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Chapter 19
Oliver
I didn’t watch Holland walk away. I drove straight past the parking garage entrance for Cody and turned around at Sunset, heading west and turning up the Pacific Coast Highway without thinking. For the entire day, I drove, focusing my attention on the lines flying under my tires, the expanse of optimistic blue on my left as I pushed the car along the curves that hugged the coast heading north. If I stopped moving, I knew, the demons I’d managed to avoid for the past month would come seeping back in around me bringing their blackness with them. And I honestly didn’t know if I would survive them again.
Holland had been my light. And even with the bright sun sliding in around me, illuminating the dust floating in the air inside the car, my mind was darkening. I ran out of gas in Cambria, pulling to a stop on the shoulder where I remained in the car for at least an hour before calling my service to dispatch a car to come get me. Something in my fucked-up mind believed that if I didn’t get out of the car, didn’t move forward or put any kind of hard stop between the car ride this morning and whatever was next, maybe I could continue to believe it hadn’t happened. But as lights pulled up behind me on the shoulder and one of the car service drivers came around to tap on my window, I had to accept it. Holland was gone. The light was out.
Anger boiled within me and I tried to tamp it down as I bit out the required words to handle the current situation.
“Get this towed back to LA, would you?”
“Of course, sir.”
I slid into the backseat of the idling Town Car and worked to keep my mind blank as I watched the sun streaking down the sky toward the water on the way back down to LA. But my mind wasn’t blank. Images of Holland, flickers of words I’d said or wanted to say, dashed across my mind. And worse, the pain of losing her was muddy, tied inextricably to other pain, other loss.
My lids slid shut and I gave myself over to the pain, sinking into a cold pool of sorrow that felt almost comfortable in its familiarity. And the old image came again, unbidden. The hand on my cheek, the bear in my hands. The car door slamming as my heart shattered.
—
“Those fucking pictures are still up, Pamela,” I grunted as I strode around my secretary’s desk, slamming my bag down inside my office.
“We’ve discussed that,” she reminded me, sounding cheerful and infuriating.
“Get them down. I’m sick of his face.”
“No thank you,” she said, carrying a stack of messages into my office and depositing them into my inbox. She smiled at me as if her answer had been something remotely close to acceptable and then continued. “A fair bit of churn went on in your absence yesterday. Here are your messages, and I’m sure Mr. Eastburn will be in to fill you in.” She stood expectantly next to my desk, smiling.
I stared up at her, a thousand evil remarks floating through my mind. I pushed them away, running a hand through my hair and forcing a polite reply instead. “Thank you.”
“Glad you’re back,” she said softly, and then turned to leave.
“Pamela?” I said, catching her at the door.
She turned, her eyebrows high beneath the brown hair swept to the side.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” she said.
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask her something about Holland’s assertion that everyone here knew we were sleeping together, to ask what she thought of it, if it seemed untoward. But I didn’t. “Never mind,” I muttered.
She turned and closed the door behind her.
The MLB deal required my full attention for the remainder of the week, and I spent any time I had left in the search for a new lead counsel. We had the board meeting scheduled for the following week, and I wanted to be able to announce not only the deal, but the imminent appointment of a new counsel. In some ways the work was a distraction, but given that Holland’s name was on almost every bit of MLB correspondence, it was impossible to put her out of my mind.
I didn’t see or speak to Holland for three full days after she’d given me her decision, and my feelings hadn’t become clearer or less difficult to handle. I couldn’t discern whether I was angry with her or with myself, or if I was just hurt. Or maybe I was just embarrassed because I let her into my world so completely, and let myself get blindsided by her sudden change of mind.
As I lay in my bed at night, wishing for the absence of pain that sleep represented, I missed her in a completely visceral way. With my dick in my hand, my palm moving me toward angry release, I could think of nothing but her tight soft body beneath me, her perfect pink lips as they’d gone around my cock. I could think of nothing but her, riding her, filling her. And when I was done, and I lay staring in the darkness at the empty expanse of time before me, I thought of nothing but her sweet smile, the way her crystal eyes glinted with humor when we talked, when she laughed.
Most of the time, if I was honest with myself, I thought of nothing but Holland. And increasingly, I thought only of how to get her back. Every plan I made fell flat in the face of her concern, however. I wasn’t going to quit my job…though if I’d been anything less than CEO I might have actually considered it. Jobs were a dime a dozen—Holland O’Dell was one of a kind.
