Still, it stung. Memories of their times together would flood her mind at the most inopportune moments. Most of these recollections weren’t even sexual, no, she thought of the calm moments in-between, like the aftermath of one of their hotel encounters when they lay breathless in bed after she’d called her ‘Jay,’ and Jaime had grumbled, saying she didn’t like to be called that.
“What’s wrong with Jay?” Olivia asked, chuckling at Jaime’s grimace.
“Nothing. It’s just not my name.”
“You never had a nickname? Ever? Nothing your family ever called you?”
Jaime’s lips thinned. “No, I’m an only child. Only grandchild, too. There were just my mom, my grandma, and I. Well, until I was seventeen, when my grandma died.”
“Wow. I can’t imagine. There have been moments when I’d wished my family was smaller, fewer demands, none of the drama and conflict, but I don’t know. That seems…lonely.”
Jaime shrugged. “I enjoy being alone.”
“Yes, well, that’s not the same thing as beinglonely, is it?”
Jaime didn’t reply, only stared at her with this unfathomable gaze she sometimes got that always made Olivia twitch, suppressing the urge to fidget.
“Were you close to your grandmother?”
Jaime nodded, her expression cagey. “She sometimes called me James.”
Olivia said nothing, trying to hide her rising anticipation. Jaime shared little about herself—in fact, Olivia still didn’t know where Jaime lived—a sore spot she did her best to ignore.
Jaime sighed. “At first, I thought she did so because she’d have preferred for me to be a boy. She was quite old-school, conservative in a lot of ways. Eventually, I asked her about it. Why she’d sometimes call me James.” A rueful smile spread over Jaime’s full lips. “She said Jaime is a soft sound, almost playful, whereas James sounded serious, and when she called me James, she needed my full attention.”
Olivia’s eyes widened.
“The funny thing, she always had it. The name, her calling me James, it had exactly the effect she wanted.”
“Never fall for emotionally unavailable people, little one.” Olivia kissed Lily’s head, sighing. She’d never had a broken heart, lived to the age of thirty-eight without it.
Then came the woman who’d first turned her head at an alumni dinner five years ago—who’d often aggravated her professionally—and somehow managed, unbeknownst to Olivia, to crush this fragile collection of veins and tissues into a pulp.
Maybe if she’d been more open to romance before, she’d know how to handle the gaping hole in her chest or stop her mind from constantly running in circles around Jaime.Even her family had noticed that something was off, though Olivia refused to talk about it.
How would she even explain what happened? They never had anything, so what had she lost?
The potential of…what exactly?
Delusions. She was feeding delusions, and if she hoped to get over Jaime anytime soon, she needed to stop. Enough damage had already fallen at her feet—at least she’d stopped it from bleeding into her professional life.
the loneliest spectator
Jaimesatinherempty living room and glared at the wall, unable to do anything but brood.
Nothing had ever distracted her from work, notoncein her entire life. Enter one Olivia Gray, the destroyer of routines—twice now—the infuriating woman had upended Jaime’s life.
First, she’d pulled her out of isolation, showing her an existence that offered both tendrils of connectionandthe safety of familiar shores. Just when Jaime had fully adjusted to her new reality, Olivia had wrenched it from her grasp.
The fact that Jaime was the one who had ended things changed nothing. The situation was untenable, and her solution offered the cleanest cut for them both. Yet, she hadn’t expected the damned cut to get infected.
Like a virus, Olivia rampaged through her system, with no cure in sight.
Her work suffered—not that bystanders noticed, but she saw it.
And she hated it.
When Olivia hadn’t shown up on the first day of the Cain case—some other puppet from her law firm sat in her chair instead—Jaime’s first emotion was worry. Was Olivia sick? Had something happened to her?
