by Chloe Cox
“Looks like it.” Jack looked sideways at her, and she saw he was finally taller than her. Even in heels. “He’s been really busy, actually. He’s been different, Liv.”
“But he’s good?”
She looked at her brother. She looked back at the figure of her father, back turned to her, but standing up straight. Gesturing. Making the other guy laugh.
Olivia answered her own question. “He’s better, at least.”
Then she stumbled back and sat down heavily in one of the chairs they always had out there for breaks. She shot right back up again, because it was made of metal and had been sitting in the sun all freaking day, but after that she just didn’t care. Took off the heels, sat on the ground.
Exhausted.
Turns out running to fix a crisis that never existed is kinda tiring. Come to think of it, she’d been on that particular treadmill for almost ten years. She’d always thought she just had to do it. But they were fine! How long had they been fine? Maybe what had started out as just what she needed to do during some dark years had, at some point, turned into a vocation. Because she thought she deserved it.
What had been the point?
She’d only really begun to live her own life a few weeks ago, in a different city, with a sexy pirate-looking Dom.
Nope, do not go there. She didn’t want to start crying. She didn’t want to have to explain.
“How did this happen?” she asked. “When? I mean, what…”
Her brother sat down in the dirt next to her.
“Sometimes I forget how long it’s been since you’ve been back. Probably because you call me too much.”
Instinctively, she whacked him in the arm, but her heart wasn’t in it. He grinned back at her. Then he followed her gaze, to where their father was charming a customer, like in the very old days.
“It was a slow change,” Jack said. “I don’t really know what did it. We got a dog? Church helped. Some group there that he went to. But honestly, I think he stopped blaming himself.”
Olivia looked at her brother sharply.
“What are you talking about? Why would Dad blame himself?”
“I’m not saying it makes sense, it’s just, you know. The fight.”
“The what?”
“Dad told me about it. That—”
“Wait. Wait, wait, wait. Dad told you about it?” she said. “You guys talk? About stuff?”
“I mean, sometimes. Just the normal amount.”
The normal amount. Olivia had no earthly idea what that would be. The last time she had an actual conversation with her father she’d been sixteen and terrible. After that…
“What fight?” she said again.
Jack looked down and picked up a sun-warmed pebble, started scratching in the dirt like when he was little. Olivia smiled, despite everything. Some memories were always going to be golden.
“The fight Mom and Dad had that night,” Jack said, focusing on his dirt art. “He told me that’s why she went out instead of him. Because she was so mad at him. It seems dumb, but I think he blamed himself. I think that’s why he was so depressed for so long.”
Shit.
Shit shit shit.
Do not cry.
“Did you know it was me?” she said.
“What?”
“It was me,” Olivia said, too tired to sugarcoat it. “I was the reason she went out, because I’d snuck out after curfew to go see Danny Kincaid. Who dumped me, by the way. I’d snuck out, and then Danny dumped me, and I was crying and kind of drunk, and I called home because I didn’t have a ride and the world was ending anyway, so who cared if I got grounded too. It was the first time I ever got dumped, and I just…I wanted my mom.”
She made herself look at her little brother, braced for him to hate her, or be angry, or hurt, or…just something. And she realized he might not remember what it was like to just want your mom, and the tears made another run at it.
“Come on, suck it up, Cress,” she muttered. “Sorry, Jack. Sometimes I forget how young you were.”
Jack shrugged.
“I only ever wanted you when I got hurt,” he said.
“Oh, come on!” Olivia said, and pulled out tissue. “This is like, triple black diamond stoicism right now. No one could pull this off.”
“Let it out, dude,” her brother said. “Besides, I think you’re both crazy. She had a heart attack at the wheel, Liv. That’s not anyone’s fault.”
Shaking her head, Olivia changed the subject.
“Who is that?” she asked.
‘That’ was a woman with a clipboard and a frankly kick-ass skirt suit, laughing along with her father and that customer. But mostly with her father.
“That’s our new finance wizard,” Jack said. Then he grinned. “I think she’s out of Dad’s league, but no one’s told her that yet, so…”
Olivia looked at him.
“Holy crap.”
“Yeah.” He nodded, like he’d just shown her the eighth wonder of the world. “So…are you back for good? Or…”
Good question.
She didn’t like thinking about it, so she hadn’t. It was pretty easy to avoid thinking in the middle of a crisis anyway, even if she’d only imagined it. She loved her family, but this place didn’t feel like home. Nothing had felt like home for a long time, until pretty recently, and that was something else she was absolutely not allowed to think about, even if the memory of him followed her everywhere.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Jack looked at her, then got up off the ground, quick and easy. He offered her his hand and pulled her up and into a hug, before she could prepare. An unsolicited, full-on, real brother bear hug. She’d almost forgotten how good that felt.
“Do what you need to do,” he said. “I’m pretty sure you’ve never even taken a vacation day.”
“So?” she said.
“So maybe it’s time.”
“Stop being a grownup, it’s weirding me out.”
“Done,” he said, then tickled her ribs and scampered away. He was still smiling when he saw something past her, over her shoulder. Then he waved. “I’ll see you back inside,” he said.
She knew what that meant.
Olivia took one last, deep breath. Then she turned around.
“It’s good to see you, Liv,” her father said.
He wasn’t as easy as he’d been with the finance lady, or even the customer. None of the charm. Just a lot of unease in his weathered face—she never could get him to wear sunscreen, it still drove her crazy—a lot of not being sure how to proceed. Olivia had no idea, either. There were a lot of years between them. A lot of stuff to work out.
Screw it.
She stepped forward and into the unknown and wrapped her father in the best hug she knew how to give. He hugged back, and the last of a certain kind of weight lifted from her shoulders.
The biggest cracked fault in her life had begun to heal. There was nothing that could take that away. Everything was kind of great.
But there was one person she wanted to share it with, and she felt his absence like an aching phantom limb.
39
Olivia had never been particularly ambitious about acting. She worked hard, but she hadn’t been in it for the celebrity, and she’d always been a little bit weirded out by that part of it. She felt bad about it, because she was mostly surrounded by people who were pursuing their lifelong dream, and she was just…cashing in while she could.
But the one thing she’d envied about the super famous was that they didn’t have to audition. Now she remembered why that was so enviable.
It was a room full of women who looked just like her. All of them up for the same part. All of them about to be grilled and, if she were being honest, probably humiliated.
And all of them pretending not to look at Olivia, the only one of them who had recently been in the news for her sex life, or lack thereof.
Olivia walked back towards the end of the hall and turned the
corner. There was a secondary exit here, and it made her feel better to know she could bolt at any time.
Which was maybe a little bit insane.
You’re just nervous.
She couldn’t focus on the pages she’d been given. Instead she dug her phone out of her bag and turned even more inward.
“Adra?”
“Hey kiddo. What’s up?”
Even Adra sounded apprehensive, like she’d expected this phone call. Olivia looked back at all the women who looked like her, and opened the door out onto the parking lot. Probably she would hear if they called her name.
“Nothing?” she said. “I don’t know.”
“Oh.” There was a pause. “Are you having any problems? Denise runs a professional shop, but if—”
“No, it’s not that,” she said. “But thanks for asking.”
The door opened out onto the parking lot almost exactly where she’d parked, and she stared at her new car. Well, new in name only. She’d taken her old jalopy from her dad’s place with his blessing. It was the first car they’d worked on together, before everything had gone to hell.
She smiled.
“Olivia? Is it the role? Talk to me.”
“It’s not the role. Promise me you’ll tell me if this is about to screw you over so I can find a way to make it up to you?”
Adra laughed. “What did you do?”
“Nothing, I haven’t gone up yet,” she said. “It’s just…I think the only role I want to play from now on is myself.”
The second she said it, she felt it. Letting go of fear was now a distinct physical sensation, one she was getting better at each time she did it. The second she stopped fighting, and gave herself up to something—the universe, God, the ineffable spark of whatever in everyone. Her Dom.
That was when she could be herself.
First time she’d felt that had been with Gavin. That first scene. And now it was like muscle memory, like riding a wonderful bike. She smiled, and sighed.
“Does that make any sense?” she asked.
“It makes perfect sense,” Adra said, warmly. “Any idea what you want to do?”
Olivia blinked. She had no clue. She’d never asked.
“Maybe go to school?”
“UCLA? I know a few great people over there.”
“Thanks, but…”
Olivia had said it without thinking, but when she looked inside, it felt true. For whatever reason, New Orleans, with all the craziness, was where she wanted to be. It was the place she’d started being herself.
Of course, she’d have to find a way to be around Gavin.
That…was going to suck.
“I have some stuff to figure out.”
“How about Tulane?”
That voice.
Olivia gripped her phone so hard her knuckles paled. Slowly, she turned around, trying to prepare herself.
Nothing could have prepared her.
“Was that him?” Adra said excitedly in her ear. “Did he just get there? I gave him a shortcut but—”
“I’ll call you later,” Olivia whispered, and hung up.
Gavin Colson stood behind her, all in black, with a two-day beard. He didn’t look like he’d slept much, but his eyes glittered with that same intensity. He carried a big grocery bag in one hand.
She was grateful to that grocery bag, whatever it was. It was the only thing keeping her from just running into him, holding onto him, getting to smell him. And she knew she could not—would not—do that. She wouldn’t come back from it.
This wasn’t a fairytale. He didn’t get over a decade of pain overnight. And she couldn’t let herself love a man who lived in the past, because she knew she couldn’t take it.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered.
“Adra told me she thought you were on the fence about this whole thing. Didn’t know if you could do it. I came here to tell you that you could, if you wanted to.”
“I don’t need you to tell me that,” she said. Then she thought about it. “Anymore.”
Gavin smiled, that scarred-lip pirate grin.
“I know,” he said. “There was one other thing.”
He came toward her, and she steeled herself for it. The brain-melting heat of his touch. Right now, it was a very specific form of torture.
“Gavin…”
Instead he placed the grocery bag at her feet. It was filled with boxes.
Bakery boxes.
“You pick randomly, it’s still a surprise,” he said. “I didn’t have time to bake, but I was damn well going to surprise you with pie, one way or the other.”
Olivia brought both her hands to her face, and took a deep breath. She was not going to cry.
“This is very sweet,” she said, and she looked at the bag on the ground, full of pies, because there was no way in hell she could look at him while she said this. “This is very sweet, and you are very sweet, in your own way. But…”
You can do this.
“But that wasn’t the problem,” she said. She’d dropped her hands to her sides already, and now she balled them into fists. “That wasn’t why you told me that our ‘arrangement’ was over. And I’m not strong enough to…”
And she forced herself to look at him.
He looked so different from the last time. Not an expressionless statue, hard and unyielding. Gavin looked at her with all of it painted on his cracked, human face. Pain and regret, but mostly…
Don’t think it.
He took a half-step toward her, but she shook her head. She was barely hanging on.
“I was wrong,” he said. “And I am sorry for it. I overreacted when Delavigne threatened you—”
“Wait, what?”
Gavin’s eyes flashed Dom. Olivia stopped talking, and wanted to kick him for it.
“Doesn’t matter,” he rumbled. “Truth is I was looking for a reason. Because I’d had ten years to twist myself up over something, and that’s a long-ass time, so it took me a while to get…less stupid.”
Now he did take a step towards her. She didn’t say anything. She couldn’t look away.
“There’s something I need you to know, and something I need to ask you,” he said.
Gavin stood in front of her, blocking out the world, the sun warming his skin and letting the tiny scar shine pale. His whole body seemed to breathe with his words, like all of him was just here, in this moment. In front of her.
“Look at me,” he said.
“Oh God, I don’t think I have a choice,” she breathed.
Gavin grinned again, and oh good Lord, it was still sexy. He bent his head, and made sure he’d locked eyes with her.
“I’ve got a mess to clean up,” he said. “And I’m going to fix this, with or without you, but you need to know: it’s because of you. You were the light. You showed up and you were so damn bright that I couldn’t take my eyes off you and I couldn’t help but see. You showed me myself, and nobody else in the world could have done that, because there’s nobody I have ever loved the way I love you. I owe you all of that.”
“Gavin,” she said, and she choked on a sob, still fighting it. “Please? Please don’t…I am barely keeping it together right now, and—”
“Come back to New Orleans with me,” he said.
Everything stopped.
“What?” she said.
“I want to be part of whatever life you make for yourself, Liv,” he said. And now he did grab her hands in his, and brought himself close, his big body straining with everything he had to say.
He said, “I want you. By my side, in my bed. Probably for the rest of our lives, but I’ll let you call it.”
Well, that was it. She was only human.
Olivia burst into tears.
Gavin smiled softly, and then he drew her closer, until his arms could wrap around her, until she could trust the safety there. When she looked up, he kissed her tear-stained cheek and pressed his forehead to hers.
“You know I’m a mess, to
o, right?” she said.
“Oh man, yeah,” he said. “Your mom died, you took care of your family, you never got to be yourself. It’s not rocket science.”
She pinched him.
“Do you have any idea how long it took me to figure that out?”
“‘Bout as long as it took me, and you didn’t have Charlene yelling at you like a pissed-off football coach to help you out,” he said. “I can’t fix it for you, but I’m damn well gonna be there for you while you do it.”
“Promise?”
Gavin didn’t say anything, not for a long while. He held her tighter, in that dumb parking lot, with a stack of pies melting in the sun, and he smiled.
“Only if you give me a ride,” he said finally.
Olivia pinched him again, and this time Gavin didn’t let it go. He swept her up, grinning that pirate grin, and pinned her against the hot brick, somehow sending a shiver through to her core. He let himself look at her, really look at her. And then he kissed her.
Holy God, did he kiss her. He kissed the fairytale right into her, until she was barely breathing, and barely standing.
Then he pulled back, looking slightly sheepish for the first time, possibly in his entire life.
“I really do need a ride, though,” he said. “They were out of cars at the airport and no way in hell I was gonna waste any more time.”
Olivia laughed, and pointed at the jalopy behind him.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said.
“This is your car?”
“Yeah, first one I ever fixed up,” she said, and walked with maybe a little bit of extra sass in her hips around the front of the big car, towards the driver’s seat.
When she looked up, Gavin was rooted to the ground, his mouth still open.
“What, I never told you the family business was auto parts?” she said innocently. “How do you think I got so good at messing them up?”
Gavin looked at the car, then looked back at her.
“You drive like that on purpose?” he said.
She shrugged. “It’s fun.” Then she smiled. “You mad?”
“Nah,” Gavin said, walking around to the passenger door. He thumped on the roof, then looked at Liv, that grin in full effect. “Just thinking about how I’m gonna punish you for messing with my car.”
