CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THELEAD-UPTO the wedding was intense, but well handled. If there was one thing that he and Olive knew, it was how to delegate, and how to formulate a plan. The two of them together setting this into motion made it seem satisfyingly easy. Watching all of the pieces work in time with each other really was incredibly satisfying.
And he... He found that he liked the way that he and Olive worked together. They had been sparring against each other for so many years, that he had not been aware of the fact the two of them could create something so spectacular when they used their gifts in tandem.
But Olive was particularly brilliant at getting the best out of people. She excelled with team management and with aesthetics. She was a hard worker, and she knew how to adjust things to make them just that much more special. Just that much more pleasing to the eye.
He was good with mechanics. With the way things ran, and how they would work. He was good at organizing tasks.
They complemented each other in a way that he could never have foreseen. He had not thought he’d had blind spots remaining in his life, and yet, this was a large one.
But he had never understood Olive and her quirkiness. The way that she behaved, or the way that she looked at things, but he could see now that it was an essential part of what she was. An essential part of who she was. Without it, she would not come up with things that she did.
Without it, she would not be Olive.
He had watched her march around the room eating saltine crackers, making suggestions to how the reception decor might be shifted slightly, that changed something from lovely to unbearably brilliant.
She was bright. And smart. She was a spark that he could not look away from.
And the day of the wedding, she made herself scarce, texting him about how it was bad luck for the groom to see the bride.
He also had not been with her again since that first day they had moved into the new house.
Their encounter on the sofa had been incendiary, and he had nearly been undone by it altogether.
The moment in the nursery had been something else entirely.
He could not quite understand, this thing that she did to him. He could not quite understand what it was she made him. For he was accustomed to having a sexual appetite, but he was not accustomed to being controlled by it. He was not accustomed to being at its mercy, but when she had stood there, looking up at him as she had, it had been outside of his power to resist. He had kissed her when they’d first arrived, because he’d had no other choice. He had kissed her, because he had been unable to stop himself. She was all things brilliant and beautiful, but it was more than that. He had had any number of beautiful women, and he could go out today and get more, even if they knew that his wedding was today. Maybe most especially if they knew.
But they would never be Olive, and they would never do to him what she did.
She fascinated him.
And if he were honest with himself, he could admit that she always had. It had been easy to write it off as some twisted form of forbidden lust, but that would take it and oversimplify it far too much. It was not that. No. It was something without a name. Something without measure. Something that made him think of a tiny home in the middle of nowhere in Iceland. Smoke coming out of the chimney, a simple meal of fish and bread.
A life where there had not been money, but there had been a warmth that he had not felt since.
And he had been cold. Every day of his life since he had left that cabin. Cold, except for when Olive ignited within him.
He had no one standing up with him at his wedding. And neither did Olive. It spoke volumes but neither of them had another person to ask to fulfill such a duty. They could have manufactured friends out of nothing, but they had both agreed that there was no need to be performative. Not when the rest of it was such a performance.
They were marrying outdoors at a massive estate, because Olive had said it would be atmospheric, and she wished to embrace that over tradition.
And he deferred to her, because she had been right about many things all along, so why not that.
The guests were all there, seated and looking appropriately like the sort of people that should be at a wedding that united two of the largest tech moguls in the entire world.
The performance was impeccable.
And as he stood there and waited for his bride, he felt the sense of performance begin to slip away.
His parents had never married. It was one reason he felt so strongly about this.
He had never known his mother.
But her parents... They had been warm and wonderful people.
They had been the only real taste of family he’d ever had.