Nothing was fixed.
But she was back.
Chapter 20
Leo
Leo stood in the cool, damp air of his greenhouse, staring blindly at the rows of potted herbs, but his mind was miles away.
He was haunted by the ghost of that kiss.
Weeks had passed, but the memory clung to him, making him feel vividly alive and ashamed all at once. He had wanted to kiss Olivia for years. He had imagined it, buried it, and fought it until his chest ached. But now that it had actually happened, the timing felt impossible.
He replayed the moment on an endless, torturous loop. The way she had frozen at first, her wide eyes staring up at him. The agonizing second of hesitation before her hands pressed flat against his chest. The way she had kissed him back, a soft, yielding response that had nearly brought him to his knees. And then, the abrupt end—the way she pulled away, her fingers touching her swollen mouth, looking utterly stunned.
Leo felt the lingering sweetness of the moment, a physical ache in his blood, but it was heavily overshadowed by guilt. He knew he had crossed a line. Olivia was heartbroken. She was legally trapped in a marriage that James was actively weaponizing. Leo knew the kiss, no matter how real and desperate it felt, could become another piece of ammunition in James’s hands.
He didn't regret wanting her. He didn't regret loving her. But he regretted giving her one more heavy thing to carry when she was already buckling under the weight of her shattered life.
The distance between them now felt agonizing.
Leo thought about the day Olivia left his house to stay with her parents. Leo knew it was the right move. Olivia needed her parents. She needed her family. She needed a neutral place to breathe that did not hold the emotional confusion of his house, Brooklyn’s presence, his heavy confession, and that badly timed kiss.
But watching her leave had still hurt like hell.
Leo remembered carrying her suitcase out to her parents’ car. He had tried to act normal, offering a casual smile and a supportive nod. He completely failed. It felt as though Olivia were moving to another planet, not just a rented house a few miles away.
Olivia had looked at him through the passenger window. She looked like she could tell something was wrong, but neither of them knew how to speak about it. The goodbye had been strained, trapped behind glass and unspoken fears.
How quickly everything had changed. A few weeks ago, Olivia had shown up at his door, shivering and broken, because James had ripped her life apart. Then she was standing in his kitchen, smiling as she baked an apricot pie. Then he kissed her. Then her parents arrived. Then she left.
Now, she was back at the bakery. Leo felt a fierce wave of relief knowing she was trying to return to herself, standing in her own kitchen with flour on her hands. But a dark, suffocating part of him was also afraid. He was afraid James would find a way to get to her. Afraid her friends would keep doubting her.Afraid the looming lawsuit would make Olivia retreat into her shell again.
Most of all, he was afraid his own poorly timed feelings had made everything worse.
His phone vibrated in his pocket, jarring him back to the present.
Leo pulled it out and answered. It was the private investigator. For the next five minutes, Leo listened in silence as the PI delivered yet another report with no real or useful updates. No definitive hotel records. No smoking-gun text messages. Nothing that could officially prove the affair in a court of law.
Leo ended the call, his jaw clenched so tight his teeth ached.
He thought about everything Olivia was going through. James was actively trying to make Leo look like the homewrecker. James, who had cheated for a year. James, who had humiliated Olivia in their own marital bed. James, who had the absolute nerve to paint himself as the abandoned, heartbroken husband.
A dark, primal anger surged through Leo’s chest. The alpha-male instinct to hunt James down and beat the truth out of him was nearly blinding, but Leo forced it down. He knew he could not just go after James without making things catastrophically worse for Olivia. Her lawyers needed hard, undeniable evidence. The PI hadn't found enough yet, meaning James and Amanda had been meticulously careful.
But careful was not the same as clean.
There had to be something. Hotel records paid in cash. Security footage from a parking garage. Receipts for expensive dinners. Deleted files on a corporate server. Rental cars. Work-trip inconsistencies. Witnesses.
Someone saw something. Someone knew something. Leo just had to find the right person to dig deep enough.
Leo stared down at his phone, the screen glowing in the dim light of the greenhouse. He swiped past his usual contacts, scrolling down to a name he had hoped he would never have to use again.
He hesitated, his thumb hovering over the screen.
This person was not part of Leo’s ordinary life anymore. They operated in the gray areas, the places where legal boundaries blurred. Leo had cut ties years ago for a very good reason. Keeping this framed purely as investigation and evidence-gathering, at all costs, was a dangerous game.
Leo stared at the number. He thought about Olivia’s tears. He thought about the malicious lawsuit. He thought about James’s smug lies, and Olivia standing in his kitchen, claiming they were just friends because she truly did not know the burden he had been carrying for years.
