Everyone Loves a Hero

by Marie Force

He gasped. “Oh, my God. Keep her there. I’m on my way.” The connection went dead.

  Jenny closed the phone and glanced at Olivia.

  “I don’t want to see him.”

  “Something about this stinks to high heaven, if you ask me. You owe him the chance to explain.”

  “I don’t owe him anything!” Olivia broke down again into grief-stricken sobs. “I should’ve known something like this would happen. Everywhere we go, fabulously beautiful women throw themselves at him or reappear out of his past. How can I ever compete with that? I’m sick of trying!”

  Jenny put her arms around her. “Liv, honey, I know this has been an awful day and you’ve had a terrible shock, but if you don’t see him, you’re always going to wonder what he might’ve said. I’ve seen the way he looks at you. He loves you. I’m sure of it.”

  “I was sure of it, too, but now I’m wondering how I’ll know if anything he says is true.”

  “You’ll know.”

  “I feel like I’m going to die,” she whispered, resting her head on Jenny’s shoulder. “My heart literally hurts.”

  “I know, sweetie. I know.”

  ***

  Cole came storming up the stairs to Jenny’s townhouse at ten o’clock.

  She opened the door for him and led him into the living room where Olivia slept on the sofa.

  “Nothing she said was true, Jenny,” he said, his tone quiet but frantic. “I swear to God.”

  “Unfortunately, I’m not the one you need to convince.”

  “She believed her.” When Cole shifted his eyes to Olivia, he noticed her face was red and puffy from crying.

  “I guess it was quite a performance.”

  “She’s a total nutcase. I’ve been trying to get rid of her for months. Long before I met Liv.”

  “Can I get you anything?” Jenny asked. “Something to eat? A stiff drink maybe?”

  “No, thanks. I’m sorry to come barging in here like this. If she’ll go with me, I’ll take her to her place. Would you mind if we borrowed your car? We’ll get it back to you tomorrow.”

  “I’ll get the keys.”

  She left the room, and Cole went over to kneel down next to Olivia. He brushed his hand over her silky hair and kissed her forehead. “Liv,” he whispered.

  Her eyes fluttered open, and she greeted him with a soft, dreamy smile. He watched her smile fade as she remembered what had happened earlier. She sat up and put as much space between them as she could. “You shouldn’t have come here.”

  “We need to talk. Let’s go to your place. Jenny’s going to loan us her car.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  A stab of fear lodged in his breastbone, making it difficult to draw a breath. “Yes, you are.”

  Jenny came back with the keys, which she handed to Cole.

  “I’m not leaving until you talk to me. We can either do it here and maybe wake up Billy, or we can go to your place. But we are going to talk.”

  With great reluctance, Olivia got up and slipped on her shoes and coat.

  Jenny hugged her and whispered something in her ear.

  Olivia nodded and went out the door.

  “Thanks,” Cole said to Jenny.

  She squeezed his arm. “Good luck.”

  ***

  Neither of them said a word as he drove to Alexandria. When they arrived at her apartment, he used his key to open the door and held it for her.

  Olivia went in ahead of him and dropped her coat on the hook by the door. Feeling like she was wading through quicksand, she went through the motions of making coffee to thaw the block of ice that had formed inside her.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she watched him pace like a pent-up tiger in a cage, ready to pounce. She also couldn’t help but notice how exhausted he looked, but she refused to feel any compassion for him. Those days were over.

  “Are you ready to listen to me now?” he asked after a long period of silence.

  She kept her back to him and took a sip of the coffee, but it did nothing to warm her.

  “Olivia.”

  Turning to him, she forced herself to look at him. “Whatever you have to say won’t matter, so why don’t we skip this whole scene and call it a day? You’ve had your last fling. What more do you want from me?”

  His face went slack with shock. “Is that what she said? Yes, you were my last fling—the last fling I ever planned to have before I married you, Olivia.”

  “What about your wedding? April, I think she said it was.”

  He shook his head in disbelief. “There is no wedding.”

  “She had a ring.”

  “Not that she got from me! I’ve never been engaged to anyone. The only person I want to be engaged to is you.”

  At that, Olivia snapped. “She had a key and luggage and your mail! She knew your schedule and that you’d been sick. You expect me to believe there’s nothing going on between you?”

  He came over to her and put his hand on her arm. “Will you sit down? Please? Let me explain.”

  She shook him off. “What can you possibly say that I’m going to believe?”

  “There’s nothing going on with her. Not anymore. Not since before I met you.”

  “So there was?”

  “Sit with me.” He led her to the sofa and sat down next to her. “I should’ve told you about her,” he said with a deep sigh. “I know that. I almost did the other night when you asked me, but you’ve been so skittish and things between us were going so well. I didn’t want to give you any reason to have doubts.”

  “Well,” she snorted, “that backfired on you, didn’t it?”

  “Liv, she’s a total freak. She latches on to guys, and when they break up with her, she goes nuts. I didn’t find out until after I broke up with her that she’s done this before.”

  Olivia wasn’t sure she wanted to know, but she couldn’t help but ask. “Done what?”

  He ran a frustrated hand through his hair and released a deep, rattling breath from his congested chest. “I met her through some friends about two and a half years ago. We started seeing each other once in a while, nothing major. I told her the same thing I told everyone else—I’m not looking for anything serious, I just want to have fun, I don’t want anyone to get hurt. For a while, things were okay. We were having a good time, you know? Then my mother got sick. Everything happened really fast. She went to the doctor because she wasn’t feeling well. They sent her to a specialist, and the next day we found out she was terminal.”

  His pain was so acute, even after all this time, that Olivia wanted to reach out to him but didn’t.

  “I was in a big rush to get home to Indiana. I called Natasha and asked her to deal with my fridge and the mail and stuff. I put a key under the mat for her and left town. While my mother was sick, Natasha came to Lafayette a couple of times to bring me my mail and more clothes. She always brought food, too, and was really helpful, which I appreciated. When my mother died, she came to the funeral and everything. It was all such a blur that I hardly remember her being there.

  “I stayed with my dad for two weeks after the funeral, and then I had to get back to work. I’d been on a leave of absence for almost five months by then. I was numb, and I really needed to focus on work for a while. Natasha didn’t like that. She had waited months for me and wanted to get back to having fun.

  “We were fighting a lot, which I didn’t need just then, so I called it off with her. She totally freaked out. I mean she went nuts, which was the first sign that something wasn’t right with her. I had just lost my mother, and she was making it about her?”

  Olivia didn’t want to be moved by his story, but she was nonetheless.

  “I stopped taking her calls and ignored her messages. Maybe I didn’t handle it as well as I could have, but I had other things on my mind. A couple of weeks went by without any word from her, and then she started showing up at my house at odd hours. Sometimes she was drunk, sometimes she wasn’t, but it alway
s led to a screaming match. My neighbors called the cops once, and they gave her a warning.

  “This went on for months, until I couldn’t take it anymore. I called her parents and asked them to talk to her. They were deeply distressed to hear about what’d been going on. That’s when I found out I wasn’t the first guy she’d latched onto in an unhealthy way. They got involved, and I didn’t hear from her for more than a year. I thought I’d seen the last of her.”

  “What happened?”

  “When I was home for those two weeks after I got punched in the store?”

  Olivia nodded.

  “She showed up again, crying and pleading with me to give her another chance. I decided to play hardball this time. I told her I’d met someone else, and I was in love with her.”

  Olivia gasped. “You said that before you even saw me again?”

  He took her hand, held it tightly. “I already knew, Liv. You were it for me. I knew it then.”

  Tears flooded her eyes, but she shook her head. “You’re only saying what you think I need to hear.”

  “I’m telling you the truth!”

  “How do I know?” she cried, tugging her hand free of his grip.

  His teeth gritted with anger and frustration, he was clearly struggling to stay calm. “Let me finish, and then you can decide.”

  She wiped at tears and buried her face in her hands. This was the most excruciating thing she’d ever been through in her life.

  “The weekend we had dinner at the airport? Do you remember how I didn’t call you until Sunday night, and you thought I wasn’t going to call?”

  Looking up at him, she nodded.

  “I left the next morning on an eight o’clock flight to Orlando, and all I was thinking about was you and how much I’d loved being with you and kissing you. When I landed, I got an urgent message from the airline representative meeting the plane that Natasha’s father was trying to reach me. I checked my cell phone and found four incoherent messages from her and two frantic messages from him. She was barricaded in her apartment threatening to kill herself if she didn’t see me.”

  Shocked, Olivia stared at him. “What did you do?”

  “I wasn’t going to have that on my conscience, so I arranged for emergency backup, which did me no favors at work, I might add, and hopped on a flight back to Chicago. I spent the rest of that weekend talking her out of her apartment and into the hospital so she could get some help. Her parents thanked me profusely for coming and promised I wouldn’t hear from any of them again. The first thing I did when I left that hospital was call you.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this?”

  “Olivia,” he said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Have you no memory of how it was between us at first? I was so busy trying to convince you the feelings I had for you were real and genuine that I wouldn’t have dared drop this on you then. You would’ve gone running for the hills.”

  She couldn’t deny that he had a point. “When we were together that first weekend, you got messages from her, didn’t you? I came out of the bathroom, and you were checking your voicemail. I could tell you were troubled, but you said it was nothing.”

  He nodded. “She was whacked out on something, so I couldn’t even understand what she was saying. You were upset about what had happened with your parents that day, so I wasn’t going to lay this on you then, either. The night I sent you the text message asking you to call me?” He paused. “I didn’t answer when you called because I got home to find her stretched out naked on my sofa with a red rose between her breasts.”

  Olivia gasped.

  “That time I’d had enough. I called the cops, went to the station, and pressed charges against her for breaking and entering. But because she had a key, the cops refused to pursue it. I finally got the key back that night, and I was sure I’d seen the last of her. It never occurred to me that she would’ve had others made. I should’ve known. I’d planned to change the lock but never got around to it since I’ve been away so much lately. Somehow she found out you were staying with me. We have a lot of friends in common, and most of them have no idea what she’s put me through. Anyone could’ve told her.”

  “She knew things about me.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “That I live in Washington and I’m an artist.”

  “Stuff I’ve mentioned to my friends.”

  In a small, dead sounding voice, Olivia added, “She said you’d told her I was your sister’s friend, and I’d be staying there this week while I did a school project in Chicago.”

  He hung his head with dismay. “Liv, it’s all lies. I’ve never talked to her about you, except to tell her I’d met you and was in love with you. That’s it. I swear to God.”

  “She said the boxes on the third floor were hers—”

  His eyes flashed with rage. “Those boxes are things of my mother’s that my father couldn’t bear to have around the house and we couldn’t bear to part with!”

  “How did she know you were sick?” she asked as the awful truth began to sneak past the block of ice.

  “She called one day this week while I was sleeping. I answered the phone thinking it would be you. She must’ve heard it in my voice.” He stood up, hands on his hips, eyes flashing with anger. “What else? What other lies do I need to defend myself against?”

  “Are you serious? If you had told me about her, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation!”

  He snorted with disbelief. “If I had told you about her, it would’ve been over between us long before now.”

  Something about the way he said that made her heart shatter into a thousand pieces. “I guess we’ll never know, will we?”

  “I guess not.”

  “So where does that leave us?”

  Picking up his coat, he put it on slowly, never taking his eyes off her. “I can’t be with someone who thinks I’m capable of this. It’s not the only time your first impulse was to think the worst of me. Either you trust me, or you don’t. Clearly, you don’t, and I’m tired of trying to convince you that you can.”

  “That’s not fair!” Olivia cried, standing up to face him. “What was I supposed to think when she came waltzing in there claiming to be your fiancée?”

  “Maybe you could’ve picked up the phone and asked me instead of believing her and running away! Maybe you could’ve had a little faith in me after everything we’ve shared!”

  “You could’ve had some faith in me, too.”

  “Well, I’m sorry for trying to protect you from something ugly after what you were going through with your family. I’m sorry I put your needs ahead of my own. I won’t make that mistake again.”

  Taking her key off his ring, he put it on the counter and went to the door. With his hand resting on the doorknob, he turned back to her. “I wanted everything with you, Olivia. I wanted to marry you, have a family with you, share my life with you. I loved you that much. Congratulations. You’ve finally succeeded in talking me out of it.”

  “Cole!” His name caught on the huge lump in her throat. “Please don’t leave.”

  He hesitated, but only for a moment. Then he opened the door and was gone.

  Olivia slid to the floor and dissolved into helpless, heartbroken sobs.

  The next day she woke up with the worst cold she’d ever had.

  Chapter 29

  She’d had no idea it was possible to hurt this much. Over the next month, Olivia slogged through her days without feeling, tasting, or seeing much of anything. School started up again, but for all she cared she might have been back in business school rather than pursuing her dream. Without Cole to share it with, what did it matter?

  Most alarming of all, she hadn’t drawn or painted a thing since their awful confrontation. Her talent seemed to have dried up and died right along with their love.

  Had she ever noticed before that every song was about heartbreak or lost love? She found herself staring into the mirror with tears rolling down her cheek
s at odd hours of the day and night. Apparently, she had lost weight because her dad and Jenny were after her to eat. But nothing appealed to her, so most of the time she didn’t bother.

  When she got her period, she experienced a new wave of grief for all the things that would never be. She dreamt of the dark-haired, blue-eyed babies they would’ve had together and woke up heartbroken every time.

  Just over a month after their breakup, she received a box in the mail from Cole. Tearing into it, she found the painting she had been working on when Natasha arrived and ruined everything. Also in the box were her paints, brushes, and the iPod he had given her. That was it. No note, no word, nothing to tell her he missed her or was thinking of her.

  She tore the painting into tiny shreds and dumped it into the garbage. Not able to bring herself to trash the iPod, she put it in the same drawer where she had stashed the diamond earrings and tried to forget they were there.

  A week later, she received word through her father that her mother was anxious to see her. Olivia hadn’t seen her mother since the terrible blow-up the previous fall. Mary had been home for a while, and from what everyone had told Olivia, the change in her was quite remarkable. Regardless, Olivia had to work up the courage to go to her parents’ new home.

  She almost didn’t recognize Mary when she walked into the orderly, uncluttered house. “Mom?”

  Mary stood up to reveal a figure that was at least forty pounds lighter than it had been the last time Olivia saw her. There was also a sparkle in her eyes that Olivia had never seen before. She knew she was staring, but she couldn’t seem to help it.

  Mary held out her arms to her daughter. “Livvie.”

  Olivia stepped into her mother’s embrace and fought the urge to sob. She had cried enough lately to last a lifetime.

  “It’s so good to see you,” Mary said as she released her daughter.

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “Still at work. He’s made three sales this week alone. They’re thrilled with him. He’s right where he belongs, selling Cadillacs.”

  “That’s great.” They sat together on the sofa. “You look wonderful. I can’t believe it.”