Page 16 of Learn For Me
“I think I should be asking you that,” she muttered, trying to hide her disappointment that he wasn’t as eager to take this new step with her. But then, she shouldn’t feel this excited; she’d left him a note, outlining her emotions the best she could, and gotten radio silence in response. “Is there any point, when it’s obviously not what you want?”
“This isn’t about what I want, Olivia. It’s about you, and what’s best for you right now. Personally, I agree with Att; intervention and support are required to help you.” The seriousness of his tone squashed any hopes and dreams lingering at the back of her mind. “I won’t leave you stranded. I’ll help if you want someone to lean on.”
But he didn’twanther.
The keen arousal searing her alive faded and died. Tears prickled her eyes as she blinked, determined not to let any more fall. Clearing her throat, she pressed a hand between them, pushing him away. “Excuse me. I need the bathroom.”
“Olivia.”
“I need to pee,” she snapped. “Would you like tohelpme with that?”
His eyes did that thing where they shifted several shades in a matter of seconds. Another time, another place where her heart wasn’t wilting in her chest, she might have made some ridiculously unfunny joke about him being Fifty Shades of Green, but now wasn’t that time, and this was certainly not the place.
Without a sound, he rolled off her, leaving a wash of cold air in his wake. Her heated skin chilled, and she felt stupidly vulnerable as she scrambled off the bed. A bed that wasn’t hers, in a room she’d only seen from the outside on the rare occasion she’d ventured from downstairs to find her interfering boss.
Fighting to keep her breathing steady, she asked, “Where are my clothes?”
“In the laundry. They should be done drying soon. There’s a robe on the back of the door for you.” Zeke hauled himself into a sitting position against the headboard, wincing slightly. “Olivia, look—”
It was a long walk back to the city without any clothes. A hot one in a robe.
Feet sinking into the carpet, Olivia stalked over to the door and yanked the pretty cotton garment from its hook, swirling the pale purple fabric around her back and shoving her arms through the holes. She knotted the belt with shaking hands, cursing the wetness between her legs.
Yanking the door open, she glared at him over her shoulder. “No,youlook, Zeke. I laid my feelings out for you once. I’ve spent two years of hell waiting for a single word from you to tell me you felt the same, and got nothing. This is me, taking my heart and my love and whatever else I’ve been stupid enough to feel for you, away from here. Keep your intervention and support for someone who gives a shit.”
“Olivia.” The command in his tone was clear:stay.
She slammed the door after she stepped out into the hallway, belatedly remembering that Atticus had two young children now. Waiting three beats with her breath held, she strained her ears, listening for any sign she’d woken them.
When everything remained quiet, she exhaled slowly, then hurried down the hall to Atticus’s office. She pushed inside, squinting against the dim glare of dawn sunlight peeking through the window behind his desk, then beelined straight for the elevator.
The doors opened immediately, sliding shut after she dragged herself into the empty box and hit the button for the office floor. A sob stuck in her throat; she pressed the back of her hand to her lips to stop them quivering.
It hadn’t been love at first sight for her. Atticus had asked her to watch over Braun and Liam in the hospital the night of the explosion, and to keep her eye on Zeke. The other two men had been discharged without too much delay, but Zeke’s injuries had been so much worse.
No one came to visit him in the first week. She knew, because she’d been the one sitting by his bedside, talking to him about inane subjects, praying he sensed someone was with him. There was nothing worse than being in pain, suffering alone.
One week rolled into two, then a month.
She stayed with him through all the procedures to heal the burns in his skin, waited for the surgeries to repair his broken leg to end. Her days became a constant loop of working on her laptop as she rode out the months of his induced coma, wondering if he was strong enough to live through the trauma, telling him in no uncertain terms that he was.
She hadn’t cried as much in her life as she did when he finally opened his eyes.
Well, aside from yesterday’s meltdown, she supposed.
When she’d taken the fall, she didn’t know. There wasn’t a definitive moment where she could unequivocally state thatthiswas when she fell in love. It only deepened in the weeks following, as they talked, and she learned more about him.
It was time to set that period of her life aside and go back to work. Bury her head in her laptop, shut her heart in a box where she no longer heard it weeping pitifully, and be the data machine everyone expected.
The doors opened again, spilling her into the corridor leading to her office. Assuming itwasstill her office. Her prolonged absence meant Atticus had probably allocated the space to one of the in-house techs, someone who didn’t blow a year of time on an undeserving asshole, and another two playing caretaker to a terminally ill mother and inept stepfather.
She heard the manic clacking of a keyboard from further down, and friendly chatter coming from inside the breakroom. Neither interested her; she wasn’t in the mood for reunions and incessant questions about where she’d been.
Hurrying to her safe place, Olivia clasped her fingers around the handle, pushing down. Relief escaped her on another sob when she found it unlocked, and she slipped into the empty office like a shadow. The automatic lights registered her presence, flickering to life and shining down on her station.
It was precisely as she’d left it. Cleaner, tidier, than she remembered, but all her things were there—the framed photo of her mom, her assortment of notepads, pens, and pencils for when she got bored and needed to do something to clear her mind. The fidget spinner sat beside the mousepad, and her day-to-day calendar was still set to the last date she’d been in here.
Home.