Chapter 21

Oliver

Holland and I spent the weekend in a cocoon-like state, moving in slow motion from the bed to the couch in her apartment. I went home to pick up clothes and then came back to hibernate some more, basking in the sudden joy taking over my life. Holland O’Dell was mine, and we were going to be a family. A real family. A smile was permanently affixed to my face, and I didn’t care at all. Love surged through me in a way I’d never felt, like a new drug I was trying for the first time.

We watched movies on her couch, our limbs tangled together and kisses interrupting the plots when they got slow. We made love once, slowly and carefully, and I’d felt a new sense of responsibility. I had an overwhelming desire to take care of her, and that transferred into what happened between us sexually. Knowing she was pregnant didn’t change anything for me in terms of wanting her, or needing to feel her next to me, around me.

We had long languorous talks about things that we probably wouldn’t have talked about otherwise. She told me about her childhood—or parts of it. I had to work for those.

“I had one friend when I was in third grade—Tessa,” she told me at one point, lying with her head in my lap as I stroked her forehead. “Her mom was pregnant. It seemed like such a big, magical thing.”

“It is,” I assured her.

“She had money, Tessa. Her house was huge, and she had all the things I wanted, things I couldn’t have. But the thing that I have remembered since then was the baby’s room.”

“The baby had all the things?” I asked.

“All the things. And more. The nursery was this whole jungle theme. And there was a giraffe in one corner—this huge stuffed thing. It was taller than I was. And I was a tall third-grader.” Her voice was reverent, disbelieving.

“A big giraffe,” I said.

“I know it sounds stupid. It was the thing that made me think, This baby has everything.” Her eyes shone as she looked past me at the ceiling and spoke. “That baby—it hadn’t even been born and its parents were so committed, so head over heels in love with it that it owned more things than I did and I was eight years old.”

“Things don’t equal love.”

“No, but giant fucking giraffes just might,” she said, her face breaking into a smile.

“You’re right. I wasn’t accounting for the giraffe factor.”

Out from beneath her, Holland produced the small giraffe I’d sat on earlier. “I’ve always had a thing for them.” She pulled the stuffed animal close to her chest and planted a tiny kiss on its small head and then tucked it back under her. The move charmed me in a way I couldn’t explain. “It was the only thing my mom ever gave me,” she said quietly, not meeting my eye.

My heart broke just a little and I tried not to think of the little stuffed bear in my dreams, the car door slamming.

That whole weekend I told myself that if Holland’s pregnancy didn’t change the way I felt about her, then it didn’t change anything else, either. We’d been on a trajectory, my duchess and I. We’d been accelerating toward a commitment to each other, even though we hadn’t defined anything explicitly. I knew she cared about me, I could see it move through her crystalline eyes when she looked at me, and I could feel it when she kissed me. And me? I was fucking head over heels, and while I would never have checked “yes” in a quiz about whether I was ready to have a kid, it was fucking happening, and I wasn’t going to run from what would be the first blood family I’d ever known. Holland and I were of one mind in that way.

Or so I’d thought.

“I’ll be right back.” The duchess stepped over me, heading for her bathroom as I paused our viewing of Footloose. I’d never seen it, and she was weirdly insistent that we had to watch it. The original, not the remake. It did give me a strange new respect for Kevin Bacon. Before that I’d really thought he was famous mostly for that stupid six degrees game. But the guy had a skinny joyful appeal I couldn’t quite pinpoint.

I sat up, waiting for her to return, and slid around some of the magazines on her coffee table, looking at the covers. She had the usual assortment of girl stuff—fashion and home mags, a couple celebrity gossip rags. I was about to grab a People when something caught my eye—a word that would grab anyone’s attention. “Insemination.” It was also fairly topical at the moment, so I couldn’t help but push aside the other magazines to pull it out. But it wasn’t a magazine. It was a brochure. From a local sperm bank. I stared at it, confused, and then flipped open the cover to find a letter tucked inside, made out to Holland O’Dell.

Dear Ms.O’Dell,

Thank you for your interest in the services offered by Irvine Center Reproductive Services…

Icy shock rushed through me. What was this? I read further and discovered that this was a brochure from a sperm bank—personalized to Holland. This was the place women went when they decided to get pregnant. When they decided that random chance or careful planning weren’t enough. When they decided to take things into their own hands. Why would she have this? My mind began to twist in uncomfortable directions, pushing me to conclusions I didn’t even want to consider. Holland wanted a family. She’d told me that several times. She envied Delia and Carl, wanted what they had…I hated myself for even thinking it, but what the fuck was this? I felt like I was holding a smoking gun. Had Holland lied to me and tried to rope me into being responsible for her pregnancy? For what? For money? I shook my head slowly in disbelief. My world tilted and everything I thought I knew slid sideways with a sickening crash.

Alarms sounded in me and familiar anger began to swirl in my gut, making me feel sick. The bathroom door clicked and she reappeared.

I stood. “What is this?” I asked her, holding up the brochure.

She wrinkled her nose in confusion and cocked her head to get a better look. “Oh!” She laughed. “Delia brought that to me. A while ago.” She gave me a strange look then, as if she couldn’t think why I might be asking.

“Were you considering artificial insemination?” My voice sounded thin and brittle.

The smile left her face and I watched her realize I was seconds from losing it. She shook her head. “No, not really.”

“Not really? Or no?”

“No!” She took a step back and it made me wonder what I looked like—if I seemed so frightening that she would need to get away from me. The step backward also seemed defensive, like something someone would do if they felt guilty about lying. “Delia and I talked about it a long time ago. About how if I didn’t meet the right guy…” she trailed off, her eyes darkening. “You don’t seriously think I…”

“I don’t know what to think.”

“Oliver, I would never—” I heard anger begin to creep into Holland’s voice, pairing with the hurt there.

I was standing in Holland’s living room, staring at her with the brochure shaking in my hand. It was as if I was watching myself from above, watching myself lose everything I thought I’d found. I felt the familiar dark tug of anger, of the betrayal and confusion that comes with being lied to by someone you love, and it began to overwhelm me. It was way too fucking familiar. My vision narrowed and I felt a rush of emotion, a tidal wave breaking over me, washing me away where I stood and flushing every little bit of humanity I’d found recently back out until it was diluted by black swirling hatred and confusion. I had to get out before everything I’d tried so hard to get past in the preceding year knocked me down again and washed me out into a bleak, boundless sea. For a second I thought it didn’t even matter if Holland had lied or not. What mattered was my realization that she could. And that I’d made myself vulnerable to it.

And that somewhere, deep down in a part of me that was ugly and sour, I believed that she actually had.

“I have to go.”

Her voice followed me as I picked up my shoes and burst out her front door, searching my pockets for my car keys. I stumbled out to the elevator, my soul emptying out as I descended each floor until I found myself speeding along the freeway, an empty husk of a man.

“Fuck!” I screamed at the steering wheel, desperate to relieve the overwhelming emotion inside me somehow, to let it out before it swelled to the point that I exploded. “Fuck!” I screamed again, narrowly missing a car as I swerved through the lanes. My phone was buzzing in my pocket, but I ignored it. I stumbled into my house, poured a tall glass of scotch and sank into a chair, unable to form my disparate emotions into anything that would allow a rational thought to press through the subsuming murk.

Monday morning dawned bright and optimistic, an irritating contrast to my mood. I was at the office early, and my email inbox was overflowing.

I knew Holland and I needed to talk, I just didn’t look forward to the next conversation. At all. I was angry and confused, betrayed again by someone I loved. Which was why I buried myself in work for the entire day.

Rob made it easy to lose myself in business, since Salvatore Dex, one of the key shareholders on the board, had tipped Rob off to a plan by four other key shareholders to sell to SonicCom, which would put SonicCom in control of almost half the company. Salvatore was an old friend of Adam’s, one who was evidently still loyal after my eight-month absence.

“This is happening, Oliver. We can’t just pretend it isn’t.” Rob paced back and forth in my office, his hands raking through his hair and his tie hanging loose. “You can’t keep disappearing. I called you all weekend and you never answered.”

“I was…busy.”

“Busy fucking your employees,” he spat.

I was across the room with my hands fisting his shirt before I’d even thought about it. I realized what I was doing as I stared into his surprised eyes, my face inches from his, and I relaxed my grip. “I didn’t mean for this to happen, Rob. I didn’t plan it.”

“It’s not exactly kosher,” he said in a low voice. “I don’t have a problem with it, unless it’s keeping you from focusing on the things that need your attention.”

I dropped my hands to my sides. “Sorry, Rob. It’s complicated. But I’m here. The MLB deal appears to be coming through. And I want a new counsel on as soon as possible. Any progress?”

Rob shrugged. “Met a candidate last week who might be promising. A woman. Maybe you could interview her.”

“Set it up.” I heard my voice, a low growl. I added, “Please.”

Rob turned to walk out and then turned back around. “Do you want your girl in the meeting?”

“Ms. O’Dell is not my girl.” My voice was icy.

Rob spread his hands in front of him. “Sorry. Look, I don’t know how to handle this situation.”

That made two of us.

“She doesn’t need to be present. Let’s make it happen.” I walked to my desk and buzzed Pamela. “Pamela, can you come in here, please?”

Pamela opened the door, her face professional but wary. “Yes, sir?”

“Come in.” I waved her to the couch. “We need to schedule an interview with this lawyer.” I handed her the résumé Rob had given me. “And we’ll need some materials gathered for the MLB meeting next month.” I gave her all the details and she promised to make it happen.

When Rob and Pamela had both left my office I walked to the windows and stared out at the city below me. How had everything changed so much in such a short time? I couldn’t deny the anger I felt at Holland, but I wasn’t sure I was ready to write her off completely. Though she’d brought the latest emotional turmoil, she’d also pulled me from the darkness in which I’d been lost after the death of my parents. I braced my hands on the window and shook my head, feeling warring emotions threatening to explode inside me. She’d dangled the one thing I’d never had, and then she’d ripped it away the next instant. I didn’t know if I could ever forgive her for that. But I knew for sure I was still in love with her despite it.

I ignored several texts from Holland and left the office at exactly six, taking myself home and pushing through the toughest workout I’d done in months, hoping to reach an exhaustion deep enough to sleep, hoping maybe tomorrow things would be clearer.