Thief .(66)

I go straight to her condo. If she’s not home already, I’ll be waiting there when she arrives.

She is home. When she opens the door, it’s as if she was expecting me. Her eyes and her lips are swollen. When Olivia cries, her lips double in size and turn bright red. It’s the most beautifully fragile and feminine thing about her.

She stands to the side to let me in, and I walk past her into the living room. She closes the door softly and follows me.

She wraps her arms around her body and stares out at the ocean.

“When you left and went to Texas, after we…” I break to let her catch up to what I’m saying. “I came after you. It took me a few months to get past my initial wounded pride, and to find you, of course. Cammie didn’t want to tell me you were there, so I just showed up on her doorstep.”

I tell her about how I waited at the side of the house when I saw the car coming, and how I heard the exchange between her and Cammie. About how I knocked on the door when she went upstairs to shower. I tell her all of it and I can’t tell if she can hear me, because her face is unmoving, her eyes unblinking. Her chest doesn’t even rise and fall with breath.

“I was on my way up the stairs, Duchess, when Cammie stopped me. She told me that you got pregnant after our night together. She told me about the abortion.”

Finally, the statue springs to life. Her fierce eyes turn on me. Blue fire — the hottest kind.

“Abortion?” The word tumbles out of her mouth. “She told you that I got an abortion?”

Now … now, her chest is rising and falling. Her breasts straining against the fabric of her shirt.

“She inferred it. Why didn’t you tell me?”

She opens her mouth, runs her tongue along her bottom lip. I don’t know why I’m doing this to her now. Maybe I think that if I remind her of how much history we have, it’ll stir her to choose me.

“I didn’t have an abortion, Caleb,” she says. “I had a miscarriage. A goddamn miscarriage!”

She swims in and out of focus as I grasp her words.

“Why wouldn’t Cammie tell me?”

“I don’t know! To keep you away from me? She was right to! We are bad for each other!”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because it hurt! I tried to pretend it never happened.”

I don’t know what to do with myself. It’s like the whole world is determined to keep us apart. Even fucking Cammie who’d had a front row seat to our relationship for all these years. How could she? Olivia is struggling not to cry. Her lips move as she tries to form words.

“Look at me, Duchess.”

She can’t.

“What are you going to tell me?”

“You know…” she says softly.

“Don’t do this,” I say. “This is our last chance. You and I were made for each other.”

“I choose him, Caleb.”

Her words ignite anger — so much anger. I can barely look at her. I breathe through my nose, her announcement reverberating across my brain, burning my tear ducts and landing somewhere in my chest, causing such incredible heartache, I can’t see straight.

Through my crash, I lift my head to look at her. She’s pale; her eyes wide and panicked.

I nod … slowly. I’m still nodding ten seconds later. I’m calculating the rest of my life without her. I am contemplating strangling her. I am wondering if I did everything I could … if I could have tried harder.

There is one last thing I have to say. Something I said before and was so terribly wrong about.

“Olivia, I once told you that I would love again, and that you would hurt forever. Do you remember?”

She nods. It’s a painful memory for both of us.

“It was a lie. I knew it was a lie, even as I said it. I’ve never loved anyone after you. I never will.”

I walk out.

Walk away.

No more fighting — not for her, or with her, or with myself.

I am so sad.



How many times can a heart be broken before it is beyond mend? How many times can I wish to not be alive? How can one human being cause such a crack in my existence? I alternate between periods of numbness and inconceivable pain all in the span of — an hour? An hour feels like a day, a day feels like a week. I want to live, and then I want to die. I want to cry, and then I want to scream.

I want, I want, I want…

Olivia.

But, I don’t. I want her to suffer. I want her to be happy. I want to stop thinking altogether and be locked in a room without thoughts. Possibly for a year.

I run. I run so much that if the zombie apocalypse were to happen, they’d never be able to catch me. When I run I don’t feel anything but the burning in my lungs. I like the burn; it lets me know I can still feel when I’m having a numb day. When I am having a day of pain, I drink.