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“That you’re no good. That you’re still the same. That history will repeat itself. That you’ll hurt me the way you did in college. But I’m not listening to any of it. I have no control over how they feel or what they say or the pictures they can apparently send, but I do have control over whether or not I take their advice,” she said.
“Olivia, please don’t quit. You’re going to need the money. The health insurance.”
“I will not work for a man who doesn’t take me at my word, personally. I will not work with a man who wants to step back from his responsibilities because of things other people are saying. You talk as if it’s my fault, but it isn’t. Some of it is, but other people’s actions aren’t my fault.”
“I’m not saying they’re your fault, Olivia.”
“Well, you’re sure as hell acting like it,” she spat.
I slowly came around from behind my desk, but she backtracked for my office door. She was out the door and down the hallway before I could catch her, wiping tears away from her eyes. I darted out into the hallway and caught her stepping into the elevator. I wanted to go after her. I wanted to make her stay, to make her talk to me, to make her listen so we could somehow make this right. But Katherine was staring and a couple of my investors were sitting, waiting for a meeting I’d had on the books for days now.
The entire day passed like a blur before I got a chance to call her.
“Olivia, it’s me. Please call me back when you can.”
“Olivia, it’s Brett. We really need to talk. Call me back.”
“Olivia, damn it. I know you’re listening to these. You have to call me back. We have to talk. We have to work this out, okay?”
“Olivia. For the love of everything, would you please pick up the phone?”
I left voice message after voice message. I sat in my home at my kitchen table, mindlessly staring at my fucking phone. I knew I had made a mistake. I had no idea how to fix it, but I knew I had made one. Olivia was right. I tossed all of the responsibility of this drama onto her shoulders, when it very well could have been coming from people who supported me. Mason. My sister. Hell, it could’ve been Daniel coming after me. My knee-jerk reaction was that Katie was doing this. I always had a theory that she had been behind a lot of the bullshit back in college.
I came at this with the mindset that we were still back in fucking college. That was where I had gone wrong.
I knew I had made a mistake, but there was nothing I could do until Olivia decided to speak with me. So, in the meantime, I needed to get down to who was behind those damn emails. I wanted to stop them. I wanted to get them out of the fucking way so Olivia and I could talk. I didn’t want them to win. Not this time. Not again. She was carrying my child—pregnant with my baby—and I needed to do anything I could to preserve the health of my family. I needed to be there, for both of them. I needed to protect them from whoever was doing this to us.
Fucking hell, why had it take me so long to admit that?
“I’m such an ass,” I groaned.
I leaned back into the booth of my breakfast nook and raked my hands over my face. No wonder Olivia was so pissed off at me. So many wrong moves. So many things I had assumed before taking the time to cool down and come to my senses. I should have gone straight back to that penthouse when I finally figured out the woman in that picture wasn’t Olivia. I should have gone back to her the second I convinced myself the child she was carrying was, in fact, mine. But instead, I let Mason get in my head. I let a last-minute conversation in a moment of weakness before we left to come home get inside my head and dictate my moves.
Just leave her and move on. You won’t know if the kid is yours until it’s born anyway. Do you really want to get attached before finding out she whored around on you?
“Fuck, Brett! Come on!”
I roared out of anger and frustration as I slid out of the booth. I paced my kitchen, trying to reel in my thoughts. I needed to take my own damn advice. I needed to step up and be the man I knew I needed to be instead of allowing myself to be dragged back into all of that drama. Olivia hadn’t been the only one manipulated on college. I had been as well. But, unlike her, I was still being manipulated now. I was the one making harsh decisions based on Mason’s word. I was the one making idiotic decisions based on a few anonymous emails. Olivia had approached me with it. I had run away, trying to get away from the inevitable hurt I thought was soaring around the corner.
