Fourteen
Vivienne
My nerves are shot as the landing gear connects with the runway. I thought I’d be better – feel better – once the gala was over, but everything is smoothed over at work and I’m still a wreck. Turns out, my anxiety had nothing to do with the Hughes’ contract and everything to do with coming back home to face Ollie. I haven’t spoken to him since our call early this morning, but snippets of the flirty conversation have been playing on repeat through my mind all day. I didn’t get anything done at work, thanks to his promises of what I can expect from him tonight.
I guess we’re doing this.
“Quit fidgeting,” Davis tells me for the millionth time since we boarded the plane. “You look flawless. You smell divine. Bishop isn’t going to know what hit him.”
“Are you sure this is all right?” I look down at my outfit for the millionth time since I slipped it on this morning. Davis has given me all the reassurances in the world that Ollie will swallow his tongue when he sees me.
“There’s no man alive that could resist you in that outfit.”
“But it’s so New York.”
“It’s so hot. Besides, nothing you can do about it now. It’s show time.” Davis nudges me and I step into the aisle, wobbly on my wedges, knowing what I’m going to face on the other side of the plane. This all seemed like a good idea when we were on opposite sides of the country. Now, I’m not so sure.
“Breathe, baby girl,” he whispers in my ear as I walk across the terminal.
I feel Ollie’s stare before I see him. I look in his direction, his jaw locked tight, his eyes moving slowly down my body, the heat searing me.
“Good God,” Davis says. “That man could get you pregnant with that look alone. I’ll go get the luggage.”
When Ollie’s eyes make their way down my body and back up, they lock with mine and I freeze. His stare is intense. He’s looking at me like he wants to devour me. Slowly, he walks toward me and his eyes don’t waver from mine. My breathing becomes unsteady as I brace for what’s to come. Exhilaration, fear, and anticipation course through my veins the closer he gets.
“Welcome home, Princess. Ready?” he asks.
I’m hit with disappointment. That was not what I expected of our reunion. At all. I start to look down, but he takes my chin and tilts my face back up to meet his.
His voice is gruff. The sound of it shoots down my spine. “I can’t touch you now. Once I get my hands on you, I won’t be able to stop. Gotta get you outta here. Okay?”
I bite my lip to keep from moaning in the middle of the airport and give him a shaky nod. I’ve lost my ability to form words. We walk toward baggage claim, so close but not touching, ready to get my stuff and head home.
The ride is quiet and filled with a palpable tension, not at all made easy with the addition of Davis. His stories from the backseat aren’t helping. I’m sitting close enough to Ollie to feel the heat coming off his skin, to smell the faint scent of peppermint and smoke, and the closer we get to the house, the more nervous I become. This situation is becoming real, not just all talk, not just a harmless game of flirting done by phone when I’m in New York and he’s here. The pressure starts to settle in my chest, and it’s becoming overwhelming. I’m excited at the prospect of this, of us, but I’m scared. I’ve never been more scared of anything in my life. Even when I moved away on my own at eighteen years old, it didn’t feel like this.
As soon as we pull up in the driveway, Davis takes off without even looking back, spouting off something about a date at Buddy’s.
“Leave the bags,” Ollie grunts as he shuts off the engine of his truck and practically pulls me through my front door.
“Bishop,” I croak out, panicked. “I’m scared.”
He stops his trek to the bedroom immediately and looks me in the eyes. “I know I look different, seem different. I’ve been through a lot of shit, Viv. Shit you wouldn’t believe, even if I told you, but I would never hurt you.”
I close my eyes and drop my head to his chest. His heart is pounding fast, just as fast as mine, and I’m sorry that he mistakes my meaning. I know he would never physically hurt me. Emotionally, that’s another story. “I know you’d never put your hands on me,” I whisper. “I’m not scared of you in that way.”
“Tell me what you mean.”
Keeping my head planted firmly against his chest, I give him the truth I’ve kept with me for all these years. “It almost killed me when you left, Bishop. When I woke up and you were gone, I wished I had died in the accident. It took me years to get over that. I’m not sure if I ever did truly get over it. I don’t know if I can survive it again.”
As I give him the words I’ve never spoken aloud, his arms grow tight around me. His body seems harder when I finish.
“I’m not sure what’s goin’ on here, but I think there’s a serious mix-up.” His voice is laced with an anger that I haven’t heard since we were kids and he’d fight with his father. Only this time, it’s a lot scarier because he’s a lot scarier as a grown man.
It’s only then that I pick my head up and move away from him. Not too far, but just enough so I can look at him and see if his facial expression matches his voice. He looks like he could spit fire.
“I’m not sure what the mix-up is,” I say, quietly and cautiously. “I woke up three weeks after the night of the accident and you were gone. California is what I was told. No one knew why.”
His face pales. “You knew why.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Had no choice. I explained it all in the letter. My options were jail for drunk driving or joining the military. I chose the latter, but I was comin’ back for you. Never had any intention of leavin’ you. I loved you.” His words feel like nails being hammered into my chest. Each and every one is a blow, harder than the last. I sink to the floor since standing up was no longer an option. “I came back for you,” he continues, kneeling down beside me, wiping the tears that are streaming down my face. “Came back after basic training but your mom said you were gone. Left and didn’t want anything to do with me ever again. Said I ruined your life that night.”
“That’s not true,” I whisper over and over again. My mind is unable to process everything that’s going on. The words don’t make sense. “That’s not true.”
“I came back for you,” he repeats as he picks me up off the floor and carries me to the bedroom. “You were it for me, Viv. Did you honestly think I would leave you behind and not come back?”
I can’t answer him. It’s impossible to do anything but cry and think about the time we could have had together. The life we could have lived. The lost years. The family we could have made together.
He undresses me, slipping off his shirt afterward and covering my body with it. We get into bed, tears still falling, but silent now. I don’t know what to say about what we’ve just discovered about our past. Ollie doesn’t have much to say either. He’s just as quiet as I am. So many questions, but really, at this point, the answers don’t matter. Nothing is going to change. We are just lucky that we’ve managed to find each other again.
That doesn’t make the situation any less tragic, though.
As I’m leaning against the railing on the back porch, watching Oliver with Ace and Cat, all the questions that didn’t seem important last night seem to hold much more weight this morning. When Ollie woke me up with a kiss before leaving to get us coffee at his sister’s, all the what ifs and whys started to race around my mind in his absence.
I can tell it’s weighing on him, too. He’s quiet this morning, much quieter than usual. He runs through his morning routine with Ace, the usual playfulness absent when the work is done. He rubs her head and comes up the porch steps, his eyes full of worry, no doubt over how I’ll react over the inevitable conversation that’s about to take place.
“Do I need to feed you before we talk?”
“I don’t have much of an appetite,” I answer honestly. I’m too nauseated to eat, probably will be until we get this sorted. I’m ready to move on.
With him.
“Tell me what you remember about that night. About when you woke up.”
I remember it all. As much as I tried to put it out of my mind, I replayed the party, the accident, and waking up in the hospital over and over until I would make myself sick. As soon as I was able, I left for New York, hoping the distance would ease the memories and the pain, but it didn’t work. As much as I wanted to forget, I never could. My dreams were haunted with the pain. But that doesn’t mean I want to relive it this morning, standing on my back porch, surrounded by the scent of Oliver’s shirt that I slept in last night.
“I woke up and you weren’t there,” I answer. The words burn my throat as I slowly relive the worst time in my life. “No one had seen you or heard from you. As soon as I could, I went by your house and your dad said you were in California. He wouldn’t tell me anything more.”
“Bullshit.”
“California?”
“All of it.” We’re nose to nose in an instant, his hands gripping my face. “I never left your side, Vivienne. Day and night, I was at the hospital unless the nurses kicked me out. I didn’t want to leave you and stayed until I was forced to go. I couldn’t ruin everything by going to jail, so I had to go to basic. I promised you I’d come back.” His eyes are hard, serious, and his voice is low. “Reassured you over and over until my damn throat was raw, and I left it in a letter. Gave it to your mom; she put it next to your bed. I was coming back.”
There’s so much in that short speech that I need to wrap my head around. One detail sticks out the most. “Jail? You weren’t driving.”
He shakes his head. “Couldn’t let you take the blame. What was I supposed to do? Tell your parents you were pissed at Denise so you were all over my dick while you were drivin’ away from the party, tryin’ to prove a point?”
My face heats as I remember us leaving the party. Denise Comeaux bragging to all her friends about sleeping with Oliver in the back of his truck, something he swore to me never happened. Ollie was too drunk to deny it but wouldn’t let me leave the graduation party alone. I was pissed, embarrassed, hurt that he had sex with her but never with me. I didn’t understand why he let her touch him. Why did he always deny me, always saying I was too good for him? While one hand gripped the wheel of my car, I let the other hand wander all over him, questioning why he let her do things to him but he never let us go that far. As soon as I managed to get his jeans unzipped, he jerked my hand away and I lost control of my car, hitting a tree and sending us both through the windshield.
“You shouldn’t have taken the blame,” I cry, wiping at my face. I’m tired of all the tears. Too many have been shed over this. “Look at where we ended up.”
“That wasn’t supposed to happen. You were supposed to be okay with me leaving for a few months. When I came back, your mom said you never wanted to see me again.”
“Because you left me.” I start to pace along the length of the porch, finding it hard to be in Ollie’s arms right now.
“It was all in the letter.”
“I never got a letter.”
“I gave it to your mom. She promised to give it to you the second you woke up.”
I feel the last bit of energy I have left leave my body. This is all too much. “She never gave me a letter.”
“I wrote down everything—”
“I never got a letter,” I yell, rage coursing through my veins, the only coherent thought I can form right now is that I hate my mother. I storm in the house, throw on some clothes and rip the keys from the hook by the door, the roughness of the motion causing it to fall from the wall. “I’ll be back.”
“Whoa, Viv. You’re not goin’ anywhere like this. I’ll drive.”
I just hand over my keys instead of arguing and let him drive us to my parents’ house. I don’t bother calling and giving them a heads up that we’re coming, that would give her too much time to try and come up with some sort of bullshit excuse on why she did what she did. It takes all of five minutes to get there from Lulu’s, but with Ollie driving, we’re parked and knocking on the door in three.
“Sugar, what are you doing here?” Mom asks when she sees me standing there. “Are you okay? You look awful. Come in.”
Ollie steps into view and her face pales. My mother has never been able to hide anything and her guilt is clearly written all over her face.
“Why did you do it?” I ask. There’s no time this morning to play games or dance around the issue.
“What?” she responds, another sign that she’s lying. She knows exactly what I’m talking about, she just wants a few more seconds to think about how to get herself out of the mess she made all those years ago.
“Why did you lie about him leaving me? Where’s the letter?” My voice rises with each word.
“This is not the kind of conversation to have on a porch. Come in.”
We follow her into the house, straight into the kitchen and sit at the table, both declining coffee, which is a huge slap in the face to my mother. You don’t turn down refreshments in a Southern woman’s kitchen, no matter what the circumstances are surrounding the visit. Suddenly, sitting in her kitchen, the angst, frustration, everything I’ve felt over the last sixteen years comes crashing down and I just don’t have the power to fight her on this. I’m done. I just want to know what compelled her to lie and ruin my life.
Ruin our lives.
“Why did you do it, Mom? What did you get out of it?” The words are barely audible. I can see from her expression that she knows she’s broken me. I yell when I’m angry. When I can barely speak, I’m beyond done. If it wasn’t for Ollie’s strong hands gripping my shoulders, his thumbs rubbing circles against the nape of my neck, giving me silent reassurances, I don’t know if I could even sit at her table and look at her.
“I had to.”
“Need to do better than that,” he says from behind me. “Or I get the feelin’ she’s gonna walk out and you won’t get the chance to have this conversation again.”
Momma gets up from the table and busies herself at the sink, her wheels spinning, no doubt trying to make this play out in her favor. She’s losing me as the seconds tick by, and when she finally turns back around, I can see from her defeated expression that she knows there’s nothing she could say to justify hiding Ollie’s letter from me, ripping him away from me and shattering my heart.
“He nearly killed you,” she hisses. “How could I let you wait around for him? How could I wait around for another call saying you were in the hospital? Who knows what the call would have been next time? Who knows if you would have survived him!”
“You don’t even know what happened!” I scream back at her, our faces nose to nose, our chests heaving. “I caused the accident. Not him.” She takes a step back, shocked. “I was driving. Ollie was trying to protect me. He would never hurt me, Mom, and you knew that.”
She shakes her head back and forth. “I didn’t know.”
“That’s no excuse for the lies. Why didn’t you give me the letter? Why didn’t you tell me he was coming back? You let me think he left. You let me believe he didn’t want me anymore.”
“It was for the best.” She’s pale as she reaches out to coddle me, much like she did when I first found out he was gone, but I step out of her reach, not wanting her touch. I don’t trust her. I don’t want her hands on me. I step into Ollie, his embrace calming me as soon as his arms tighten around me.
“You don’t know what it’s been like for me.”
“You’re one of the most successful people I’ve ever known. You’ve made such a name for yourself.”
“And it doesn’t mean shit,” I spit out. “None of it means anything, because I didn’t have the one thing I actually wanted.”
I need to walk away. I have so much more to say, so much more to get off my chest, but I’m scared once I start, I won’t be able to stop. Things will get said that I’ll never be able to take back.
“Know better than to ask if you’re okay,” Ollie says as we back out of the driveway. “So tell me what you need.”
“Is it too early for whisky on the porch?”
“It’s five o’clock somewhere, but we haven’t even had breakfast.”
“Annie’s?” I suggest instead.
He takes his eyes off the road for a second and looks at me, raising one eyebrow. I’m still in his shirt from the night before with some cut off shorts that aren’t even visible underneath. My black Tory Burch flip-flops are on my feet, but that’s the only thing I would be caught dead in public wearing.
“I can get it to go,” he answers. I may have suggested his sister’s for breakfast, but I would be mortified under normal circumstances to even be seen in my yard dressed like this.
“Good call.”
His warm hand rests on my leg as we drive to Annie’s and he’s going slower than he did on the way to my mom’s, no longer in a hurry. I don’t want to eat breakfast anymore. His palm flat against my thigh, heavy and hot, and it’s making it hard to think about food. It’s making it hard to think about anything but Ollie, back in my bed.
“Or we could just go back home,” I suggest instead.
He slams on the brakes, not caring one bit that he’s stopped in the middle of the street. “You sure?” he asks, wanting to know if I have the same thing in mind for when we get back to the house that he does.
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
Taking my face in his hands, he slams his mouth against mine, pouring every emotion from the last sixteen years into the kiss. I feel it shoot through my body, all the way down to my toes. It might be the best kiss we’ve ever shared, and there’s been many. I want nothing more than to crawl into his lap and deepen it, but a honk from behind has us pulling away, laughing. Rather than driving away, though, he looks at me, smiling, and leans back in for another kiss, this one softer, gentler, longer. “Don’t be scared,” he whispers, a mere fraction of an inch from my lips. “This’ll be perfect. New me and you will be the best me and you we’ve ever been.”
I lied to myself after the first kiss.
The second kiss was by far the best one ever.
In true Oliver Bishop fashion, he sticks his arm out the window, flips the bird at the person behind us still honking their horn, and takes his time putting the car back into gear and driving off.