The Other Side of Us - By Sarah Mayberry Page 0,94
Even though that was how he felt right this second. He pulled his phone from his back pocket and dialed her number. The phone rang. He moved to the window so he could see her place.
The phone rang, and rang. His grip tightened on the handset. He stared at her house, willing her to pick up. Finally, it went through to voice mail.
What the...?
He glared at her empty, dark kitchen window, a sudden, violent rage ripping through him. What was she doing that she couldn’t answer the phone? What were they doing? How could she do this to him?
For long seconds he stood raging at the window, literally shaking with the force of his own fury. He wanted to smash the glass in front of him. He wanted to pick up the nearest chair and hurl it through like a cowboy in a saloon fight. He wanted to kick holes in the wall and tear pictures from the walls and drag the house down around his ears.
He didn’t.
He stood and shook and endured his own terrible anger. Then he forced himself to walk into the kitchen. He sat at the table and clasped his hands in front of him and tried to get a grip on his own sanity.
He didn’t know where all this anger had come from, but he knew it wasn’t about Mackenzie. This was all for Edie and himself. This was about his failed marriage, not the woman he’d fallen so precipitously and recklessly in love with. Trouble was, at this moment in time, he couldn’t for the life of him separate the two things.
He dropped his head into his hands, fingers pressing against his skull. A single, hot tear ran down his cheek and dropped onto the table.
For the first time he admitted to himself that the past five months had been damned hard. The hardest of his life. Dealing with Edie, keeping up appearances for all his friends and his business partner and his brother. Assuring everyone that he was a bit messed up but that essentially he was okay.
On one level, it was true. But on another, it was a thin, fragile lie.
He’d believed in his marriage. Even though he could see now that it had been flawed, he’d believed in it and invested in him and Edie. And she had smashed it all to pieces, destroying parts of him in the process.
In the midst of that chaos he’d met Mackenzie, and the world had seemed good again. He’d fallen, hard, eating up the happiness and certainty that she seemed to bring.
But nothing in life was certain. Certainly, people weren’t.
He had no idea how long he sat at the kitchen table. A long time. He grew colder and colder. At some point, Strudel joined him, curling up at his feet. Finally the need for heat forced him to his feet and into the living room. He stoked the fire and threw on another log and stood staring into the flames, feeling depleted and exhausted and oddly numb.
When the fire was blazing again he grabbed a blanket and stretched out on the couch. Strudel jumped up to lie across his legs and he drifted into almost-sleep, his thoughts chasing themselves in circles, indistinct images flashing across his mind’s eye.
He must have eventually drifted off properly, because when he woke it was very dark, the only light the glow of the embers in the fire grate. His neck was sore from being crooked at an awkward angle on the arm of the couch. He sat up slowly and circled his shoulders, then his neck. Then he stood and placed the screen in front of the fire.
“Come on Strudel, bedtime.”
He wasn’t sure what made him check out the front window before he headed for bed. Some innate, primitive instinct, perhaps.
He pulled the curtain aside enough to see into the street, expecting to see nothing but empty road where the Ferrari had been.
The big red sports car was still there, its paintwork shining dully in the moonlight.
Oliver stared at it for a long moment as an echo of his earlier rage and jealousy rippled through him. He closed his eyes.
He believed in Mackenzie. He really did.
But he couldn’t do this.
His brother had been right. It was way, way too soon for him to be throwing himself headfirst into a serious relationship. Even if he was crazy, madly in love with Mackenzie. Even if he felt as though life was full of possibilities when he was with her.