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I felt her slipping away again. Then again, it had been of her own doing the first time.
It seemed as if history did have a nasty way of repeating itself.
29
Olivia
I felt like shit. It had been two days since my fight with Brett, and the only thing I could focus on was what he’d said. I picked it apart. Analyzed it. Thought back more on my college years than I ever had. And I found that he was right. He was right about everything he had accused me of. Not the cheating, of course. The only person I knew he could have been talking about was Oliver, the teaching assistant from one of my classes. He was gay. Very gay. Nowhere near a threat to someone like Brett. But it did give me insight as to why Mason wasn’t a fan of me. Brett said Mason had snapped pictures of me in that coffee shop. Which meant that his best friend was under the assumption that I had cheated on him.
I wouldn’t like anyone, either, if I thought they had cheated on Katie.
Even as we went through the meeting in London, my mind picked apart my college years. And there were a lot of things that backed up Brett’s accusations. Times when I ran to Katie before him. Like when I wanted to celebrate over barely scraping by in a class I had almost been failing. A class Brett had tutored me through. Instead of celebrating with him, the man who’d helped me get through it, I’d celebrated with Katie and told him about it the next morning.
Another case in point: I celebrated my twenty-first birthday out with Katie. We went dancing that night, and she’d bought me my first drink. I hadn’t celebrated with Brett until that weekend, after all of the excitement had already died down. From anyone’s point of view, that was exactly what I had done. I’d constantly prioritized Katie—someone who’d intentionally tried to wiggle her way into my relationship—over the man I was in the relationship with.
I didn’t want to take sides. I didn’t enjoy playing that game. But I understood Brett’s side of it.
And it made me feel sicker than I already did.
Neither of us had spoken to each other since the fight. We slept in two separate beds while in London and never conversed outside of the meetings. I ventured out in the city by myself. Ate by myself. The only time it seemed as if Brett was around was when he caught me getting sick in my own bathroom. I’d find his shadow looming outside of the bathroom door, but he’d be gone by the time I cleaned myself up.
Things had gone well in London, but I could tell by how Brett interacted with his connections there that he didn’t have plans to put his headquarters in England.
The meeting went well enough. Contacts were reassured and business dinners were had. Brett did more schmoozing to keep his connections than actual talk of settling in the area. Even though the London financial gurus took us to see a couple of properties for sale, Brett insisted I not take notes, that I not jot anything down or commit anything to memory. I wasn’t sure of the purpose of our London trip if he had no passion to settle there, but it was his business. And I wasn’t in a position to question much of what he did.
If anything at all.
Which gave me plenty of free time to feel awful about myself.
As we packed our things up and headed back to his jet, the awful feeling in the pit of my gut grew. He sat on one extreme of the plane, and I sat on the other. He kept his head in his laptop, and I kept my eyes staring at the wall, neither of us moving to speak to the other. I should have told him sooner. I should have called him instead of Katie. I shouldn’t have called in sick that morning. Hell, I could have still taken the tests with Katie and then taken them to Brett that morning.
That was what I should have done. Not cower away in a corner trying to hide it.
At least I hadn’t waited longer. At least I hadn’t waited until after the trip like I had planned. But every glance I stole of him told me it didn’t matter. It didn’t make me feel better, and it sure as hell wouldn’t make him feel better. We touched down in Paris and rode silently to the hotel. We split off into our separate rooms like we had the night of that fight. I had no idea what was going to happen between the two of us now. I didn’t know if we were going to ever work things out.
