“Do you think he’s in love with you?”
* * *
A few of the worst hours of her life later, Olivia reached Kim’s apartment complex in an upscale neighborhood of Manhattan. Thankfully, there were no reporters hovering on the street. But she knew it was only a matter of time before they descended on Kim. With hurried steps, she walked through the door held open by the uniformed doorman, his prying gaze eating her up.
All she wanted to do was to jump in the shower, get into bed and not emerge for a few days. She pressed the up arrow for the elevator and the doors opened with a smooth swish.
And her father stepped out.
She froze. Her gut clenched tight into a painful, unforgiving knot. The muscles in her legs tightened. The urge to flee pummeled her blood. She threw a quick look behind her, trying to see past the foyer into the street, weighing the chance of leaving without someone from the press trailing her again.
“Yes, run away again. It’s not like you’re capable of anything else. You were always like your mother.”
The words landed on her like the sharp points of countless needles, flaying her. And still, all she wanted was to do exactly as he said. Run away.
Her hands hung by her sides, she turned around and forced herself to meet his gaze.
Silver hair cut short, he was immaculately dressed in a gray suit, his favorite pair of platinum cuff links gleaming at the cuffs, the pair that she had always wanted to pound to dust with a hammer. “Hello, Dad,” she said, the words incredibly hard to form. She swallowed past the fear scratching her throat. She didn’t want to explain, but this time, she needed to. She knew how bad it looked. She shouldn’t care, but she couldn’t let him go on believing the absolute worst about her. “I know how it looks, but —”
“Have you no shame, Olivia?” His words boomed around the empty corridor, echoing around her, until all she could hear was the derision etched into each of them. Her skin crawled. “I knew it. You’re nothing better than a slut who would betray her own twin. Have you fallen so low that only a married man would do?”
She moved her hands to her ears, trembling, each word sinking its claws into her skin. “Stop it, Dad. Give me a chance to—”
“No wonder you were successful with that advertising contract.”
She tried to breathe through the crushing pain in her chest. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, his words shouldn’t have this much power to hurt her, yet they did. “That’s not true. I worked hard for—”
“Do you expect me to believe that? That you achieved anything through hard work and talent? The only thing you were ever good at was making a shameless spectacle of yourself with any man who would look at you twice.”
“How could I be good at anything? You constantly pushed me into things I didn’t want to do, criticized anything I did enjoy. You leeched away every ounce of joy from my life, you belittled me until...”
Alexander’s words came back to her. Wrong careers, wrong men, she had pursued all the wrong things just because she hadn’t thought any better of herself. Because inside where it mattered, she hadn’t thought herself worthy of anything, that she would never be good enough for someone nice and decent.
Like Alexander.
Familiar pain scratched her insides, but something else fueled her, too. She was better than she thought, she did deserve better and she had already proved it to herself.
It had hurt like a part of her was being wrenched away, but she had walked away from Alexander, she had stood up for what she was worth. Her heart might never recover from it, she would never stop loving him, but she had nothing to prove to anyone, either, least of all her father.
She took a couple of steps toward him. She hadn’t stood this close to him in a while, the smell of the cigars he enjoyed swathed her, bittersweet in the memories it evoked. “Kim—” she didn’t want to betray her sister’s news “—she knows about us and she doesn’t care. And Alexander, he...cares about me—”
“Don’t add delusion to your already long list of weaknesses. The truth is, a man like Alexander will kick you to the curb the minute his fancy wears off, and he has, hasn’t he?”
It was the worst she had believed about herself, and hearing the words from her father’s mouth ate into her newfound beliefs. It was so easy, too easy to stop fighting his words, to let the old fears creep back in, to think that Alexander had walked away so easily because it had been her. That she hadn’t been enough, her love hadn’t been enough.