Page 75 of Before the Bond
After a moment, she decided to pick up her book again.
"Well," she said. "Welcome back for tonight."
I could only give her a nod.
I looked around the fireplace area. Even if nothing had changed in the slightest, it felt like the walls were closing in. The fire crackled. The chairs sat at their usual angle.
Everything was exactly as it had been on every other night we'd spent here, and it felt nothing like those nights at all. I'd let something erode in my absence and I was only now feeling the full measurement of it.
I knew I had to tell her. She deserved a better life than this. One with parents. One without me.
But, the other side of me spoke then.
I don't want to lose her.
I'd been away from Olivia for so long. Whether or not it was the best of situations, it didn't change the fact that having her here — speaking with her, being in her presence — was something I'd stopped being able to imagine the absence of. I hadn't let myself name that for a long time. I was naming it now, in the quiet, with the fire going low and her just across from me turning pages she wasn't really reading.
I loved her.
And I'd sworn I wouldn't let that become the thing that trapped her.
I drew my chair closer. The scrape of it against the floor was the loudest thing in the room.
"I promised you something," I said. "When we first fought."
She chuckled. It eased the tension in the air ever so slightly.
"I don't think it was a fight so much as me shouting at you."
It was my turn to grin, though it didn't last long.
"I told you that I would inform you if something really mattered," I said. "That I didn't need to wait for the right time or place."
Olivia regarded the words slowly. "You did."
She straightened up in her chair. "So what's this about?"
A chill moved slowly from my feet toward my chest. My heart pounded.
"There's something about the night your parents died…" The words were barely above a whisper.
Olivia's expression changed.
I expected fear. I expected hurt.
Instead it was softness. The same openness she'd shown me time and again — patient, trusting, without condition. The expression of someone who had already decided, before I'd said another word, that whatever came next was something she could hold.
Every part of me seized.
I'd prepared for this. I'd told myself there was no more time. That Elias was going to say it if I didn't, and she deserved to hear it from me first, in my own words, with whatever explanation I could give.
But I couldn't do this to her. Not to that expression.
I opened my mouth once more and tried.
"I…"
I stared at her face again. I didn't want to see what happened to it when the words finally landed. I didn't know if I could watch that and stay in the room.
