The bitter irony that his little family had faced the same awful loss as his parents had hadn’t escaped him. But he wasn’t his father. He wouldn’t give in and buckle under the grief he felt. Instead he’d locked his feelings down. He would not be weak or needy. He would not, above all things, need Olivia more than she needed him. When it had become clear to him that she didn’t need him at all, that she’d moved past their tragedy without him, Xander had left.
He groaned out loud. This was doing his head in. He needed a distraction, but what? Or who? He picked up his phone again and scrolled through his contact list. He wasn’t in the mood for testosterone-driven company. His finger hovered over Rachelle’s number. She’d made it more than clear these past few weeks that she was interested in picking up where they’d left off before his accident. In fact, she’d also made it clear she was willing to jump a few steps on that particular ladder.
Was that what would finally dislodge Olivia’s presence from his mind? He could only hope so.
* * *
Rachelle arrived within thirty minutes of his call, and she glided into his arms as if she belonged there.
“I’m so glad you called,” she said with a sultry purr as she lifted her face to his.
He kissed her and tried to feel something, anything but indifference, and failed miserably. Maybe he was just out of practice, he thought. But what about Olivia? You didn’t need any practice there, came the insidious voice in the back of his mind. He pushed the thought away and led Rachelle into his sitting room.
“Would you like a drink?” he offered.
“Sure, a pinot noir if you have it,” she replied, settling herself on the couch and crossing her legs.
He couldn’t help but notice the way her skirt rode up on her shapely thighs. She might be petite, but there was nothing about her that wasn’t perfectly formed—and she knew how to dress to highlight those assets, he acknowledged wryly. Again he anticipated the surge of interest, of desire, that should be starting a slow pulse in his veins. Again, nothing.
Xander snagged a bottle of wine from the wine rack and went to the kitchen to pour them each a glass. He returned to where she sat and passed her the wine. They clinked glasses.
“To new beginnings,” Rachelle said with a glow of hope in her dark brown eyes, flicking her glossy black hair back over her shoulder. “And happy endings,” she finished with a smile.
Xander nodded his head and took a sip of wine. Even that didn’t taste right. In fact, nothing about this evening felt right at all. Rachelle began to talk about work—she’d recently received a promotion and was excited about bringing new ideas to the table. Xander enjoyed her lively conversation and approved many of her ideas, but when she turned the conversation to more personal matters and placed one dainty hand on his thigh as she moved a little closer on the sofa, he knew he had to bring the evening to a premature end.
“Rachelle, look, I’m sorry, but—” he started.
Regret spread across her face, but she mustered up an attempt at a smile. She lifted her hand from his leg and placed her fingers across his lips. “It’s okay,” she said. “I can feel you’re trying, but it’s not working, is it? And, really, you shouldn’t have to try. The problem is—you’re still too married to Olivia. Maybe not on paper and maybe not in your mind, but—” she placed a hand on his chest “—you most definitely are still married to her here, in your heart.”
She leaned forward, put her wineglass on the table and rose from the sofa. “Don’t get up,” she said as he started to rise, as well. “I can see myself out. Oh, and I guess I’d better leave this with you, too.”
Rachelle pulled a key out of a side pocket of her handbag and put it on the table next to her glass.
After she’d gone, Xander stared at the key on the table. He’d given it to her about a week before his accident. They’d been scheduled to attend a client function together, and he’d offered his place for her to get ready since she lived fairly far away. As she’d finished work ahead of him, he’d given her the key so she could let herself in and they’d then traveled to the venue together. He hadn’t asked for the key back that night, or the next day, either, thinking that they would be developing their relationship further. He couldn’t have been more wrong about that—accident or no accident.
He played her parting words over in his head. Was he really still in love with his wife? He got up and took the wineglasses to the kitchen. After pouring their contents down the drain and leaving the glasses on the counter top, he headed to his bedroom.
The room felt empty. Hell, he felt empty. It was past time to be honest with himself. He missed Olivia. And, more, he missed their life together and the new closeness they’d developed during his recovery. But could he forgive her? Could he let himself care for her—and for the baby on the way—when he knew they had the potential to hurt him so deeply?
No easy answers came to him through yet another sleepless night. They didn’t come through a particularly arduous time at work the next day. He was tired and more than a little bit cranky when he arrived back at the apartment at eight o’clock that evening. The last person he wanted, or expected, to see was Olivia standing at his door, waiting for him.
Seventeen
Olivia straightened the second she saw him come out of the elevator and walk toward his apartment. Her face was pale and drawn, and he fought to quell the expression of concern that sprang to his lips.
“Olivia,” he said in acknowledgment.
“I...I couldn’t wait for you to return my call. I needed to see you.”
“You’d better come inside.”
He opened the door wide and ushered her into the apartment. His nostrils flared at the trace of scent she left in her wake, and instantly his body began to react. Why couldn’t it have been like this last night? he asked himself. Why was it only Olivia who drew this reaction from him?
“Take a seat—you look worn-out,” he commented as he put his briefcase down and shrugged out of his jacket. “Have you eaten?”
“Yes, thank you. I had dinner before I drove over.”
“Were you waiting long?”
“Awhile,” she answered vaguely.
He stood and watched as she took a seat.
“Xander, is it really too late for us?” she suddenly blurted, her hands fluttering nervously in her lap. “Can you truly not find it in your heart to forgive me and allow us to start over?”
He pushed a hand through his hair and breathed out a sigh. He’d asked himself the same question over and over last night and still he had no answers. Sure, his heart told him to give in and find a way to make their way forward in their lives again, but his head and his experience emphatically told him to walk away while he still could.
The thing was, he still felt so much for her. Even now every nerve, every cell in his body was attuned to Olivia—to every nuance and expression on her face, to the gentle lines of her body, to the fact she was carrying his baby. Reality slammed into him with the subtlety of an ice bucket challenge. Except this was no challenge. This was his life. The thing was, did he want it? Could he risk everything again and start a new life with Olivia and a baby?
“Xander? Please, say something.”
Olivia’s voice held a wealth of pain and uncertainty. A part of him wanted to reassure her, to say they could work things out. But the other, darker, side remembered all too well the child he’d been, the one who’d come home from school to a house filled with sorrow and devoid of emotional warmth—remembered the void left by his brother that was too big for Xander to fill on his own. A void like that left by Parker’s death. One too painful to imagine even attempting to fill again. Love hurt, no matter which way you looked at it, and he was done with hurting.
He sat down next to Olivia, his elbows resting on his thighs and his hands loosely clasped. His head droppe
d between his shoulders.
“I don’t think so,” he finally said.
“At least that’s more promising than a flat-out no,” Olivia commented, although her voice held no humor.
He turned his head to look at her. Her features were so familiar to him. This was the woman whose gentle touch and quiet encouragement had helped him to recuperate and grow strong again. The woman he’d fallen even more deeply in love with as they’d lived together and made love. If he only let himself, he would be completely vulnerable to her again and to their unborn child. But he couldn’t let go. He had to make the break and make it clean and fast.
“You’d better go. We have nothing to talk about anymore, Olivia,” he said wearily.
“Not until you’ve heard me out,” she insisted. “I have a right to tell you how I feel. I love you, Xander. Not just a little bit, not even a lot. I love you with every single thing I am. Every breath I take, every choice I’ve made since I met you. It’s all about you. I know that some of those choices were the wrong ones, and I’m deeply sorry for those, but I’m learning as I go here. We both were—are,” she corrected herself emphatically.
“I never asked for anything from you,” he replied and started to rise. She grabbed his arm and tugged him back down.
“I know you didn’t. I know you probably don’t even want to admit that you want me, us, in your life at all. It’s why you’re pushing me away now. Why we probably lived such a parallel life before.” She drew in a deep breath, then let it all go on her next words. “I’ve talked to your mother. I know what it was like for you when you were little.”
“You what? Why? You had no right to talk to her.”
Anger boiled thick and fast deep inside. Anger at Olivia for contacting his mother over something that was between the two of them only, and anger at his mother for talking to Olivia when she never spoke to him about the past.
“I needed to know, Xander. I had to find out if we had a chance. When Parker died, I did what I do. What I’ve always done for the past twenty years of my life. I picked up the pieces and I carried on.”
“You didn’t just pick them up. You boxed them up and put them away for good. You treated Parker’s memory as if it was something to be forgotten, something to be swept away as if it had never happened.”
Her voice was quiet when she replied. “It was all I knew how to do. I couldn’t talk about it, Xander. We didn’t talk about emotions in our house, and I suspect your house was very similar. Your mum told me about your dad, about how unwell he was. His grief went far deeper than mourning, and eventually it broke him completely.
“I don’t want that for you, Xander. I want you to be whole. I want us to be whole, together. We can’t do this on our own, apart. But maybe we can pull the pieces back together if we work together. Please, Xander, tell me you’ll try. Tell me we’re worth it.” She took his hand and pressed it on her still-flat belly and begged him, “Tell me all three of us are worth it.”
He looked down at his hand, then up to her face, where her eyes shone with unshed tears. His own eyes burned in kind.
“I can’t tell you what you need to hear.”
He could see this wasn’t the answer she’d hoped for, but she rallied enough for one more try. “Think about it a little longer, Xander. Please. For all our sakes. Neither of us is perfect, but together we can make a good attempt at it. I know I pushed you away. I was as guilty as anyone of not sharing how I felt.
“It’s not that I didn’t care—I cared too much. If I let any of it out, how would I function? How would I manage to keep putting one foot in front of the other day after day? I couldn’t let that grief float to the surface and still care for you at the same time. If I let it out, it would consume me. The only way I knew how to get through was to work. To put away all the reminders. To lose myself in being busy. I never meant to push you away.”
“You didn’t just push me away, Livvy. You pushed away every last physical memory we had of Parker, too. I felt like once he was gone, he didn’t matter to you anymore. You never talked about him. You barely even mentioned his name.”
“I never meant for you to believe that I didn’t think Parker’s life mattered. He mattered. You matter. We matter, don’t we?”
She got up and began to pace the floor.
“After Parker died and you left, I threw myself into my painting. The time I spent working was the only time I didn’t feel the pain of losing you both. All I could do was work, day in, day out. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, but I could paint, so I did. I produced my most emotive work ever. I even scored an agent from the paintings I did at the time, and they became the platform for my current success. But you know what?” She stopped pacing and faced him, her face a mask of pain and remorse. “I can’t take pride in that even now. I feel like I cashed in on Parker’s death. I painted out my grief, my frustration, my anger—my guilt.”
“Guilt? What do you mean?” Xander stood up, his body rigid with tension, his hands curled into tight fists of frustration. “It wasn’t you that left the gate open, nor were you the one who threw the ball for Bozo toward the road. That was all my fault.”
A single tear slipped down Olivia’s cheek. He ached to wipe it away, but he daren’t touch her.
“I know I said it was your fault, Xander. It was far easier for me to point the blame at you than to admit my own accountability for what happened. Parker had been happily playing in my studio that morning—don’t you remember? But the sounds he was making with his train set got on my nerves, and I couldn’t concentrate on my work.
“I told him to go outside. If I hadn’t done that—” Her voice broke off on a gasp of pain, and she hugged her arms around herself tight.
When he said nothing more, she went over to the sofa and grabbed her handbag. “I’m sorry, Xander. More than you’ll ever know. I’d hoped, that if we talked—properly this time—that maybe we could work things out. But I guess the river runs too deep between us now for that to happen.”
Before he could stop her or form a coherent sentence, she was gone. Feeling more horribly alone than he’d ever felt in his life, Xander sank back down onto the sofa and stared out the window. The last rays of the evening sun caressed the peninsula across the harbor. The peninsula where his home lay and, if he was to be totally honest, where his heart lived, as well.
He replayed Olivia’s words over and over, thinking hard about what she’d said and in particular about her admission of fault in what happened that awful day when their world stopped turning. Why had she never said anything about that before?
I did what I do. What I’ve always done for the past twenty years of my life. I picked up the pieces and I carried on.
Of course she did. It was the example her father had set her and it was what he’d clearly expected of her after her mother died. In so many ways it was a mirror to what Xander had gone through as a child. Keep putting each foot forward straight after the other—no time for regret, no time for emotion. Do what needs to be done at all times. And whatever you do, don’t talk about it.
Could he have made more effort to salvage their marriage after Parker died? Of course he could have. But he’d been turned in too much on himself. Focused too hard on protecting that facade that he’d spent most of his lifetime building, as his mother had built hers. He’d never seen his mother show weakness, never seen her so much as shed a tear. When the going got tough, as it had so often as she struggled to keep everything together, she just worked harder. And wasn’t that exactly what he’d done, too?
When Olivia had told him they were expecting a baby, he’d thrown himself into work. He’d distanced himself from her and from the impending birth by doing whatever he could to ensure their financial security. He’d earned a promotion along the way. Successes like that he could measure, he could take pride in. What the hell did he know about being a father? Heav
en knew he hadn’t had a good example of one to call upon. He hadn’t had any time to research it, to even get his head into the idea—they’d had no discussion, nothing, before she’d sprung it on him. And then to his amazement, when Parker had been born, the bond and the love had been instant. Equally rewarding and terrifying in its own right.
Fatherhood had become an unexpected delight. He’d been amazed at how effortlessly Livvy had transitioned from high school teacher to homemaker and mother. She did everything with an air of efficiency and capability that was daunting. Did she never question her ability to be a good parent? Did she never question his? If she had, he’d never seen any sign of it.
Part of his original attraction to her had always been to her self-sufficiency, but that very thing was what had slowly driven a wedge between them. It shifted the balance. But what he realized now, weighing her words and the feelings she’d finally opened up to him about this evening, was that in trying not to become a victim of his past, in trying not to be like his father, he’d fallen in the trap of behaving like his mother.
Why hadn’t he been able to see that he didn’t need to be a part of a dysfunctional relationship? When had he lost sight of all that was good and right about life? He thought back to the joy and excitement of meeting Olivia, of falling in love with her. He’d met a lot of women over time—beautiful, strong and successful women—and none of them had touched his heart the way she did. Why should it be wrong to be vulnerable to the one person he wanted to be close to?
Had he, with his own determined aloofness, contributed to the demise of their marriage? Of course he had. He had to accept that he couldn’t be all things to all people. Surely his own mother’s example had shown him that. Then why had he followed her path in life instead of his own?
The Wife He Couldn't Forget Page 15
