“Yes,” she says again.
“And before he left, how often was he around?”
She’s quiet for a long time.
“It’s like he thought he could be married on his terms. Have you at home for when it was convenient for him, but he’s never been there for you.”
“Stop.”
I grab her wrist and hold it. “Why didn’t he come back when Dobson escaped from that damn institution?”
“He said they’d catch him. To sit tight and trust the police.”
“Exactly. He was supposed to protect you. That was his job. He should have been on a plane the minute he found out.”
“That’s not fair,” she says, shaking her head. “He knows I’m tough. He knows I can take care of myself.”
I make a disgusted noise in the back of my throat. This is sad.
“Listen to me,” I grab her face so she has to look at me when I say this, “I know you don’t know this because your dad was a useless shit, and he never did anything to show you how you need to be treated. But you are valuable enough for any and every man in your life to drop everything to protect you. You shouldn’t have to be forced to be strong on your own because no one will stand with you. Your dad failed you. Noah failed you. I will not fail you again.”
I kiss her on the forehead just as she sheds a tear. Just one.
“Round and round and round we go, Olivia. This is about you and me, not you and Noah. Just take a few weeks. Spend some time with me. No decisions until it’s a fair decision.”
“The fair decision would be to do what’s right-”
I cut her off. “For you. Yes, do what’s right for you. Give me some time to show you.”
She opens her pink lips to shoot some venom at me.
“Hush,” I say. “Pack an overnight bag. There’s somewhere I want to take you.”
“I can’t just take off with you! I have a job!”
“I know you took some time off. Bernie told me.”
Olivia looks flabbergasted. “Bernie? When did you talk to Bernie?”
“I ran into her at the grocery store. She was worried about you.”
Her mouth is open. She shakes her head like the idea that anyone is worried about her is ludicrous.
“I’m fine,” she says firmly.
I grab her wrist and pull her into a hug, kissing the top of her head. “No, you’re not. I’m your soulmate. I’m the only one who knows how to heal you.”
She slaps me away, and when I let go, instead of pulling away, she buries her face in my chest like she’s trying to burrow herself into me. I rewrap her in a hug, trying not to laugh.
“Come on, Duchess. It’ll be like the camping trip.”
“Yeah, it’ll be just like that.” Her voice is muffled against my chest. “Except you won’t be lying about having amnesia, and I won’t be lying about not knowing you, and your redheaded bitch of a girlfriend won’t be trashing my apartment while we’re gone.”
I squeeze her tighter. It makes me sick that Leah did that. The things she’s done to keep Olivia and me apart are especially twisted. Almost as twisted as the things I’ve done to keep us together. I grimace and grip her by the shoulders, pulling her away so I can see her face.
“What do you say? Yes?”
“How long will we be gone?”
I think about it. “Four days.”
She shakes her head. “Two.”
“Three,” I counter. “We have to use one of those days for travel.”
She cocks her head and frowns at me. “We’re not really going camping, are we? Because, every time we do — we have some type of emotional catalyst, and I really don’t think I can handle-”
I put a hand over her mouth. “No camping. Pack something nice to wear. I’ll pick you up tomorrow at eight A.M.”
“Okay.” She tries to act nonchalant, but I can tell she’s excited.
I kiss her forehead. “Bye, Duchess. See you soon.”
I leave without looking back at her. I have no idea where I’m taking her, and I can’t lie and say camping didn’t cross my mind. But, as soon as she reminded me that both of our camping trips went to shit, I tossed the idea. She needed something to remind her how good we were together, not about the games we played. I pull out my phone as I climb into my car. I know the perfect place and it’s only a few hours away.
I knock on her door at 7:45.
“Always early,” she complains when she opens it. Her bag is in her hand. I take it and look her over. She’s wearing faded jeans and a fitted Marlins t-shirt. Her hair is wet and loose around her face.
She sees me eyeing her shirt and she shrugs. “I went to a game,” she says. I catch the defensiveness in her voice and I smirk.
“What?” she says, slapping me on the arm. “I like sport.”
“First of all, I’m the British one, not you. It’s sports. Second, you hate sports and sport and athletes. As I recall, you once told me that professional athletes were a waste of space.”
The corner of her mouth dips in as she frowns. “Noah likes baseball. I was being supportive.”
“Ah.”
I feel jealous, so I turn away and walk to the elevator with her bag while she locks up.
We ride downstairs in silence; standing so close the sides of our hands are touching. When the doors slide open, we don’t immediately step out.
“How long will the drive take?” she asks as she lowers herself into my car.
“We’re not driving,” I say.
She shakes her head, one eyebrow raised.
“You’ll see. Just sit back and relax. We’ll be there soon.”
She gives me a dirty look and turns on the radio. I hand her my iPod and she scrolls until she finds Coldplay.
“You’re crazy and erratic and mean, but I’ll never complain about your taste in music.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, setting down the iPod and staring at me. “Aren’t you supposed to be charming me this weekend?”
I grab her knee and squeeze. “That’s what I’m doing, Duchess. A compliment with an insult. Just the way you like it.”
She smacks my hand away, but she’s smiling.
The drive takes twenty minutes. When I pull up at the dock, Olivia looks confused. I get out of the car and grab her bags from the trunk.
“What is this?”
“A marina. It’s where I keep my boat.”
“Your boat?”
“Yes, love.”
She follows me to my slip. I climb on first, setting our bags in the small galley, then I go back for her.
“Peter Pan,” she says, not taking her eyes from the boat. “You named it Peter Pan.”
“Well, when I first bought it I named it Great Expectations, but Pip doesn’t land up with Estella in the end. So I changed it to Peter Pan. Didn’t want to jinx myself.”
Her nostrils flare. Then she looks at me with those big eyes of hers. “I’ve never been on a boat. A ship, but they’re so much … safer looking.”
I hold out my hand and help her on. She wobbles for a minute, and it looks like she is surfing. Then she runs to the cockpit and firmly plants herself on the seat, holding both sides of the padding on her chair. She’s such a badass I forget how little of life she’s tasted. I smile and start getting the boat ready to leave.
When we are bouncing forward, the helm of the boat cutting into the waves, she scoots closer to me on the bench. I lift my arm up and around her and she snuggles into me. I can’t even smile. I feel so intensely emotional, I steer the boat in the wrong direction for more than thirty minutes before I realize my mistake. At one point, when we are in the middle of nothing but water, I cut the engine and let her look.
“I feel so mortal,” she says. “I’ve collected so much armor over the years; a law degree, money, a hard heart. But, out here I have nothing and I feel na**d.”
“Your heart isn’t so hard,” I say, watching the water. “You just like to pretend it is.”
I can see her looking at me out of the corner of my eye.
“You’re the only one who ever says that. Everyone else believes me.”
“I’m the only one who knows you.”
“How is it that you always let me go so easily then? Why don’t you know that I want you to fight for me?”
I sigh. Here it is. The truth.
“It took me a long time to figure out that’s what you were saying. And it seemed that every time one of us came back for the other, we weren’t ready. But, ten years later, here I am. Fighting. I’d like to think I’ve learned from my mistakes. I’d also like to think we’ve finally made it to the point where we are ready for each other.”
She doesn’t respond, but I know she’s thinking. Maybe this is finally our time. Maybe.
I start the engine.
We reach Tampa Bay around one o’clock. I park my boat at a marina and call a cab to take us to a car rental place. The only thing they have available is a minivan. Olivia cracks up when we climb in.
“What?” I say. “I kind of like it.”
“No,” she says firmly. “Don’t even say that. I’ll lose all respect for you.”
I grin and drive us to the hotel. We drop off our bags, and Olivia inspects the room while I call and double check on our dinner reservations.
“Let’s go find lunch,” I say. She pulls out her makeup bag, but I take it from her.
“Just be all around na**d today, feelings and face.”
Her mouth twitches to smile, but she won’t let it. I see it in her eyes though. That’s plenty for me.
We walk to a small restaurant that sells only the fish they catch. It’s right on the water. Olivia’s nose is sunburned and I see a scattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose and her cheeks. She orders a margarita and swears it’s the best she’s ever had.
She’s chatty after two. We walk into the shops and she tells me about her life in Texas.
“Southern belles,” she assures me, “are the deadliest of all creatures on God’s earth. If they don’t like you, they won’t even look at you when you speak to them. And then they’ll give you a compliment with the most vicious insult hiding underneath.”
I laughed. “How did you deal with that?”
“Not well. I held back on the compliments and just openly insulted them.”
“I’m getting uncomfortable just thinking about it,” I admit. When Olivia unleashes an insult you feel like you’re being assaulted by word bullets. Very uncomfortable experience.
She screws up her face. “Cammie said I was the anti-Texan. She wanted me out of the south because she said I was ruining the integrity of it.”
“Oh, Cammie.”
She smiles so big. I know how much she values her best friend. I wonder what she’d say if she knew Cammie’s part in keeping me away. It doesn’t matter. I’ll never tell her anyway.
We’re looking at goofy Tampa Bay tshirts when she suddenly says, “I still have my Cats About Georgia sweatshirt.”
“Me too. Let’s get one of these. We can have an entire wardrobe of stolen getaway clothes.”
She chooses two tshirts with palm trees on them, in the most god-awful shade of teal I’ve ever seen. Hearts in Tampa Bay, they say.
I groan. “Look at those nice, fitted ones.” I point to a shirt I’d actually feel good about wearing in public, and she frowns.
“What’s the fun in that?” She goes to the bathroom and puts on her new purchase, then makes me do the same. Five minutes later, we are walking hand in hand down the boardwalk in matching ugly tshirts.
I love it.
Chapter Twenty-One
After graduation Cammie moved back to Texas. It was fairly easy to find her — all I had to do was follow her brightly lit social media trail. I signed up for Facebook. She ignored my first five messages and then after my sixth attempt, sent one short message back.
WTF, Caleb.
She wants to be left alone.
BACK THE FUCK OFF!
Did you get your memory back?
Fuck it. I don’t care.
In other words, Cammie wasn’t going to help me. I considered flying to Texas, but I had no idea where Cammie lived. Her profile was set to private and she blocked me. I felt like a stalker. I tried the college next, but even with my connections in the administration office, Olivia hadn’t left them with a forwarding address. I went through my other options: I could hire a private detective … or I could leave her alone. That’s what she wanted, after all. She wouldn’t have left unless she was really done this time.
It hurt. More than the way she left the first time. The first time I had been angry. The anger made me feel self-righteous, which saw me through the first year after our breakup. The second year I felt numb.
The third year I questioned everything. This time felt different. It felt more real, like no matter what we did, we would never be together. Maybe after we had sex, she realized she wasn’t in love with me anymore. Maybe I was presumptuous in thinking she ever was. I was in love with her more, if that was even possible. I had to find her. One more time. Just one.
One fake Facebook profile later and I was part of Cammie’s extensive network of priends. Her entire cache of photos was a click away, and yet I sat staring at my computer screen for a good fifteen minutes before I was able to look through them. I was afraid to see Olivia’s life — how easy it was for her to move on without me. I searched anyway, through the endless dragging line of party pictures. Olivia had a special knack for avoiding the camera. I thought I caught her hair sometimes in the corner of a shot, or off in the blurry background, but I was still so drunk off her I was probably seeing her everywhere she wasn’t. For all I knew, Olivia was in Sri Lanka with the Peace Corps. Was the Peace Corps in Sri Lanka?