If the overhead light was on, I was sure I’d see that jaw of his clenching. “You don’t know a fucking thing.”
“So, you’re going to insult my intelligence now. Of course. Should have seen that coming.” My hands found the floor, my dress pooling around my knees and legs as I resituated to stand. “Whatever. I am so far done with this back and forth with you, Weston. Don’t follow me when I go back out there. Or rather, if you do, do what you’ve done for months now and pretend I’m just a fixture in the room. An inanimate object that doesn’t have a voice, brain, or heart.”
It hurt to say it. It really did.
It seared down into me and poked at me until I brought one hand up to rub at that tender spot on my chest, and then I pushed up to my feet. My heart was a volcano, erupting lava-hot blood out into my veins.
He always did this.
Made me so incredibly mad.
Made mereact.
My dress fanned down around my legs. The lightheadedness knocked at the corners of my mind, but I shoved it awayas I charged toward the bathroom door. I made it one step before I felt something wrap around my wrist.
A hand.
It was a firm but soft grasp that stopped me in my tracks. It took zero seconds for me to realize it was Weston. My work nemesis. My unfaithful boyfriend’s incorrigible brother who gave me shit every chance he could.
Even when he was apologizing.
My stomach turned into a football, but this time, someone came along and punted it. It soared through the air for a short distance then dropped to the ground because that hand had no right.
Not after everything that was said.
Not without apology.
7
OLIVIA
“Let go of me,” I hissed. I wasn’t normally so moody, but there were so many things out of my control that were weaseling themselves into my life that I couldn’t catch a break.
And I needed one.
Desperately.
“Olivia,” Weston said in a stern tone. I was tired of hearing it, tired of the tightness that pinched off each of his syllables until he was speaking the next. He couldn’t be vulnerable for longer than a second, could he? He couldn’t?—
“Sit back down.”
A mirthless laugh left me as I wrenched my hand out of his grip. Like hell would I sit and have a deep conversation with him when he made my mind hurt, my heart. I wouldn’t have been surprised if my hands had blisters on them from how hard I clung to my side of the rope.
The problem was that Weston was relentless, and I only had so much fight in me.
So, I was done. I was walking away. I wasprayingthatsomeone would come for us soon and save me from this hell I walked into but wanted no part of.
“Absolutely not.”
He said my name as my hand curled around the door handle and pulled it open a crack.
“Olivia. Jesus, why are you being so difficult?” I imagined him pinching the bridge of his nose in exasperation, but I didn’t give a single damn. For all I endured tonight, he deserved the minor inconvenience of myattitude.
“Just…leave me alone,” I said as I rounded out into the main area of the break room. It looked the same as it did before, and when I glanced over at the windows, rain droplets slid down the glass. Though, if there was one small win, it was that it slowed down a bit, again. It wasn’t coming down in sheets but a trickle that indicated the storm could’ve made a turn for a simple rain shower.
Weston was hot on my tail, barreling out with me. His presence was all-consuming. Right in front of me even though I had my back turned to him. He wasn’t going to get the emotion on my face. He was getting nothing from me.
At least, that’s what I told myself as I made it over to the cabinet where the medicine was again. That dull ache was slowly turning into something more, thanks to the tension that cinched around my temples and skull.
