Only there was no shutting away the words Olivia had spoken so freely.
* * *
Olivia couldn’t think, couldn’t move for a moment. She had stood frozen, her hands wrapped around herself, a chill overtaking her with each passing second. A shiver had inched its way up her spine and she’d shaken uncontrollably as she’d realized the truth. Alexander wasn’t coming back.
A cry tore from her throat as she sank to her bed, tears pooling in her eyes. It was over.
She had no idea how long she lay in a heap like that. The darkness of dawn gave way to morning. Sunlight filtered through the small window. Feeling as if there was lead in her veins instead of blood, she sat up as her phone chirped.
“Where are you?” Kim’s concerned voice rang through the phone.
Wiping her face, Olivia straightened. She swallowed the misery clawing to break through. She needed to tell Kim before she found out from that tabloid, before anyone else did. “I’m home, why?”
“Oh, Liv. Why didn’t you tell me? You just stay there, okay?”
Unease crept up Olivia’s spine. “Wait, Kim. I need to tell you something...about Alexander and me. I....”
“God, Liv. I know.” Kim’s voice vibrated over the phone.
Olivia flinched. “No, Kim. Please listen to me. I would never hurt you...please believe me. I fell in...” Her words piled on top of each other. “It was only after—”
“I know that. I know that you would never do anything to hurt me. I mean, I was the one who dragged you into this whole mess.” Kim sounded tortured, pained, her voice quaking. “And now, they’re calling you...whatever you do, just wait in your apartment, okay. Just stay put.”
Before she could reply that she had no wish to leave, Kim hung up. Olivia sat up and only then did the small noises filter through to her brain. Footsteps shuffling outside her door, a low hum of whispers creeping in through the window... Pushing her hair out of the way, she went to it.
And jumped back as though someone had stuck a hot poker through the window.
Swarms of sleazy tabloid reporters, and more than one local network news crew were parked in front of her building. Sweat beaded on her lip, her leg muscles cramped up. It felt as if her worst nightmare had opened up shop in front of her building, ready to swallow her up.
This couldn’t be happening again, not to her... She had done nothing to deserve it this time, nothing but fall in love....
She bent over and forced herself to breathe, tears streaming down her face. Now she understood why Kim had sounded concerned. She knew it in the back of her mind, she had known it was bad that she had been photographed with Alexander, kissing him, in his arms.
But until now, the reality of what it meant hadn’t sunk in. How could it when all she could think of, all she could see was Alexander’s face, anger and disgust vying on it, all she felt was the crushing pain that he could walk away? Her stomach fell as the haze of grief cleared and more and more things scrambled into her head.
Scandal...Emily, Isabella.
She couldn’t let Emily pay the price for her mistake. Not because she hadn’t been strong enough to say no to Alexander. Not because he refused to take a chance on them.
She stood up and scrubbed her face. Every instinct in her screamed at her to lie low, to curl up in her bed and not step outside the apartment.
Fear was a tight knot in her stomach. The more it clawed at her, the faster she moved. She dressed quickly, grabbed her handbag, put her sunglasses on and closed the door behind her.
Within minutes, she was pushing through the rusty metal door in the foyer and stepping onto the pavement.
The uproar of the small crowd, the stench of their curiosity knocked her in the gut, and she almost slipped.
Taking even a breath felt like work, but she did it. She faltered before catching the newspaper thrown at her with the image of Alexander and her kissing on the front page. They looked lost in each other, lost to the world.
Olivia Stanton’s Latest Conquest: Her Twin’s Husband.
The headline ripped through her, and she gasped for breath, as though a knife had been plunged into her heart.
Cameras clicked, microphones were thrust in her face, but she kept moving, not focusing on any of them, letting all their images shift and blur, struggling to let their invasive, soul-crushing questions slide by her.
“Does your sister know what you did, Olivia?”
“Is he sleeping with both of you?”
“What is about another woman’s man that draws you so much?”
She held it together, she walked past them and miraculously, almost made it to a waiting cab. Until someone shouted the worst question at her, the one that tore through her, the one that almost knuckled her down right there.