Nothing But This

by Anders, Natasha

  “Why now?” She forced the question out. Not sure why she was asking. She should take the papers and run. But now that they were there, right in front of her, she was oddly reluctant to even touch them.

  “Because you’re going to want them after I’ve said what I came here to say.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Olivia . . .” His voice throbbed with misery, and part of Libby wanted to reach across the expanding chasm between them to take his hand. Offer him comfort.

  “Worse than the investigator?” she asked, and he swallowed before meeting her gaze head on. He looked absolutely devastated.

  “I don’t . . . I can’t . . .” He shook his head before trying again. “I’m not a very demonstrative man, Olivia. You know that. I’ve never been one to wear my every emotion on my sleeve. I know you all used to joke that I probably didn’t even have emotions.”

  You all? The phrase jolted her and made her wonder to whom he was referring.

  “We all who?” she couldn’t stop herself from asking.

  “You. Tina.” Tina? Since when did he use the nickname? “Harris. I’ve heard the comments. About me.”

  “What comments?” she asked, although she was pretty sure she knew what he meant. But their adolescent teasing had never seemed to bother him. Reinforcing their belief that he was unflappable and completely emotionless.

  “You know . . . the Ice Man stuff. And, uh, Mr. Freeze, I think it was. The Terminator?”

  “Greys—”

  “I mean, it’s okay,” he quickly interrupted, which was great because Libby had no idea what she’d been about to say. There was no denying the mocking nicknames she and Harris had come up with when they were teens. But part of it had stemmed from Libby’s desire to be noticed by him, to provoke some kind of reaction from him. She had never succeeded, of course. He had remained as cold and aloof as an iceberg. And the first inkling of warmth she’d ever seen in him had been that night at the rooftop party.

  “I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not great at revealing what I’m feeling. I find emotions messy and needlessly complicated. I’ve never found it easy to participate, and quite frankly, when you were younger—a teen—it was simpler to keep my distance. Whenever I found myself in your presence, I wanted to do highly inappropriate things. And that would have been . . .” He shook his head. “It wouldn’t have been acceptable. You were young and vulnerable. Your parents worked for mine. There was an imbalance of power, and I wanted to stay as far removed from you as possible because you were so very hard to resist.”

  “What?” Her voice was quiet and confused, and she found herself reeling at the admission that he had wanted her for so long. He had never let on. Not once.

  But he did himself a disservice when he said he was cold. She now knew he was far from cold. He was hot and passionate, and there was a wealth of emotion teeming just below the grim surface he presented to the world. She had managed to tap into it, as had Clara, and the more time she spent with him, the more of himself he revealed to her.

  “Are you saying you wanted me? Years ago?”

  “I was always aware of you . . . but when I saw you after I came home from college. The year you turned sixteen. God. My world flipped upside down. You were so fucking beautiful.” It still jolted her to hear the f-bomb from him, but there was such intense sincerity in his voice that there was no denying he meant every word. “But you were so young. I couldn’t allow what I felt to show. I kept myself as far away from you as humanly possible. But you and Harris . . . you were so close, and I-I envied him. I was jealous of his ability to be so at ease with you. I wanted to talk and laugh with you. But Harris was the one you went to with your stories and your laughter and your confidences.”

  She tilted her head as she absorbed those words. Of course she talked and laughed with Harris . . . they were friends. They were closer than friends: they were like siblings. Greyson knew that.

  “When I saw you again at the party,” he continued, “I couldn’t resist you anymore. You were . . .” He shook his head, seemingly unable to find the words. “I knew your parents had retired. You were independent, career minded, talented . . . and I could finally act on my need for you. After that—knowing I was your first—the thought of letting you go was . . . difficult for me. I started pushing for marriage. I shouldn’t have; I should have told you about my fertility concerns. I should have told you so fucking many things, Olivia. But I didn’t. I wanted you. And I would do anything to have you.”

  Clara had gone limp, and he gently shifted her so that she was cradled in his arms. So sweet and unbelievably tender with the baby.

  He traced her features with a reverent finger before looking up at Libby, his eyes gleaming with moisture.

  “When I heard that I probably couldn’t have children, I didn’t really care. I was nineteen; kids had been a distant dream. Barely even a dream. At that age, the thought of fatherhood had never occurred to me. It started to niggle as I got older. This awful feeling of inadequacy formed deep down in my gut. I forced myself not to think about it, told myself I’d cross that bridge when I came to it. I considered going for a second opinion, but the thought of being told—again—that I was flawed in such a fundamental way was exceedingly disagreeable. I kept delaying it, telling myself it didn’t matter to me. But it did matter.

  “I could never be a father. I could never give my parents grandchildren. And the thought of telling a woman, a potential mate, I couldn’t ever give her a child . . . it was humiliating. By the time you and I met up again, I had almost convinced myself that it was unimportant. And when I asked you to marry me, parenthood was literally the last thing on my mind. I just wanted you.”

  Libby stared at him, her heart lodged in her throat as she finally began to comprehend just how devastating the mistaken knowledge that he could not father children had been on a proud man like Greyson. As if something like this could make him less of a man. She would never have thought that; most people wouldn’t. But Greyson wasn’t most people, and Libby imagined this so-called biological flaw had unconsciously eaten at him for years.

  “It was only after you said yes,” he continued—and Libby forced back the urge to reach across the table and take his hand; it wasn’t her place to comfort him; not anymore—“that I realized that I hadn’t told you about my perceived infertility. I convinced myself I’d tell you. But I kept delaying the conversation. Do you have any idea how daunting the thought of telling you was? You’re beautiful, perfect, talented . . . why should you have to settle for someone who couldn’t even give you a child? I didn’t want you to think less of me or, worse, feel sorry for me. The thought of you marrying me because you pitied me was repugnant. By the time we married, I’d convinced myself we could adopt, that you’d be fine with that. Then we moved back to Cape Town, and you seemed so happy to be home. You started hanging out with your old friends, with Tina . . . and Harris.”

  The pause after he said Harris’s name seemed significant, and Libby, still not sure where this was going, sat up a little straighter. Greyson seemed so much more vulnerable than she had expected. The words were tumbling from him in almost-frantic haste, and she knew that he was building toward something big. Yet everything he told her was a complete revelation, and she wasn’t sure how much more she could take.

  “I’d come home, and Harris would be there. He would stay for dinner or a movie; he’d just be hanging out, helping you with the dishes, talking, laughing, playing . . . and I was back to being the third wheel. The Ice Man who just didn’t get you guys.”

  Her jaw dropped at that, and she stared at him, feeling sick to her stomach as she finally began to get an inkling of what this was leading up to.

  “When you told me you were pregnant—”

  “No,” she said, her voice quiet but vehement as she tried to stop what she knew was coming. Because if he said it, then nothing would ever be the same again.

  “When you told me you were pregnant,” he repeated dogg
edly, “I felt such anger and resentment and absolute hatred. I felt betrayed by the two people—”

  “No, Greyson. Don’t you say it! Don’t you dare say it.”

  “I’m sorry, Olivia,” he said miserably, for once apologizing for the right thing. But the affront was so completely unforgivable that his apology made absolutely no difference. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Harris?” she said, her voice thick with tears. “You thought Harris and I . . . ?”

  “It was the only thing that made sense to me. I didn’t want to believe it. I told myself it couldn’t be true. But I couldn’t imagine who else it could be. And then the birthmark seemed to confirm . . .”

  “Oh my God,” Libby moaned, her hand going to her mouth as the tiny bite of scallop she had swallowed threatened to come back up. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  “Olivia . . . I hate myself.”

  The words—soft, fervent, and heartfelt—made it so much worse, and the tears she had been holding at bay for the last few minutes finally overflowed to forge scalding paths down her cheeks.

  “Not as much as I hate you right now, Greyson,” she promised on a heated whisper. “Nowhere near as much as that.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “I can’t,” she panted, her hand going to her chest as she fought for breath, “I can’t breathe. How could you think such a vile, despicable thing? I mean, thinking I cheated was bad enough, but with Harris? With your own brother? I can’t comprehend the level of distrust and . . .” She couldn’t complete the thought. There were literally no words to describe how she felt right now.

  “I didn’t want to believe it.”

  “Oh, well, that makes it all better, then, doesn’t it?” She shut her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose in an attempt to ward off the headache that was starting to form.

  “I was tearing myself apart, imagining . . . believing . . .”

  “Stop.” She held up a hand to halt whatever horrible thing he’d been about to spew forth next. “I’d rather not have whatever the hell it was you’d imagined or believed imprinted in my brain. What I already have to deal with is bad enough.”

  He sat quietly while she gathered herself, thankfully not offering up any further excuses.

  “So why did you decide you were wrong about . . . about that?” she finally asked. “You didn’t have a paternity test, and you no longer think you’re infertile. Why is that?”

  “Harris. He reminded me that he’d had mumps too. And the doctor had given him the same diagnosis. He pointed out that if I believed he was the father, then that meant I had to believe that the doctor was wrong. And it naturally follows that if the doctor could be wrong about him, then . . .” He shook his head, not needing to complete the sentence. But Libby was more horrified by the revelation that Harris had known about this all along.

  “Oh my God, Harris knows about your disgusting suspicions? Why didn’t he tell me?” She wasn’t sure how she felt about Harris keeping this from her.

  “You can’t blame him for that—he urged me to come clean. He felt that this would have to come from me. He . . . he felt the same way you do. I hurt him. I hurt you both so much, and I . . . well, there’s no coming back from this, is there?” He said the last with a bitter smile, his eyes falling to the envelope between them.

  Libby dropped her palm onto the envelope, and she dragged it toward her.

  “Nothing has changed,” she affirmed. “This merely reinforces the need for a divorce.” She laughed, the sound dark with bitterness and anger. “What’s that saying? ‘Marry in haste, repent at leisure’? Well, proverbs exist for a reason, I suppose. Yet people just continue to make the same stupid mistakes over and over again.”

  She picked the envelope up and slipped it into Clara’s nappy bag and then nearly laughed again. Right back where it had started. Those papers had been in that bag for so long before she’d finally handed them to him. It was kind of funny that they now found themselves tucked back in with the nappies.

  She was focusing on silly little details to avoid thinking about what Greyson had just told her. She didn’t know why, but being accused of cheating with Harris felt like a bigger betrayal than his initial accusation. It was so beyond messed up . . . the level of distrust was much worse than she’d believed. And maybe she shouldn’t allow it to affect her so much, not when she had already made up her mind that their marriage was over. But this . . . there was no hope for an amicable relationship after this. They would be strangers raising a child together. And she had wanted more for them.

  For Clara.

  “I thought I was in love with you.” She blurted out the words before she could stop herself, and he raised his wretched gaze to hers. He looked completely desolate, but she couldn’t allow that to affect her. She wanted him to know this, wanted him to understand what he had destroyed with his distrust and his cruelty. “You wanted to know why I married you? That’s why. I’d always liked you. You know that. But after those two months, those crazy, happy whirlwind months . . . even though you still kept yourself apart from me, even though I knew you didn’t feel the same way, I was in love with you. I thought . . . perhaps . . . with time . . .”

  Her voice wobbled as a sob built, and she clapped her hand over her mouth in an attempt to hold back the anguished sound she was almost sure she would make if she continued to speak. Tears brimmed and overflowed, scalding their way down her cheeks and beneath her fingers.

  His face twisted, and his own eyes gleamed.

  “Olivia. Please . . . I’m so . . .” He shook his head, and the movement dislodged a tear. A gleaming droplet that tracked down his lean cheek. Libby’s eyes followed it, watching in fascination as it reached the rigid line of his jaw, where it teetered stoically, on the brink of falling. He impatiently rubbed his chin against his shoulder, ruthlessly obliterating the teardrop. And Libby blinked, the destruction of that single perfect teardrop bringing her back to the present with a jolt.

  “For weeks,” Greyson was saying, his voice sounding rough and distraught, “I’ve been trying to find the right words. The proper combination of sounds that would make you forgive me, that would make up for what I said and did. But those words don’t exist. And nothing I could possibly come up with will ever make up for the things I’ve said and done. How could I apologize when the words are too small, too insignificant, to ever properly communicate my regret and my absolute self-loathing? The only words I have to work with are I’m sorry . . . and they’re so fucking inadequate.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  She said nothing. And who could blame her? There was nothing left to say. Greyson had known telling her would spell the definitive end to everything he held dear. No matter what Tina or Harris said . . . he had always known that it would obliterate even the chance of a friendship between him and Olivia.

  She was distraught, hurt, absolutely furious, and she was completely justified in feeling the way she did.

  “Why did you tell me this?” she asked. “I wanted a divorce. Telling me changes nothing and just rakes up so very many negative feelings.”

  “I was hoping . . .” His voice petered off as he recognized how futile his hopes had been. How stupid and unrealistic. “I thought if we ever stood a chance of resurrecting something of our marriage . . . our relationship. Even our friendship. We shouldn’t have something of this magnitude looming between us.”

  “We barely had a marriage,” she scoffed. Her stark words lacerated him, and he flinched. “Our friendship—what there was of it—was completely one sided. And as for a relationship . . . we had great sex. Well, really good sex. It could have been great. It should have been great. Those few nights we had here, in Riversend, showed me how great it could have been. But you always held back. You never allowed yourself to lose control. To trust me at your most vulnerable. And that was the real problem with our relationship. That lack of trust led to where we are today.”

  “It’s always been hard for me to trust, Ol
ivia. I don’t like losing control. But with you . . . it was different. I was different. I was well on my way to trusting you, to giving myself to you completely, when . . . everything happened.”

  “‘When everything happened’?” she repeated scathingly. “When I got pregnant with your child, you mean? When you looked at me and were convinced that the only way that could be possible was if I had cheated on you—with your own brother?”

  She looked like she was about to gag and shut her eyes tightly as if to force her nausea back.

  “You and Harris . . . ,” he began, not entirely sure what he was going to say. “It’s so simple for you.”

  She blinked, something in his words making her pause. “What do you mean?” The question was reluctant and forced out through barely moving lips.

  “I’ve never found it easy to be around people. I prefer solitary pursuits. But you were like sunshine in my world. You lit up a room with your smile, with your laughter. You attract people to you. I was drawn to your warm, generous light, and it made me uncomfortable. Because I never knew what to say, or do, around you. Even before I desired you, I found it difficult to interact with you. You were constantly laughing over things that I often found incomprehensible. But Harris always seemed to get it.”

  She started fidgeting with the edge of her place mat. Greyson was familiar with the habit. It was something she often did—fidgeting with random objects—when she was nervous or trying to figure something out.

  “When you were a kid, you used to follow me around, remember?”

  “Until you called me a stalker,” she muttered, sounding like a resentful teen.

  “I allowed it for years before I put a stop to it. I liked knowing you were there. You were always close, and I was getting too used to it, too comfortable with it. I remember once I turned around and you weren’t there, and I panicked because I worried that something had happened to you. But you had stopped to pick up a treat from the kitchen, and you came traipsing into the living room, a plate of cookies in hand, sat down with your book, and proceeded to ignore me as usual. Always trying so hard to be unobtrusive. Trying to pretend that you just happened to be in the same room I was in. That was when I decided that I needed to put an end to it. I had become too accustomed to your presence, and it confused me. I feared that one day I would have to interact with you, and your sweet little crush would disappear when you discovered that I wasn’t interesting or funny or anything like my brother. I didn’t want to see the disappointment on your face the day that happened. So I drove you away. And then, when you were older, I kept you at arm’s length because it was the only thing that would save my sanity.”