Rushing for the parking lot while she balanced her bag and the chocolate cake she’d made for dinner with his family, Olivia didn’t notice the girl standing next to her car. In fact, she’d already hit the locks and reached for the door when she caught movement close by and jumped with a little yelp. The cake slipped, but she held on to it.
“Allison?” she gasped as the girl stepped away from the bumper. “Good Lord, you scared me.”
Allison set her jaw and didn’t say anything.
Olivia blinked in shock at the sight of her. Not just because her presence was unexpected—and it was—but because she’d changed completely in the three weeks since Olivia had last seen her. Gone was the girl with the long ponytail and slightly bohemian dress. She’d cut her hair into a shaggy, trendy bob and she was wearing dark jeans and a black maternity top that was clearly designed to emphasize her pregnancy rather than hide it.
“Um. Were you waiting for me?” Olivia asked. The cake started to slip again, so she opened the door and set it carefully down.
When she straightened, Allison was glaring. She put her hands on her hips. “We’re getting married,” she said, each letter deliberately crisp.
“Oh. Well. Congratulations.”
“I want you to stay away from him.”
“Allison,” she sighed. “That really won’t be a problem. We’ve been living separate lives for quite a while now.”
The girl smirked. “Yeah, right.”
Good Lord. “Listen, I don’t know what he’s told you, but—”
“What he’s told me is that he’s still in love with you and that you’re going to get back together.”
“That’s not true.”
“Oh, I know it’s not true now. I took care of that.”
She looked so proud, the stupid girl. As if she’d won herself a prize. As if she’d trapped some valuable animal who— Olivia blinked and stared at Allison’s smirk. “Oh, my God, you called the dean, didn’t you?”
Her smirk wavered for a split second, but then she smiled as if she’d wanted Olivia to figure it out. “I had no choice. Victor was obsessed with you. He claimed I tried to trap him by getting pregnant, as if he had nothing to do with it.”
“Did you?”
“No! But once I found out I was pregnant… He just wanted to walk away.”
“I’m sorry. That’s…” Olivia could understand how terrifying that must be, but, then again… “Did you ever think about letting him walk?”
“I’m not going to be like my mom. Kids by three different men, none of whom ever stuck around for more than two years. I didn’t work my ass off in college to end up back where I started. I wasn’t going to let him walk away.”
“So you told the dean.”
“You don’t understand,” she snapped, pointing her finger in Olivia’s face. “After you started dating that guy, Victor couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was driving him crazy. I kept telling him that he had me, but he just… Do you know what he did when I told him we were having twins?”
Olivia’s eyes flew to the girl’s belly in shock. She watched Allison curl a protective hand around her stomach.
“He went to your boyfriend’s bar and got drunk and started a fight with him! As if that was going to change anything! He was panicking, so I did what I had to do.”
“How does getting him in trouble fix anything?”
Allison shrugged. “It’s not much of a scandal if we’re married when the girls are born, is it?”
Oh, she was smart. Olivia could just imagine Victor’s conversation with the dean. This isn’t sordid, sir. In fact we’re getting married in a month. Everything here is on the up-and-up. Not a scandal in sight.
Olivia crossed her arms and looked down at her feet. She wanted to tell Allison she was making a terrible mistake. Why would she want to marry a man who didn’t want to marry her? But anything she said would be shadowed by the specter of the jealous ex-wife. The spurned woman. She—
“Oh, my God,” Olivia breathed. “You’re the one who called Lewis, aren’t you?”
Allison shrugged again. “I figured things would be easier if you had to leave. Then Victor wouldn’t see you every day at the U.”
“You know what? You deserve him. Congratulations.”
“Just stay away from him,” Allison repeated, her eyes glowing with triumph.
“You got it, girl.”
Olivia got in her car and tried not to gloat as she pulled out. After all, she was on her way to see her cute boyfriend. The one who wanted her around and wasn’t in love with another woman. But as she drove away, Allison grew tiny in the rearview mirror and Olivia’s smile faded. Ten years from now, maybe Allison would wake up and realize she had bigger dreams than Victor Bishop. Olivia took a deep breath and wished her luck. The girl was going to need it.
All thoughts of Allison and her reluctant fiancé disappeared like a popped bubble when Olivia pulled up to Jamie’s house and found him sitting on the porch waiting for her. “Am I late?” she asked as she scrambled out of her car.
“Nope.” He leaned in for a kiss as he stole the cake from her hands.
“I’m sorry. We’d better hurry. I don’t want to make you late.”
“Oh, I doubt anybody would be shocked.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true.” He transferred the cake to his truck and dropped her bag inside the house before locking up.
Once they’d pulled out onto the street, she took his hand and squeezed it. “Everything’s going well now, right? With your family?”
“Everything’s great, but it’ll take a while to build up trust. I spent a lot of years breaking it down.”
“I don’t understand. From what I’ve heard, you didn’t do anything too awful.”
“I think it was more quantity than quality. When I was a teenager, I was always skipping school and blowing off assignments and hanging out where I shouldn’t have been hanging out. Sometimes I’d take off for a couple of days, then just waltz back home like nothing had happened. But mostly, I just blew them off. I wanted them to leave me alone. I didn’t want to owe them more than I already did.”
She frowned at him, trying to figure out what he meant.
“But that was in high school,” he said. “I mostly screwed around in college like any other kid at a notorious party school. Since then, I’ve just…gotten by.”
“Why did you feel like you owed them?”
His eyes flew to hers before sliding away again. He shrugged. Traffic stalled out as a huge crowd of bicyclists passed in front of them. A police officer held up his hand when the light turned green. More bikes passed. They must have accidentally cut through a race route.
“What did you owe them?” she pressed.
He shook his head. “Everything.”
“You mean Eric? He took care of you guys, right?”
“Yeah. It’s complicated.”
“By what?”
The last of the bicycles appeared to have passed, but the light had turned red again. Jamie shifted in his seat.
“I’m sure it’s perfectly normal for a teenage boy to act out after his parents die, Jamie. Anyone would. You can’t blame yourself for that.”
“That’s not what I blame myself for.”
“Then what is it?”
He set his jaw and didn’t answer, and Olivia decided to let it go. He’d talk about it when he wanted to, and she didn’t want to start a fight. They’d only made up a week ago and they were on their way to see his family. Now was not the time for tension.
She took his hand and squeezed it. “All that matters is that you’re getting along now. I thought you were happy when I first met you, but now it’s almost like you’ve found peace.”
“Yeah,” he said, squeezing his hand again. “It’s something like that.”
The traffic jam finally gave way, and Jamie seemed to sigh with relief.
“We’re late, aren’t we?”
He laughed. “
We’re not late. I told them we’d be there around six.”
“You told me five-thirty. I’ve been so worried!”
He leaned in and stole a quick kiss. “You know how hot it gets me when you’re responsible.”
“Jamie!” She shoved him back to his side of the car. “Why did you say five-thirty?”
His smile faded and he cleared his throat. “I thought we might stop somewhere else real quick.”
The nervous way his fingers tightened on the steering wheel confused her, but she nodded. “Of course.”
They drove down the street, then took a few more turns until they were in a part of town she didn’t think she’d ever driven through. Jamie pulled into an entry gate that made her sit up straighter. It was a cemetery.
He eased slowly down the narrow lane before he stopped and cut the engine. “I wanted to bring you here because…my parents are buried here.” He gestured up a hill dotted with large trees.
Olivia gasped and reached for the door handle. “Do you want to go up? We can. I don’t really care about being late, Jamie.”
His hand closed over her wrist. “No. I don’t want to. I…I don’t go up there.”
“Ever?”
“Only when Tessa insists.”
She settled back into her seat and watched Jamie as he stared out the window.
“They were really great parents,” he said.
“I’m sure they were. Do you look like your dad?”
His lips turned up for a moment. “Yeah. My mom used to complain that she did all the work of having babies, and we got all of his genes.”
She didn’t know what to say. That she was sorry he’d lost them? Those words seemed so paltry in the face of what had been taken from him. “I’m so sorry,” she said helplessly.
“Me, too. I wasn’t…I wasn’t the son they deserved.”
“Oh, Jamie—”
“It was my fault, Olivia.”
“What was?”
“The accident.”
Her heart clenched and her lungs seemed to freeze. “What do you mean? You were there?”
“No. None of us were there. Tessa was spending the night at a friend’s house. Eric was already living in Denver. And I was out doing what I always did—getting into trouble.”
“So how could it have been your fault?”
Jamie closed his eyes for a moment and swallowed hard, but when he opened his eyes they were dry. “I told my parents I was going to a school dance, but there was no dance. Some rich girl was having a party at her house up in the mountains. I had a car, so I volunteered to be the designated driver. I wanted to do the right thing. But I didn’t. When we got to the party, I started drinking along with everyone else. But then we had to go. My friend had to be home by midnight or he’d be grounded. I was drunk. Everyone was drunk. So I called my parents. I told them I’d had a drink and I needed a ride home. Of course, Mom and Dad jumped in the car. But they never made it. It’d been raining for three days. There was a rockslide. They drove right into a boulder. Never even hit the brakes.”
He let Olivia take his hand, but he didn’t look at her. She tried to swallow her tears. My God. He’d been sixteen. He must have felt… “It was an accident, Jamie.”
“It wasn’t an accident. It was me being irresponsible. ‘Oh, sure, I’ll drive. I’ll just have one beer.’”
“You called them because that was the right thing to do!”
“No,” he said firmly. “The right thing to do would’ve been to not lie and go to the party. Or stay sober when I told my friends I would.”
“You did the right thing by not getting in the car with your friends and driving home drunk. Then you would’ve been dead.”
“I know. But at least my little sister would’ve been raised by a mom and dad instead of two clueless brothers. At least—”
“Stop. Jamie, you can’t blame yourself for an accident. Your family doesn’t blame you, do they?”
He finally looked at her then. “You’re the only one I’ve ever told.”
Oh, God. She saw it in his face then. The reason he’d pushed his brother and sister away. The reason he felt he owed them so much.
“I couldn’t tell them. I didn’t want them to hate me as much as I hated myself.”
“Jamie, no.” She reached for him, getting as close as she could in his car. “Don’t say that.”
“It’s true. I was a coward. I never wanted them to know how worthless I was.”
“Don’t say that,” she managed to say past her tears. “It’s not true, Jamie.”
“It’s okay,” he whispered into her hair. “I’m finally figuring it out. I think I deserve something better than how I’ve been living. At the very least, I want to live in a way that would have made them proud. I owe them that. My parents and my siblings.”
“Jamie, you don’t owe anybody anything. You were sixteen. You made a stupid mistake, but then you did exactly what they would’ve wanted you to.” Tears spilled down her cheeks, but she kept her face against his shoulder so he wouldn’t see. “And no matter how hard you tried to throw your life away, you couldn’t do it, because you’re a good man. You took care of your sister and graduated from college and you worked with your family every day. I’ve never seen you be unkind to anyone. Ever.”
She felt his cheek rise in a smile. “What about that time I punched Victor?”
“That was an act of mercy. For me, anyway. I’m just saying that you were trying to do the right thing. And you’re no more at fault than your sister would’ve been if she’d asked them to pick her up at the mall. You wouldn’t have blamed her, because it was an accident.”
“I can’t see it that way, but I’ve started learning to forgive myself.” He took a deep breath. She watched his chest expand and felt his breath tease over her hair. “I told you about this so you could understand. I’m working on it. I’m trying. And I know I said the wrong things that day we fought, but…”
“It’s okay.”
“Olivia, I don’t like you because I think you’ll make me a better person. Or because you’re smart and mature and I need that in my life. I like you because I think there’s a chance I might actually deserve you. Just a chance.”
Forgetting her vow to hide her crying, Olivia burst into tears.
“Come on. I’m not that bad, am I?”
“Shut up,” she sobbed. “I love you.”
“Yeah?” He eased her away so he could see her face, though she tried to hide her blubbering. “Really?”
“Really,” she gasped, tucking her face back into his shirt so she could cry freely. She loved him so much that she should be scared, but somehow she wasn’t. Whatever would happen would happen, and she was strong enough to bear heartbreak if she had to. But maybe she wouldn’t have to.
“Thank you for telling me what happened,” she whispered. She couldn’t believe he’d lived with that for so long. No wonder he’d been so lost. “You have to tell your family, Jamie.”
He shook his head. “Maybe someday. Not today. I need time. I need to think.”
She let it go. It was his secret. His truth.
“Are you done crying?” he finally asked.
“Maybe.”
“Should we go see my family?”
“Yes.” She sniffled a few times, trying to stop her tears. “Okay. Just give me a minute.” Olivia snapped down the passenger-side mirror to look at her face. “Oh, no. I look terrible.”
“You’re just a little moist. Here.” He stuffed a Dairy Queen napkin into her hand.
She dabbed carefully at her cheeks and told herself it didn’t matter. So she’d be late and blotchy, and it didn’t matter. She’d be with Jamie, and things were good with him, and getting better every day.
Jamie put the car in gear, but for a long moment his foot stayed pressed to the brake. “Next time,” he said, “maybe we’ll go up the hill.”
When she took his hand, his fingers squeezed hers hard. “I think that’s a great idea.”
>
JAMIE GAVE A PERFUNCTORY knock on the front door before opening it wide. He gestured to Olivia and watched as she stepped inside and glanced around the front rooms.
His chest felt suddenly tight. What did she see? It just looked like home to him. Dark wood floors, a big fireplace, the front window where his mom had always put the Christmas tree. It all looked the same to Jamie, but as he followed Olivia in, he realized he was different now.
He didn’t feel like a kid coming home. And he didn’t feel like someone stealing into a place where he didn’t deserve to be. Instead, he felt…good. Peaceful. Happy to have Olivia here. Thrilled to see her smile and reach for his hand.
“It’s beautiful. You must miss living here.”
“No. This house has too many memories. But I’m glad to be here now. With you.”
She always blushed when he said things like that, and she was still blushing when the sound of Tessa’s quick footsteps echoed down the hall.
“Are you ready?” he whispered.
“No!” Olivia answered, her eyes wide with trepidation. “I’m not ready.”
“Too late.” He took the cake from her hands as Tessa rushed into the entry, a wide grin already spreading across her face. “Hello!”
“Hi.” Olivia stepped back as if she were alarmed by Tessa’s mad rush, but Tessa just opened her arms and caught Olivia in a hug.
“It’s so good to finally meet you!”
“Um.” Olivia tentatively patted his sister’s back. “We already met at the brewery.”
“Yes, but not like this. This is official.”
Jamie grinned until Olivia finally smiled at him past his sister’s shoulder. “First girl I’ve ever brought home,” he said with a wink.
Tessa snorted. “First girl whose name we even learned,” she clarified.
Olivia eased out of the hug and laughed. “I feel kind of like I’m your prom date, Jamie.”
“Don’t worry,” Tessa whispered. “I’ll only make you pose for a few pictures.”
Bad Boys Do (Hqn) Page 29
