet research?”
They both knew the answer to that, and they headed out to the barn to find him.
Thirty minutes later and all four of the staff members at Honeydew Ranch were huddled up around the dinosaur of a computer in the office, looking instead at the pristine screen of Oscar’s tablet. They were shirking all sorts of morning duties that they would have to rush to catch up on later, but Grant found he didn’t care. For once, the ranch wasn’t the most important thing in the world. Olivia was.
“Her parents are even crazier than she mentioned they were,” Finn commented, pointing at yet another picture of a smiling woman in an expensive gown at a gala. Marianna Montgomery, Olivia’s mother. “From what these articles say they go to every big event of the year. With their jobs they can’t be that rich, can they?”
Oscar shrugged. He had the most experience with the big city upper class. “Could be family money. I’d probably say it is family money for them. These people don’t look like they’re particularly financially conscious.”
There was another picture of the couple holding a big cheque for charity, with Olivia standing just off to the side. The smile on her face was fake, and she was side-eying the cheque like it was going to bite her. “Isn’t it possible that David or Marianna Montgomery struck it big with some kind of business?”
“There’s no mention of it anywhere on Google, and they don’t seem like the type to keep it quiet. As far as I can tell they just have their jobs and their family money and that’s how they live. Probably how they’ve always lived.”
As curious as he was about Olivia’s family, that wasn’t what they were here for. “We need to find where they live. Or where Liv lives, or at least who her goddamn friends are or something.”
“You realize people don’t just post their address on their Facebook accounts, right?” Oscar looked up at him for a second before going back to his scrolling. “We might be able to find a phone number if someone doesn’t have their privacy settings up high enough, but don’t count on an address.”
They started with Olivia’s profile and scrolled through profile after profile, looking for anything associated with her. Anyone who might answer the phone when he called and tell him where he could find her because he knew Olivia wouldn’t. When he saw the name Maeve, it caught his eye. “Wait. Her. I think I remember her saying that her best friend’s name was Maeve. There can’t be that many Maeves.”
Sure enough, they scrolled down and found some pictures of the two of them in downtown New York, posing in front of some giant office building. By that point Levi had made his exit, not all too impressed by the balmy air in the cramped office and insistent that he had too much to do today to help with this. Finn was still sitting in the corner, watching without offering input. That was typical of him.
Much to both of their surprise, Maeve’s phone number was easily ava
ilable on her profile. Oscar launched into a rant about how people should be more conscious of their privacy settings and what information they’re allowing these services to have, but Grant was too focused on adding the number into his phone and writing it down on a piece of paper. Gesturing to Oscar, he said, “I need your phone.”
He only looked confused for a second before handing it over for Grant to key in the phone number. They needed to know if it was still connected, still one that she picked up. It rang three times as he put it on speakerphone and then a cheerful feminine voice spoke over the tinny sound system. “This is Maeve’s phone. Are you interested in a handy, a blowy, or the full package today? We have very competitive prices here.”
Grant had meant to just hear the message and hang up as if it was a prank call or a butt dial, but the two other men in the room burst out into laughter when they heard that. There was a snarky tone in the woman’s voice that told him she wasn’t actually offering prostitution services, but he had to wonder why she answered the phone like that. “I take it you boys aren’t interested in my services today. Call back when you want to talk about more than just business opportunities.”
The line went dead and Grant finally snorted with laughter, more confused than anything. But it didn’t matter what Olivia’s best friend was up to with her strange phone greetings. All that mattered was that Maeve’s phone was still connected and still being answered, and when he got to New York City he would be able to call and beg her to tell him where Olivia was so he could apologize.
That was all he needed.
Chapter 12
