Chapter Thirty-Seven
Mark
Sunday
My eyes stung from the lack of sleep, but how the hell was I supposed to relax and settle down after yesterday? Not only did Justine give me the scare of my life, I honestly wasn’t sure that I could ever get over that, but then Olivia gave me that spiel about leaving. Just at the God damn moment that I had fully embraced the fact that I might well be in love with her. Sure, it wasn’t logical, it didn’t make any sense for me to be in love with this woman who was younger than me and working with Justine, but that was where it was. My emotions flipped about everywhere as I tried to embrace this cliché, and now I knew for sure that she was the one for me.
Hudson’s announcement threw me, it made me freak out about my own feelings, but that was dumb. His situation had absolutely nothing to do with mine; I needed to just think about me and Olivia, and I wanted her.
But now she might not be here anymore. I hadn’t heard her leave, but that didn’t mean anything. Maybe after the argument last night she decided to creep out, tiptoeing so she wouldn’t alert me to anything. I hated the idea of letting her go, but I couldn’t force her to remain with me. It was completely up to her.
With a sigh, I gave up lying down since I wasn’t getting any sleep anyway, and I padded over to the window. The scene of the beach laying in front of me was beautiful, but now it felt tainted because it was where Justine escaped to when she wanted to run away. Luckily today, I had the foresight to ensure that the door was properly locked and I had all the keys in the room with me. There wasn’t any escaping. I rested my hot forehead against the cooler window, and I slid my eyes closed. Today was do or die, and I wasn’t sure what way it was going to go. I wished I could have held her all night long to ensure that she stayed, but I couldn’t.
It’s time to face the music, I told myself morosely. To see if Olivia is still here or not.
I moved nervously towards the bedroom door and swung it open. I peered my head around and tried to see her, but the entire communal area of the villa was empty. My heart began to race, it pounded in my mouth, my tummy tuned itself over and over while I thought about Justine. I knew that she couldn’t go, but what if she’d climbed out a window to get away from me? I raced towards her bedroom and pushed the door open, only calming down the moment I saw her lying across her bed sheets, asleep without a care in the world.
Oh, thank goodness. I rested my weary body up against the door frame and smiled down at her. She’s okay.
I wasn’t sure that I would ever fully be able to relax again when it came to my daughter. I would always need to know where she was. If things had gone a different way yesterday, I wouldn’t have ever been able to forgive myself. It made my fists pump angrily by my side just thinking about it. It was awful!
Justine seemed to sense my eyes upon her, and she finally forced her eyes open. She smiled and pushed herself into a sitting position, so I went to sit beside her on the bed for a little chat. We didn’t really get much time to talk yesterday after everything that had happened, and there were some things I needed to get across.
“Are you okay, darling?” I asked her softly so she knew I wasn’t going to yell today. “How are you feeling?”
She sighed loudly and nodded. “I’m better. I still feel very bad though. Is Olivia still upset?”
I shrugged, unable to answer that. “I don’t want to talk about Olivia right now. I want to discuss you and me.” I shifted uncomfortably where I sat. “I don’t think we’ve talked much about us, have we?”
Justine shook her head, and she answered me quite eloquently. “No, not with each other.”
Wow… I guess the work that Susan was doing with her was working. Justine seemed to understand her feelings a lot better than she did once upon a time. This would make our chat easier.
“I know that I haven’t been the best dad to you.” I got choked up as I said that; the truth of it hit me hard. “I got lost in my own sadness when your mom… sadly passed away…”
“You don’t ever talk about Mom,” Justine replied curiously. “Why don’t you tell me about her?”
“It’s hard for me.” Wow, being honest was hard but it felt quite good too. “It’s hard for me to remember her, but I guess it’s hard for you too. I need to remember that.” I wrapped my arm around my daughter and held her for a moment. “I’ll talk to you about this when we get back home. I’ll show you some pictures.”
Justine snuggled in closer to me, clearly liking this answer. “Okay, Daddy, thank you very much.”
“Yes, so back to what I was saying.” There wasn’t any backing out of this. “I haven’t always been the best father to you, I threw myself into work so I didn’t have to deal with it. I let Grandma look after you more than I should have.”
“But I liked spending time with Grandma! She was a lot of fun.”
“Do you miss her?” I asked curiously, remembering how she acted at the funeral. “Because I do.”
“I do.” She nodded slowly. “But I like having you around a lot too.”
“Yeah. It’s fun, isn’t it? And we’ll do much more things like this, don’t you worry about it.”
“We’re going to go on vacation a lot?” Justine’s eyes flashed with excitement. “That’s cool.”
“We’re going to do lots of things a lot… whatever you want to do, sweetheart.”
“With Olivia too?” Justine asked me, sounding a little sad. “Will she come with us?”
I wished that I could give her a positive answer, but I wasn’t sure. “I don’t know. We’ll have to figure that out. I don’t know what Olivia is thinking at the moment. We’ll have to wait and see.”
“Oh. I don’t want her to go.” Justine pouted out her bottom lip. “I love Olivia. I want her to stay.”
“Yeah, me too,” I answered. “But we have no control over that.”
“You love her?” Justine asked me without looking at me. “Does she love you?”
I couldn’t answer that, so I shrugged quietly. None of us knew where the other person was; it was a mess.
Justine went quiet for a while, and I could almost see the thoughts spinning wildly through her mind. I wanted to ask her what she was thinking, but I knew she needed the time to digest things. I had to be patient.
“I’m sorry that I’ve been so angry too, Daddy,” she finally said quietly. “I don’t mean to be.”
“You don’t worry about that. We’re working through things together. We’ll be okay.”
After a little while, we got out of her bed and we made our way into the kitchen. There, much to my surprise, I saw Olivia standing there with her back to us, making coffee. She was here; that had to mean something, right? Justine gave me a wide-eyed stare but I indicated for her to be quiet for the moment to work things out. We didn’t want to freak her out by pushing her too hard in any direction.
“M… morning,” I stammered quietly, my heart racing in my chest. “Are you okay, Olivia?”
I braced myself, waiting for her to tell me that she was still leaving because she couldn’t stand to be around me. If that was the case, it wouldn’t kill me because I did love her and want to be with her, but also, I would survive. With Justine needing me as much as she did, I would live as much as I could.
“Good morning,” she replied, slightly coldly. She turned to look at Justine, but not to me. “I’m okay.”
“Do you want some breakfast?” Justine jumped in. “I want some of those pancakes; do you?”
Justine and Olivia both fussed around in the kitchen, leaving me by myself. I stood helplessly in the living room watching them both, wondering what I was supposed to do. This was strained and very strange. I wasn’t good at not knowing where I stood; it left me feeling really strange. Lost almost; I needed that anchor.
I paced the room. I walked over to the window, and I stared out again. The beautiful view still wasn’t as pretty as I needed it to be and that was because I was sad. But I was good at fixing things, that was a big part of what made my business life so successful, so maybe I just needed to apply that to this. I couldn’t make Olivia stay if she didn’t want to, I couldn’t fix that, but I could try and make the day run smoother.
“Once breakfast is done, we’ll head out and see what wildlife we can find, okay?”
“Really?” Justine gasped with excitement. “Are you sure, Daddy? That’s not just because I’ve run away.”
“Yes, of course I mean it. In fact, I’m going to check online now and see what I can find.”
This gave me something to do while they fiddled about with breakfast. It gave me a purpose which I needed. I took my place on the couch and scrolled on my cell phone until I found something that looked perfect. A waterfall in a spot that was filled with bird life and butterflies. Wonderful for Justine.
“Oh, look, Justine, come here.” She bounded over to me and sat on my lap. “Take a look at these pictures. What do you think? It’s quite a walk to get there, but it’ll be worth it, don’t you think?”
She nodded, her eyes widening as she looked through the images. “Oh yeah, it looks beautiful. Are you coming, Olivia? It looks really nice. Look at all these butterflies.”
A thick silence clung to the air as Justine asked the one question that I was far too afraid to. I sucked in and held a breath, preparing myself for the inevitable no. It didn’t seem to quite happen like that though.
“It looks pretty shady,” Olivia replied as she leaned in to see the image, I raised my shoulders around my ears while I waited. “But I’ll have to pack plenty of sun cream.”
It felt like a win. She wasn’t leaving, which had to be a sign that she didn’t hate my guts. It wasn’t confirmation that she would never leave Justine and me, but she was still here right now. I could claim her back.
“Yay!” Justine was far less discrete in her pleasure than me. “That’s great news.”
She raced over and threw her arms around Olivia, causing me and her to catch eyes for just a brief moment. Everything jolted within me; I felt that massive reaction to her, but I couldn’t read her face at all. She was stoic, turned off to me, almost a thick brick wall. I wanted to penetrate that wall, to get back inside, but I needed to be patient. Unfortunately, patience wasn’t my strongest point, so I would have to work hard.
“Okay then, let’s eat, then we can get going. Sound good?”
They both nodded silently, which meant it was on. Today was my day to try and make it up to my daughter and Olivia.