“I never asked for anything from you,” he replied and started to rise. She grabbed his arm and tugged him back down.
“I know you didn’t. I know you probably don’t even want to admit that you want me, us, in your life at all. It’s why you’re pushing me away now. Why we probably lived such a parallel life before.” She drew in a deep breath, then let it all go on her next words. “I’ve talked to your mother. I know what it was like for you when you were little.”
“You what? Why? You had no right to talk to her.”
Anger boiled thick and fast deep inside. Anger at Olivia for contacting his mother over something that was between the two of them only, and anger at his mother for talking to Olivia when she never spoke to him about the past.
“I needed to know, Xander. I had to find out if we had a chance. When Parker died, I did what I do. What I’ve always done for the past twenty years of my life. I picked up the pieces and I carried on.”
“You didn’t just pick them up. You boxed them up and put them away for good. You treated Parker’s memory as if it was something to be forgotten, something to be swept away as if it had never happened.”
Her voice was quiet when she replied. “It was all I knew how to do. I couldn’t talk about it, Xander. We didn’t talk about emotions in our house, and I suspect your house was very similar. Your mum told me about your dad, about how unwell he was. His grief went far deeper than mourning, and eventually it broke him completely.
“I don’t want that for you, Xander. I want you to be whole. I want us to be whole, together. We can’t do this on our own, apart. But maybe we can pull the pieces back together if we work together. Please, Xander, tell me you’ll try. Tell me we’re worth it.” She took his hand and pressed it on her still-flat belly and begged him, “Tell me all three of us are worth it.”
He looked down at his hand, then up to her face, where her eyes shone with unshed tears. His own eyes burned in kind.
“I can’t tell you what you need to hear.”
He could see this wasn’t the answer she’d hoped for, but she rallied enough for one more try. “Think about it a little longer, Xander. Please. For all our sakes. Neither of us is perfect, but together we can make a good attempt at it. I know I pushed you away. I was as guilty as anyone of not sharing how I felt.
“It’s not that I didn’t care—I cared too much. If I let any of it out, how would I function? How would I manage to keep putting one foot in front of the other day after day? I couldn’t let that grief float to the surface and still care for you at the same time. If I let it out, it would consume me. The only way I knew how to get through was to work. To put away all the reminders. To lose myself in being busy. I never meant to push you away.”
“You didn’t just push me away, Livvy. You pushed away every last physical memory we had of Parker, too. I felt like once he was gone, he didn’t matter to you anymore. You never talked about him. You barely even mentioned his name.”
“I never meant for you to believe that I didn’t think Parker’s life mattered. He mattered. You matter. We matter, don’t we?”
She got up and began to pace the floor.
“After Parker died and you left, I threw myself into my painting. The time I spent working was the only time I didn’t feel the pain of losing you both. All I could do was work, day in, day out. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, but I could paint, so I did. I produced my most emotive work ever. I even scored an agent from the paintings I did at the time, and they became the platform for my current success. But you know what?” She stopped pacing and faced him, her face a mask of pain and remorse. “I can’t take pride in that even now. I feel like I cashed in on Parker’s death. I painted out my grief, my frustration, my anger—my guilt.”
“Guilt? What do you mean?” Xander stood up, his body rigid with tension, his hands curled into tight fists of frustration. “It wasn’t you that left the gate open, nor were you the one who threw the ball for Bozo toward the road. That was all my fault.”
A single tear slipped down Olivia’s cheek. He ached to wipe it away, but he daren’t touch her.
“I know I said it was your fault, Xander. It was far easier for me to point the blame at you than to admit my own accountability for what happened. Parker had been happily playing in my studio that morning—don’t you remember? But the sounds he was making with his train set got on my nerves, and I couldn’t concentrate on my work.
“I told him to go outside. If I hadn’t done that—” Her voice broke off on a gasp of pain, and she hugged her arms around herself tight.