Olivia (25 page)

“Because I can’t be everything to you.”

“Eugene can’t be everything to me, but that doesn’t mean I love him any less or feel any less loved,” Olivia said, suddenly realizing that those words were true, spoken straight from her heart. “I think I love him more because I know he gives me everything he
can
give me—probably more than he ever thought he was capable of giving to anyone.”

“It’s not the same.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not the same,” he repeated with emphasis. “I wish to heaven it was, Liv, but it’s not.”

“So you would rather enter a loveless marriage where no one is getting anything they want or need than enter one where we love each other as deeply and as truly as we possibly can and part as friends when it comes time to end it?”

“I love you too much to
use
you
and if I lost you as a friend when it all was said and done…” He trailed off with a shake of his head and his jaw set. “No.”

“But you’re
not
using me!” she insisted. “I know what I’m getting into here. I know that one day you’ll find a Nick who you’ll fall so madly in love with won’t be afraid to tell anyone about him, even your dad. And when that day comes, I’ll move on, too. And I’ll be
fine
.”

“No, Olivia.”

Whether right now, by choice, or eighty years from now, by death, she would one day lose him, and her heart, forever. She was as powerless to stop him from leaving her as she would be to stop the sun from setting, but before he slipped completely away, and she was set adrift into the chasm of life without him, she had to know the answer to the one question he had avoided.

“What did you mean when you said ‘until you’?”

“What?” he asked, taken aback by her sudden change in direction.

“You said no girl made you feel the same as kissing the boy did—until me. What does that mean?”

“It’s one of those things that can’t be put into words,” he said.

“Try.”

He thought about it for a moment and said, “When you walk into the room there’s this sudden energy that wasn’t there before. My heart speeds up, and it’s like the air tastes just a little bit sweeter. I want to touch you all the time… and when you kiss me I never want you to stop.”

“Are you attracted to me sexually?” she asked.

“Yes… in a way,” he admitted. “But it’s not about sex with you. It’s more than that, Liv. A lot more.”

“Then what is it?”

“You make me feel… alive.”

She moved into him and cupped his face in her hands. “That’s exactly how you make
me
feel.”

Slowly, she brought her lips to his. As she did, he closed his eyes. He let out a sigh that was neither relief nor defeat, but possibly a combination of both, as he pulled her roughly onto him so she straddled his lap, and deepened her kiss to one with a purpose. His lips were firm, his tongue demanding as he commanded her to keep up with his pace. She did so without missing a beat. She pushed his shirt up, and he ripped it the rest of the way off, and then he froze, staring deep into her eyes as his chest heaved with his struggle to breathe.

“Are we doing this then?” she asked to make sure they were both on the same wavelength. With a light touch, her fingertips outlined the muscles of his tight stomach and trailed down to his waistband. As she played with the button on his jeans, her eyes and her heart begged him to say yes.

He held his breath as his gaze shifted to her hands, and then back into her eyes, and then he exhaled and said, “I guess we are.”

“You guess?” she asked with a hint of a smile.

“I never know anything for certain when it comes to you, Baby Girl.”

“You can be certain that I love you, George,” she promised. “And you can be certain that the very second you find that part of yourself that you’re missing, I’ll be right here to help make sure you never lose it again.”

“Even if it means I have to leave you behind?”

“You won’t be leaving me behind.” Her hands slowly unbuttoned his jeans and started on his zipper. “You’ll be setting me free.”

He sat up and caught her lips with his, effectively sealing their deal with a kiss.

Bit by bit, piece by piece, their clothing disappeared as they worked their way into George’s bedroom. They shut the door on common sense and the world and the oven buzzer and the burning meatloaf and slowly, carefully and lovingly, they each placed the other in the center of their own hearts and made love until the emptiness on the edges all but disappeared.

Chapter Twelve

The next morning, Olivia shuffled into George’s kitchen with her hair standing on end and deep red creases on her face from the bunched up pillow and big sleep boogers in the corners of her eyes and her breath stinking like the bowels of hell. George looked up from the burnt and crusty meatloaf pan he was scrubbing, and he was so taken by her beauty the steel wool Brillo pad fell out of his hand. He pinned her against the fridge and kissed her until her toes curled.

“Good morning.” She smiled and tried to talk without breathing in his face, which was silly because he had just run his tongue all around all that funk and hadn’t seemed to mind.

“Good morning,” he said with a smile of his own.

“Are you coming to the hospital with me again today?”

“Of course.”

“Don’t you have to run the bar?” she asked.

“No. I’d rather be with you,” he said and then kissed along her neck and trailed his hands along her body.

“What about Helen’s kids? Won’t all these days off play right into their hands?”

“I don’t care. You and Eugene are more important to me than a stupid bar.”

“When do you want to leave?”

“Ten, fifteen minutes maybe,” he said with a shrug as he tried to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear, but it preferred to stick straight out the side of her head. He let out a laugh and smoothed both of his hands down her head to try and tame the wild, but there was no taming the wild when it came to Olivia. He gave up and kissed her again, funky breath and all.

Her hands ran a course around his fine, hard body, eventually finding their way into his boxer-briefs. She was in the process of making
his
toes curl when the phone rang. They both groaned at once and George leaned back away from her to reach for the phone. Olivia took advantage of his angle to dip down and envelop her funky breath around something else, causing George to answer the phone with a gasp of surprised pleasure and a little moan instead of a hello.

His eyes closed and his breathing became labored as he grunted out little words of understanding to the person on the other end of the line while Olivia did her best to make him hang up faster. She was doing an outstanding job for having just woken up. He was getting a little weak in the knees when suddenly he stood at attention and George Jr. did the opposite.

“Of course,” he said into the phone. He lifted Olivia by her upper arm and kept a tight hold of her. “We’ll be there in five minutes, Officer Wade…Yes, I understand…We will, of course, sir.” George hung up the phone and cupped Olivia’s face in his hands. Very slowly and very carefully, he said, “Do not freak out, ok?”

“Why not? What happened?” Olivia asked, already disobeying George’s instructions. “Why were you talking to Clete? What happened? Is it Eugene?”

“You know Officer Wade?” he asked.

“Yes! What happened?”

“Olivia…” George ran his hands slow down her hair again and pulled her in to place a gentle kiss on her forehead. With his lips still pressed to her skin, he said, “Mitch came looking for you last night…” He lifted his lips and tipped her chin so she would meet his eyes. “He burned your trailer to the ground.”

Instantly, Olivia’s chest tightened, her face went numb, and her guts felt like they could let loose in a watershed. “
What?
”

“Mitch burned—”

“I heard you.” As suddenly as the fear had hit her, fury surged in and took control. She pushed George out of her way and flew into the bedroom to find some clothes. She threw on one of George’s Kitty’s Place t-shirts and her jeans from the night before, stuffed her feet into her tennis shoes sans socks and crammed a ball cap on her head. She ripped open the front door and was sitting in George’s truck waiting for him before he even got his jeans buttoned. She laid on the horn and stayed on it until he came running out the door a full minute after her.

George stabbed the key into the ignition. “Olivia—”

“Just drive.” She crossed her arms over her chest and stared out the windshield as George wove through traffic to Valley View. Of all the fucking things to happen to her when her world was already in chaos… goddamn fucking Mitch.

Embers of her 1950-something Atlas mobile home were still smoldering and the guys from the fire department were starting to wrap up their hoses when George splashed through the lakes of fire-dousing water on the narrow lane leading to her trailer. Her home was a total loss, her Buick nothing more than a charcoal briquette under the crumbling carport. Every resident of Valley View stood and pointed, staring and whispering amongst themselves, watching as Olivia climbed out of George’s truck and looked over what had once been her home-sweet-home. Mr. Turner stood in the shade of his porch overhang in his open bathrobe and boxers and waved to Olivia. She ignored him and simply took in the sight.

She did not cry. There was no way in hell she would give Mitch that satisfaction.

Clete came up behind her. “Olivia, I’m sorry about all of this.”

“It’s not your fault,” she said with her jaw set and her chin held high. “Where is the motherfucker?”

“We don’t know,” Clete said.

“But you know it was him?”

“Yes.”

Olivia nodded and looked over the entirety of her worldly possessions as they slowly burned out, their ashes set adrift in the cool, fall breeze.

“I guess I should call Reggie,” she said.

“He’s already on his way,” Clete said. “We called him while we were calling people trying to find you. We’ve been calling people… looking for you… for hours…”

Clete choked on the words and Olivia finally looked at him. Really looked at him. He was more shaken up than he should have been for a house fire, especially a house that wasn’t his. She placed her hand on his arm to comfort him. “It’s ok Clete. It’s just a house… and a car… and everything I own… But, it’s ok. I’ll figure something out… eventually.”

“I thought you were…” Clete’s chest heaved up and down and his face twisted from his struggle to control his emotion. “You didn’t answer your phone and…”

“Oh, hey, it’s ok, Big Guy.” She gave him a hug and squeezed tight to comfort him. Poor guy obviously wasn’t cut out for emergency crisis management, which sucked because he was a cop and that was kind of his job. Maybe she’d help him find a different career once her life settled down a bit. She pushed him away and smiled as best she could. “See, I’m alive and kickin’. I’ve got more lives than an alley cat. It’ll take a hell of a lot more than a fire to kill me.”

“Yeah.” He stepped away from her, avoiding her eyes, and cleared his throat. When he spoke again, he was all business. “So, Reggie’ll be here soon, and I’ll need to get a statement from you.”

George came up behind Olivia and placed a comforting hand on the back of her neck. She leaned into him.

“I know this is kinda sudden, but you wanna shack up?” Olivia asked.

“Sure.” George laughed. “Let’s live in your place. It’s
hot
.”

“Smokin’,” Olivia joked back and tipped her head to look at him. “I love you, Georgie.”

“I love you too, Baby Girl.” George kissed her forehead. “It’ll be ok.”

“I know,” she answered.

And the crazy thing was, she had a feeling it would be ok. Maybe it was merely a survival instinct, kind of like going into shock. Maybe it was the first symptom of insanity. Or maybe it was just what happened to be floating on the surface of the crazy pandemonium of emotion she had been riding like a roller coaster all week long. First Eugene dead, then not dead, then everything with George, and now her nut-job, crazy ex-fiancé trying to kill her and burning everything she owned in a fiery hell…

Maybe she shouldn’t have broken up with him via text. Looking back, it probably deserved at least a phone call.

George took her hand and they walked as close to the destruction as the fire marshal would allow. There were a few things that didn’t get burned, but of course it was nothing that she wanted. All of her clothes were gone, her CD’s, her DVD’s. Her life-size cut-out of Mr. Mark Wahlberg was burned to a crisp. She shed a bit of a tear over that one. Even her kitty cat kitchen clock was dead—his final life snuffed out by temperatures in excess of eleven hundred degrees.

The only thing that brought real tears to her eyes was the loss of her photo album. It was a fifty page album with only four pages in use, but it contained the only copies of the only six pictures of her and Eugene together, all of them taken on a Polaroid, and now all of them gone forever, except in Olivia’s memory.

“He used an accelerant,” Clete said as if to explain the extent of the damage.

“What did he use?” George asked.

“Vodka.”

Of course. Olivia always knew drinking would be the death of her. She just figured it would have been her liver to go up in flames, not her humble abode.

“Did he know she wasn’t home?” George asked.

“We believe so.” Clete turned to Olivia and added, “And that means he’s going to be looking for you.”

Olivia nodded. She knew he would be.

“He won’t get near her,” George assured Clete. “She’ll be glued to my side 24/7 until you guys find him.”

“That might not be enough,” Clete said with a concerned look in his eye.

“You are a walking
disaster
,” Reggie Young proclaimed as he stepped over rubble and joined the group behind the police tape. “I’m dropping your ass, Olivia. I swear, as soon as I file this claim, I’m dropping your ass. And then I’m gonna throw myself a big ol’
whoop-de-doo
party in celebration.”