“Bullshit!”she yelled. Jake at least had the good grace to flinch from the outburst. “How many times, Jake? How many times did I cry on your shoulder? How many nights did I call you, bawling my eyes out because I’d had another nightmare about losing Mikey, and I couldn’t go to Pops because I knew it would only upset him even more?God!” Olivia put her hands to her forehead. “I’m such an idiot!”
“You’re not an idiot,” Jake ground the words out.
Olivia ignored him. “I sure bet you had some good laughs after those phone calls, huh? Poor, clueless Olivia—”
“No, Goddammit, Ididn’tlaugh. It tore my heart out to see you hurting like that. All those nights you called, I’d be up until daylight because I felt so guilty for not telling you the truth. I’d damn near decided to tell you, but—”
Mikey broke in, “Whoa, you were going to tell her? What the hell, man?”
“The dreams stopped,” Jake said, ignoring him.
Olivia shook her head, and she smiled sadly. “They didn’t stop, Jake.”
Confused, he said, “But...you never called again. Not because of a nightmare, anyway.”
Frustrated, Olivia had to force herself not to scream. “Because I realized you had a life and didn’t need some college brat bothering you all the time! It was bad enoughIcouldn’t sleep. There was no reason for both of us to be miserable. So, I just learned to deal with it on my own.”
Jake stepped toward her, but she put her hand up to stop him and took a step back. Withdrawing from him like that hurt him. She could see it in his eyes, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.
He fisted his hands at his sides. “Why didn’t you tell me you were still having nightmares? I would have talked you through them. I would have figured out a way to—”
“Tell me the truth? Funny thing about that, Jake. I saw you even after I quit calling in the middle of the night. We’ve met for lunch how many times over the years? For God’s sake, we were stuck in the freaking jungle together two months ago and thought we were going to die! I talked about Mikey then, and youstilldidn’t tell me!”
She turned her back on them both and ran a frustrated hand through her hair.
“That wasn’t the right time—”
Olivia swung back around. “I can’t believe this.”
The man she loved and the brother she’d thought was lost, were less than three feet away from her, yet she felt more alone than she’d ever been in her life.
Olivia looked back into Jake’s eyes. “I thought that we...” She swallowed hard. “I can’t believe I actually thought...” She swallowed again, this time to push back the bile threatening to fill her mouth. “God, Jake. Isleptwith you for Christ’s sake!”
The memory of his hands running over her body, the pleasure he’d brought to her now tainted forever. He’d been lying to her that entire time about something so huge...something so unforgivable. It made her wonder, what else had he lied about?
“You said you loved me—”
“Hold up. Yousleptwith him?” Mikey asked surprised, as if that was the most outrageous part of this conversation.
“Shut up, Mikey,” Jake and Olivia both said in unison, never once taking their eyes off each other.
It was something they’d done countless times when they’d been younger. She would have laughed had the situation not been so totally screwed all to hell.
“So what was that? Huh, Jake? Did you sleep with me because you felt guilty for lying to me? Or did you just feel so sorry for me, that you thought you’d give me a few pity-fucks? You know, use my feelings for you against me to make yourself feel better? Tell me something...did it work?”
Jake’s eyes burned into hers. He closed the distance between them in three long strides, and grabbed her shoulders, his grip just this side of painful. Even in the midst of this new insanity, Olivia knew Jake would never physically hurt her.
“Don’t youeversay that again! Yeah, I lied to you, Olivia. For tenfuckingyears, I’ve lied, but I did it toprotectyou. To protect your brother and Pops. What happened between us hadnothingto do with that. It sure as hell was more than some quick lays to appease my guilt.”
Jake’s nostrils flared as he drew in several quick breaths, the anger and pain in his eyes almost too much for her to bear.
“All I’ve ever wanted was to be with you. To give you every part of me...the good and the bad. Holding this back, keeping this from you for so long...that was the worst kind of torture for me. So, no, Liv. The sex didn’teasemy guilt. It made it worse. But being with you was worth it, because I love you, sweetheart. I love you more than life itself, so don’t youdarestand there and cheapen what we have by saying it was just a few pity fucks.”
Olivia wanted to believe him. With every fiber of her being, she wanted to believe him. Before today, she’d truly thought Jake loved her. Never, not in a million years, would she have doubted anything he told her. But now—
“Had, Jake. What we had. And I don’t even know what that was anymore. But, hey...look at it this way. At least now you won’t have poor Olivia to constantly watch out for. To always have toprotect.You’re off the hook. Yay, for you.”
She jerked away from his grasp and turned toward the hallway to get her things.
