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"Bullshit," I hissed.
He slowly looked up at me. "W-what?" he stuttered.
"You were testing me, weren't you?"
"N-no, of course not, Olive."
"Then why didn't you tell me, Lucas? Why didn't you tell me that you knew all of this? Why didn't you just ask me to stay?"
His eyes narrowed. "I told you I loved you, Olive. Was that not enough?"
I opened my mouth to respond, but I couldn't figure out what to say.
Lucas scoffed. "Exactly. And you didn't say it back. Just like you can't say it now. So call it a test or whatever you want. But I gave you a choice. I gave you the money you were owed, that you would have gotten anyways if I hadn't gotten in the middle of this, and then you came here tonight and told me you were leaving."
Tears spilled out of my eyes. "Lucas, that's not fair."
"None of this is fair," Lucas hissed. "But that's life. And you made your choice, Olive. Loud and clear."
There was something about the way he said it that hit me like a ton of bricks. My whole life, I'd been trying to get by, to prove myself, to be enough for Claire. And I'd finally found a chance for her to have a full life, and yet, I was going to run, take all this money from a crime, and start over. Where? Doing what?
Living on that, getting a server job somewhere? Waiting until it ran out and then returning back to a life of being a hacker? Returning to a life of crime?
I was never going to be enough. Not for Lucas. Not for Claire. I didn't know who the fuck I was or what I was doing.
All I knew was that Lucas was right. I'd made a selfish choice to run. A choice that would have hurt Lucas and kept Claire in a cyclical space of stress. Except this time it would have been even worse because I would have taken her away from her dad.
What the fuck was I doing?
I slid past Lucas and picked up Claire.
"Where are you going?" Lucas asked.
But I couldn't respond because I didn't have an answer.
I just needed to get away from here.
24
LUCAS
The door slammed shut, and silence settled around me, an overwhelming pressure pressing against my chest and leaving me breathless. A ringing resounded in my ears. I could no longer hear the media outside, hounding Jessie and Carter. All I heard was the echo of Olive's words:you were testing me.
Holy fuck.
Is that what I had done?
Testing her to see how she would react when I gave her exactly what she wanted? But didn't that still make this a choice for her? And she chose to leave.
Or had she just walked down the only path she'd ever known, one she’d expected to unfold? Sure, I'd said I loved her, but what did that really mean?
It was just a word.
I knew more than anyone that actions spoke louder than words. How many women had told me that they loved me but had then attempted to use me to get a job, or steal money from me, or fake a pregnancy to lock me down?
And here I was, telling Olive I loved her but keeping secrets from her, lying by omission, unfurling an entire plan to see if she would choose something other than me. I said I'd given her a choice, but all I'd really done was set her up.
If this had been a real choice, I would have been honest from the beginning. I would have admitted everything to her when I figured all of this out.
