A week of me giving Olivia excuses as to why I couldn’t come over and visit. I knew she thought that was odd, since there was hardly ever a day gone by since Olivia moved in with Mason that I didn’t see her, for five minutes or five hours. It was especially true since Emma was born.
Now I hadn’t seen any of them for a whole week. I missed them. But I was a fucking coward. I didn’t know what I would do if I saw Lizzie again. Kiss her? Hold her and never let her go?
Or had things become so bad between us, we’d become nothing more than strangers, with nothing to say to each other? I hated the thought more than anything else, and I didn’t want to see it come true. So I had been avoiding everyone and burying myself into work.
Which wasn’t such a bad thing, considering how busy things were. I had been with Kinsley Financial since I was in college, first as their intern before I quickly climbed the corporate ladder. I was now working as the CFO for the company.
I had been fortunate in my career, lucky enough to be able to do a job that I loved. I always had a knack for numbers, and knew I wanted to work in something related to it early on. This was the kind of career in which I could make a pretty decent living.
I wasn’t passionate about the job, but I loved the security, and at first I had loved it for allowing me to have the ability to take care of Olivia. I would have taken care of Grace, too, had things been different between us.
Grace was my childhood best friend. She had been only a year older than me, and I had loved her for the longest time. She had this charisma about her that drew people in.
Back in high school, everyone had a crush on Grace. But she had been in love with Michael. They had Olivia when they were both sixteen.
I had tried to be happy for her at that time, but shamefully, I had been thinking the same thing everyone else had been thinking. That she and Michael had ruined their lives with this pregnancy. I was hurt that she had chosen him instead of me.
Now I was grateful that Grace and I never got together. Because the moment I walked into that hospital room, and Grace had placed a tiny baby Olivia in my hands…
Everything had shifted for me in that moment.
She wasn’t my blood, but she had been mine from that day on. For years after, I tried to do right by her. I hated seeing her hurt by her own parents’ careless actions, and there had been nothing I could do about it.
Then Michael left when Olivia was twelve, and I had to watch that little girl’s heart breaking. Never had I felt such violence toward a man before. But Michael’s abandonment had nothing on Grace’s abandonment of Olivia when she was seventeen. Suddenly, I found myself in the exact position I had wanted all along—to be her caregiver, her protector. But I hadn’t wanted it, not like that.
I didn’t want her heart to break in order for me to be able to protect her and care for her the way she deserved, but it had happened, and, selfishly, a part of me had been glad. I didn’t think her parents had taken good care of her. They didn’t deserve her.
I had thought I did, but then Mason had come home at that time, took one look at Olivia, and he got greedy with her. I didn’t see it coming. Or perhaps I saw the signs of them falling in love, but a part of me didn’t think my little brother would do that. I ignored it, until everything blew up in our faces, and Olivia ended up hurt in the crossfire.
It was the one thing I regretted most.
That I had tried so hard to protect her from every little hurt in this world, and in the end, she still got hurt because of my inaction.
Though things had worked out, a part of me still thought he should have waited for her to grow up a bit before he made her his.
That was the part I never told anyone about.
Early Monday morning, unable to sleep, I put on my running shoes and shorts and headed out the door. I started off with a slow jog around the neighborhood. I lived in the suburbs, in a quiet upper-middle-class neighborhood that was about a thirty-minute commute from my work. I bought this house in my late twenties, and I knew most men in my position, those who were making the kind of money I was making and were unattached, would have rented a nice place in the city instead, somewhere probably in the heart of the city, where they could live out their single life to the fullest.
I hadn’t wanted that. I had bought this house, mostly because before Olivia came into my care, Grace and Michael had brought a small ranch-style house not far from here. About ten minutes away.
I had wanted to be close to Olivia in case she needed me. I realized I had spent most of my adult life making sure I was around for Olivia. Now, I was almost forty, still unattached, and finding it difficult to adjust to the fact that she didn’t need me anymore.
She was all grown up now, and was a mom to the most adorable little girl.
I ran away from the neighborhood and to a secluded wooded area not far away, getting in deeper, until the neighborhood all but disappeared from my sight.
I loved it out here.
I discovered this place quite by accident, since I hardly ever went running outside. The weather in Chicago could be unpredictable at times, especially in the wintertime, but it was nice during the summer, and I came out here when I needed to think, or not think at all.
Being here felt like I was the only person in the world, and all my problems started to feel insignificant.
A small feminine yelp, then some rustling noise, brought me out of my thoughts. I wasn’t as alone as I had thought. I moved toward the noise, and pulled up short from the sight that greeted me. My heart thudded heavily in my chest, and I felt like an adolescent boy all over again. A ridiculous thought, I knew.
Lizzie was on the ground, her hands wrapped around her ankle, her expression pulled together in a small frown. I quickly rushed over to her.
“Where else are you hurt?” I asked, my voice sounding too gruff for my liking. It looked like only her ankle was injured, but there could be other places I couldn’t see.