“This is why I didn’t tell you. I don’t want you feeling sorry for me, trying to lift my spirits up with meaningless words. He’s gone and no amount of alcohol or condolences can bring me peace.”
Olivia stared at him for a long time, realizing for the first time that she and Alex were more alike than she’d ever allowed herself to see. “I don’t pity you.”
Alex restrained his muscles so that his face was a solid mask of stone. “I wasn’t planning on coming back to New York. I was going to stay in Sweden and take over the family business,” he said without emotion.
“Then why the hell are you here?”
He threw Olivia a meaningful glance. Now was not the time to divulge the reason why he had fought so hard to return to New York, even if it meant handing the family business over to an uncle he didn’t completely trust. Olivia was not in the right frame of mind to receive such revealing information, nor was he ready to deliver it. “Just go to your father’s place, will you?” he said instead.
She shook her head. “No. I’m going to Daniel’s.” She began to walk away, and out of sheer desperation, he grabbed her wrist and spun her around.
“Don’t go there. Please? For me?”
“Why do you hate Daniel so much?” she asked, her eyes burning into his.
Alex hesitated, not knowing how to break the news that something was off about her boyfriend. The noble part of him asserted that he simply didn’t want to worry her, but the real reason was far simpler: he just didn’t want to look like a wimp. How else would she interpret what had happened between him and Daniel the night she was kidnapped? How could she take him seriously if he complained that Daniel had pushed him, when even he himself couldn’t understand how it was that he had flown so far? Alex had been a decorated swimmer all throughout college, as well as a regular at the gym; he was no slight man. So the fact that Daniel Johnson had managed to send him flying through the air from a simple, close-quartered shove truly baffled him. “I just don’t think he’s good enough for you.”
“Well then, who is good enough for me?” she said, the challenge glittering in her eyes. “You?”
He winced at her sarcastic tone. “No. I don’t think I’m good enough for you either. But I know that guy is bad news. You deserve better.”
Olivia closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Alex, please.” She looked up at him with pity, and sliced his ego to ribbons. “We’ve been over this before. I’m with Daniel now. If you can’t accept that, then I suggest you just leave.”
Alex cast her wrist down in disgust, but quickly reminded himself that this was about Olivia, not him. He would endure the cruelest words if it meant that she was safe from that violent freak. “If you go to him, we’re done,” he said. Short of detaining her physically, the ultimatum was the only card left to play.
“You can’t be serious,” she said with a snort. “As in, you’re never going to talk to me again?”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I mean,” he said, his voice tight with resolve.
She stared at him long and hard, her eyebrows drawn together. Finally she made a tiny motion to the open door. “Then go.”
“You’re serious?”
“If you are.”
His heart plummeted to his toes, but he dared not show his devastation. It was bad enough that she chose Daniel over him, but it was another thing entirely that she was willing to turn her back on their many years of friendship. If, after everything he had done to ensure her safety, she still did not value him as an important person, someone that she needed to have in her life, then it was her loss. As much as it was breaking his heart, he could not bring himself to waste another minute looking at the face of someone so ungrateful, even one he’d spent many nights dreaming about.
Lifting his shoulders a little higher, he gave her one last hard look and walked out the door, his mind already sitting at the bar down the street, drinking until Olivia was nothing more than a distant, bitter memory.
* * * * *
Olivia had almost calmed entirely from her confrontation with Alex by the time Smith dropped her off in front of Daniel’s apartment building. As much as she wanted to push Alex completely out her mind, she couldn’t help but feel the sting of his angry departure. But he would be back; of this she was almost completely sure.
When Daniel answered the door, she could immediately see that something had shifted in his world, from the weary lines under his eyes to the way he avoided her gaze.
“What is it?” she asked as soon as she stepped inside.
His hands firmly in his pockets, he lifted his head and forced a smile. “Nothing. Hey, I thought you were going to perform tonight?”
“I’m off until Saturday.” She threaded her arms through his and squeezed his chest, ignoring his mood. Whatever was bothering him could wait; she could not. She rose to her toes and breathed into his ear, “I’m entirely yours tonight.”
Daniel kissed her forehead but drew away. “No, Liv,” he said, looking into her eyes for the first time. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
Olivia fought to control her unreasonably quick temper. “Why does everyone think they can tell me what to do?” she said, fingernails digging into her palms. “I’m not some helpless woman who needs to be managed.”
Daniel frowned. “That’s not what I meant. I just didn’t want to push you before you’re ready.”
“Daniel, just shut up and kiss me.”
The look on his face instantly transformed into determination and before she could even blink, he was forcing her lips apart with his own. She grasped the back of his head and closed her eyes, allowing the taste of Daniel to permeate her thoughts. “I need you to screw me. Now,” she said and he complied with a pained groan, pressing her against the wall.
If he still cared about pushing her too far, he did not say, as he made quick work of undressing them both. In the blink of an eye, their clothes lay at their feet and he was back to kissing her, his hands splayed on either side of her head. She wrapped one leg around his waist and he helped her with the other leg, and soon he was supporting her with only one hand as he thrust into her.
She should have stopped and made him get a condom – it would have been but a work of a moment – but, in that instant, she didn’t care about the consequences. All that mattered was that her mind was devoid of all thoughts of reality. She was all nerve endings as he drove in and out, kissing any expanse of skin he could touch with his lips and leaving it singed.
“Liv,” he rasped and she cried out, her insides trembling with release. A few seconds later, he crushed his face against the side of her neck and went rigid.
After a few moments of ragged breathing, he lifted his head and she witnessed the exact moment awareness seeped back into his eyes. His lips parted and eyebrows furrowed, but before he could say anything, she covered his mouth with her own for fear of hearing anything that would cool the heat of the moment.
32 | THE FUTURE IS HERE
Daniel found sleep elusive that night, his mind buzzing with stinging thoughts. He no longer knew up from down, right from wrong. Had he really just had unprotected sex with Olivia knowing that he was contagious? Was he so far gone that it hadn’t occurred to him to exercise some care with the woman who needed it most?
He sat up and watched her peaceful face, mentally tracing the graceful line of her jaw down to her lips, which were slightly pouty in sleep, staving off the chest-tightening possibility of pregnancy. Could his freak-show body even impregnate a woman? If so, did he love her enough to marry her? Where would they live, what would they survive on?
All of a sudden, a thought struck him like an ice pick to the temple: what if the child, their child, came out a freak as well?
He could do nothing else but shake his head, refusing to think about the future when his present was still so uncertain. “What the hell have I done?” he whispered into the dark room. Fighting the urge to wake her to talk, or to make love again like a dying man, he stood up and out
of the bed. But as he took one last lingering look, he couldn’t bring his muscles to move away.
And then it hit him, the reason why he was reduced to a bewildered fool around her: she wielded a power that even he, of incredible speed and strength, could not fend off. And though it explained why he was acting so impulsively, so unlike his self-preserving old self, it didn’t explain why his chest ached at the thought of leaving her side. Inevitably, the heart cannot be commanded to feel an emotion not already there.
With a resigned sigh, he lay back down and snuggled around her, burrowing his face in the curve of her neck. It was all his fault. He had supplied her with the special ability to crack open the thick dam of emotions he had built around his heart. And now that the floodgates were open, he was, basically, fucked.
Olivia awoke to the soft breathing against her hair, feeling lighter than she had in the past few days. She supposed waking up in the arms of your superhuman boyfriend would have that effect.
Then it all came rushing back to her, what she had forced Daniel to do, the impulsive risk she had taken. Careful not to disturb his sleep, she whispered in his ear then rolled away from the heavy arm draped across her waist. She stood up, feeling vividly aware of the air on her bare skin, the various scents she breathed in.
She performed quick leg stretches, relieved that the tightness in her left calf had almost completely disappeared, then tiptoed to the bathroom.
Once the warm water hit her face, her muscles completely unwound and the tight rein on her emotions dissolved. The tears, once they began, flowed free and steady. She brought a trembling hand up to her neck and fingered the lump, no longer able to ignore its presence.
She was dying, suffering from an almost identical ailment as her mother. But Olivia knew that, in her final weeks before she passed, her mother had given up and simply succumbed to death’s beckoning finger. She had pasted on a brave face for her daughter’s sake, but the absence of determination in her eyes had been hard to look beyond. The woman had all but thrown her hands up in surrender.
And now Olivia was due to suffer the same fate. But unlike her mother, Olivia vowed that she would not yield and fade away like a photograph to bleach in the sun. She would live the hell out of every moment, squeeze every emotion out of every word. To hell with cancer, she would go down fighting.
By the time she made her way back to the bedroom, her damp hair still sticking to her back, Daniel was already sitting up in bed with two mugs of instant coffee in his hands.
“Hi,” she said huskily, dropping the towel and pausing a heartbeat for Daniel’s benefit.
He sighed and put down his mug. “Come here.” He pulled her close and ran his hands along her side as they kissed. She closed her eyes, relishing the taste of coffee on his tongue and the pleasant scent of his skin. He pulled back with a dazed look. “Liv, I…”
She brought a finger to his lips. “I don’t want to talk about what happened or what could happen. Just for today, can we just be two people living in the present?”
He nodded and gently bit the tip of her finger. “So what do you want to do?” He smiled salaciously as he sucked on her finger, sending tingles up and down her stomach.
Olivia had to hand it to herself; summoning the Daniel Johnson that she had only heard about in high school was definitely a stroke of genius. Even if her powers of suggestion only kept him around for a few hours, even just fifteen minutes, at least she could catch a glimpse of the happy-go-lucky jock before his life was touched by misfortune.
Olivia peered at him through her lashes, herself playing make-believe. “I want you to ask me out on a date.” She sat up, the blanket sliding off her chest. “And maybe, if you play your cards right, you might get to second base.”
He growled playfully before pouncing.
“So what are your plans for Thanksgiving next week?” Olivia said as they walked down Times Square with their hands entwined.
Daniel shrugged, trying desperately to hold onto that buoyant feeling he’d awoken with that morning. But no matter how hard he tried to stave them off, little bits of his life seeped back into his mind and, slowly but surely, his good mood began to evaporate with each breath. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” he said, which was not altogether the truth. He forced his mind away from the plans he had been mulling over and turned his attention back to the woman at the end of his arm. “What about you?”
“I was hoping to spend it with you.”
He looked into her almond-shaped eyes and wished that he could be someone else entirely. Olivia deserved someone who could offer her a life without secrets, a vibrant life lived out in the open. Someone like Alex, he realized while gritting his teeth.
“I might go back home to Oklahoma, to spend it with my mom and dad.”
She turned away. “Ah.”
He pulled her close and wrapped an arm protectively around her shoulders. “I would much rather be with you, trust me.” This much, he could say honestly.
“That’s okay,” she said, her eyes still trained across the street. “I have a thing anyway.”
He squeezed her in place of an actual apology. All of a sudden, someone bumped into his shoulder and he pitched forward. When he straightened, he saw a disheveled woman running down the street, two paper shopping sacks swinging from her hands. Lagging behind was a young mother with an infant strapped to her chest, calling out for help.
Olivia caught Daniel’s eye then turned and ran. “Stop!” she shouted towards the fleeing thief. “You will stop running right now!”
Daniel wanted nothing more than to leave the thief be, but he had no other choice if his own girlfriend was giving chase. He followed suit at a human pace, fooling everyone but those who mattered.
He caught up with Olivia at the end of the block, where she was doubled over clutching her ankle through her brown boots.
“Are you hurt?” he said, pretending to breathe heavily.
She winced as she met his eyes. “I twisted my ankle on that curb,” she said with a small jerk of the head.
He hoisted her up into his arms and it was then he noticed the gloss accumulating in her eyes. “Hey, hey,” he said as she bit her lower lip. “Don’t cry.”
She pushed him away, struggling to get back on her one good foot. “What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you put me down and go after that thief?”
He held steady, unwilling to let her go for a myriad of reasons. “No way. You’re hurt.”
“But she stole that woman’s stuff! Those were probably Christmas gifts.” Olivia was crying now, tears streaming down her flushed cheeks.
“She can live without it,” he said in exasperation. “But I won’t be able to live with myself if I left you here while you’re hurt.”
“No,” she said and buried her face in his collar. She began to sob, repeating the word over and over again.
“Hey, it’s alright.”
“It’s not alright!” She looked at him, her eyes wild. “The final performance of Swan Lake is tomorrow.”
The real reason for her anguish finally sunk in through his thick skull. “So you won’t be able to dance,” he finished softly. He felt like an idiot for forgetting that a dancer’s career is only as healthy as her body. He held her closer, not knowing what else to do. “Hold on, I’m going to take you to the hospital.”
“No,” she said in such a tone that he knew he would have to obey. “You will put me down right now.”
His arms released her as though they had a mind of their own and she slid to the ground. He watched as she tested the ankle by placing some weight on it, and though she gritted her teeth, she managed to stand. “I just need to stretch it out,” she said, bending her ankle in circles. “I’ll be okay.” Still, for all her bravado, she couldn’t conceal the visible pain – physical or emotional, he couldn’t tell which – in her face as she limped down the street.
“Is it really safe for you to be walking on a twisted ankle?” he said, eyeing her sideways.
“I don’t mind carrying you.”
She gave him a sharp look. “I do.” And he realized that the vulnerable girl he’d seen a few nights before was now gone, replaced by a woman intent on proving her self-reliance.
Good, she’ll need it, he thought as he silently studied the stubborn set of her jaw. He was not a psychic like Coral, but knew enough to predict that the road ahead would be an arduous one, and whether together or apart, he and Olivia would need all the strength they possessed.
33 | LEAPING OFF THE WORLD’S SUMMIT
It was time.
As soon as they stepped inside the wide elevators that rose to the top of the Chrysler Building, Daniel came to the decision that he could no longer keep his mouth shut. Olivia deserved to know the entire story.
But even as they traveled silently up the elevator to the uppermost floor, his mind still sought other options, clambered for other ways around his problem. Still, as much as he cared for the woman who stood so still beside him, he could not deny the irrefutable fact that he was a risk to all. He was nothing but a walking infectious disease in a densely populated city.
The elevator doors opened and revealed a deck full of warm bodies milling around, posing and taking pictures. His heart sank and he clutched at Olivia’s hand like a lifeline. He had counted on the winter’s chill to keep visitors away from the top of one of Manhattan’s tallest buildings, but he could not have been more wrong.
“Daniel?” Olivia squeezed his hand and pulled him out of the elevator, her limp almost undetectable now. “You doing okay?”
His eyes flew around, assessing each person in the area. “No. I’m just… I can’t be near people.”
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