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Chapter 22
Holland
I watched Oliver walk out my door and down the hall with a sinking feeling of finality. Something deep inside me throbbed with aching pain; the ragged edges of a wound so recently healed had been ripped open again. He was gone. I knew it as surely as I knew I was pregnant, and my life had changed and changed again over the course of a short month. My legs felt as if they would crumble beneath me. I closed the door and stumbled to my bed, curling into a ball and lying there. I fell asleep that way, willing my mind to stop, trying to keep from turning over and over again the way things had happened. The way he’d left.
Artificial insemination was not something I’d seriously considered. Delia believed it was a viable option, but the way I saw it, I had until I was forty to have a family the traditional way. That was a lot of years between now and the day I might walk into a sperm bank looking for a father to my unborn children. It was funny how things worked out. Nothing in my life had ever really gone according to plan, despite the plans I sketched out and carefully detailed in my notebook. Oliver hadn’t been part of the plan, and getting pregnant now—on the brink of the professional success I’d been working toward—was absolutely not something I’d intended. In the bigger scheme of things, though, falling in love and having a child seemed like exactly what I wanted. But not like this.
Oliver left because he believed I’d lied to him. He believed I’d tricked him, manipulated him, and that I was a person capable of perpetuating a lie for my own purposes. For money. The idea made me almost physically sick. The knowledge that he thought of me like that—as a woman capable of playing a man for money…I couldn’t understand it. I’d been honest with him. I’d been open and clear. And as soon as I knew I was pregnant, I’d told him. I had expected nothing.
But I hadn’t expected him to turn it around and accuse me of planning the entire thing, either.
As the days passed, anger replaced the ragged pain I felt. I was not the kind of person Oliver believed me to be. I might have come from nothing, might not have the money and the privilege he’d always had, but that didn’t mean I spent my life looking for ways to get it from other people. I’d spent every single day of my life figuring out how to do things for myself, learning how to build myself up from nothing and how to find a security no one could take away from me. I thought Oliver understood that. I thought he knew me.
I was wrong.
—
I had canceled on Pamela more than once, and it had been a long time since we’d really talked. I agreed to meet with her Friday. I wasn’t in a place where I really wanted to talk, or to trust anyone, but I also realized I needed friends. And Pamela was a single mom—something I might need some insight about.
“That bad, huh?” Pamela said, sliding into the booth across from me at the café around the corner from work. I hadn’t met her in the office because I was afraid of running into Oliver. My office seemed to be off-limits for him, but any common space in the executive tower—including my beloved coffeehouse—was ripe for a run-in that I didn’t want to have.
“Am I that transparent?”
“Don’t look for a second career in poker, that’s all I’m saying.” Pamela’s eyes twinkled as she smiled, the freckles across the bridge of her nose giving her a sweet and nonthreatening look. “What’s up?”
I shook my head. I’d wondered what I might say to her, whether I’d spend our lunch venting about her boss. “I’m kind of a disaster right now. That’s why I canceled on you before.”
“Would this maybe have any connection to my boss acting like a complete ass for the last couple weeks?”
My heart accelerated against my will, and I wondered if Oliver felt something other than anger at his belief of my betrayal. “It might. I guess you know about things?”
“I figured a few things out before the MLB deal began to look like it was going to come through. But he’s reverted back to pre-MLB Oliver. Rob’s worried he’s going to disappear again…” she trailed off, maybe thinking better of sharing what had transpired in the executive offices with me.
I dropped my head into my hands. I didn’t want to worry about Oliver. I didn’t want to care how he was doing. He hurt me. He completely destroyed me, if I was honest. “I’m sorry,” I said, knowing Oliver’s mood would make her life harder.
“Are you going to tell me what happened?”
Our sandwiches came, and I stalled, picking at the fries on my plate and trying to figure out what the professional ethics might be of discussing something so personal with Oliver’s secretary. Though, to be truthful, professional ethics had pretty much gone out the window when I’d gotten involved with the CEO.
“Here’s what I know,” Pamela tried, dipping a fry in ketchup and squinting at it before popping it into her mouth. “You and Oliver became involved, and Oliver went from absent to angry, and then from present to completely engaged. He became the guy I knew a year ago—except better. There was something hopeful and fun about him that hadn’t been there before. Before his parents died, he’d gotten really angry and seemed so lost. And then he left. But whatever happened with you guys…it made him happy.”
“Until it didn’t,” I offered.
Pamela said nothing, just ate and waited for me to explain.
“I never meant to get involved, I swear,” I began. “And when I met him, he told me his name was Hale. And he looked like some kind of surf bum or something…I didn’t even think he belonged here. I couldn’t figure out why he was here.”
Pamela nodded, her mouth full.
“But I was trying to figure out how to make StrokeStat work for MLB and he saw some of the notes I’d made when I was sitting in the coffeehouse. He volunteered to help.”
“He did?” Her eyes widened. “Angry Oliver offered to help? That’s something…Last time I saw that version of him, he was throwing things around in the office and yelling at people.”
I nodded, remembering the day I’d gone to see Pamela and sent security up after Oliver instead. “He was pretty friendly, actually—well, after he apologized for being a complete dick. If either of us was really evil at first, it was probably me. But he was kind and smart, and I needed the help. We ended up…” I paused, thinking about the day at the pier, about what had happened after in my apartment. “We got involved. I didn’t plan it to happen, I just got caught up.” I shook my head, trying to shake off the warmth that had crept over me, remembering the way Oliver’s eyes burned as he’d looked at me that first time we’d been together.
“So you still had no clue who he really was?”
I shook my head. “Not until the MLB meeting. He kind of sprung it on me, and the MLB people practically fell all over themselves at the meeting when they realized he was the CEO. I was a little less thrilled.”
