His Dangerous Love On Ice (Olivia and Zane) novel Chapter 203

Olive’s POV

The manipulation. The performance.

Elena had always been good at this-at making herself the victim, at twisting situations until everyone around her felt guilty for whatever pain she claimed to be experiencing.

I’d never known that until I watched the video in the military, of her accepting to a crime I never committed.

“You don’t get to show up here and act like you’re owed explanations,” I said quietly.

“I don’t-” She stopped, eyes widening. “Are you serious right now? We were best friends, Zane. We grew up together. We were-we were everything to each other. And you just left. You just vanished. And now you’re standing here acting like I’m some stranger who-”

“You are a stranger,” I interrupted. “It’s been seventeen years. People change. You’re not the person I knew. I’m not the person you knew. Whatever we were to each other ended a long time ago.”

“That’s not true,” she said, and now she was moving closer again, closing the distance I’d put between us. “You don’t just stop caring about someone because time passes. You don’t just forget about—”

“I didn’t forget,” I said. “I chose to leave. There’s a difference.”

That stopped her.

For a moment, she just stared at me, her face going through several expressions-shock, hurt, anger, all cycling through in rapid succession.

“You chose to leave,” she repeated slowly. “You chose to abandon everyone who cared about you. To disappear without a word. To build this entire life-” she gestured around the penthouse “-and not once, not in seventeen years, think to reach out to the people who loved you?”

“The people who loved me,” I said, “would have understood that I needed to get out. That staying would have destroyed me.”

But it was a lie, I never chose to leave, I never choose to be sent to a place meant for only the cursed, but I couldn’t tell her that.

“I would have understood,” Elena said, her voice dropping to something softer now. More intimate. “If you had just talked to me. If you had just told me what was going on-”

“This conversation is over,” I said, turning away from her. “You can leave now. I have nothing for you, and it’s unpleasant seeing you.”

I started walking toward the hallway, done with this, done with her, done with whatever game Sophia thought she was playing by giving Elena my address.

Because that’s what this was.

A game.

It was quite easy to piece together Sophia’s gambit.

Sophia setting up her pieces, trying to create chaos, trying to drive a wedge between me and Olive by bringing back ghosts from my past.

But Elena wasn’t a ghost.

She was just a memory I’d buried for good reason and I wasn’t ready to bring it up.

“Zane, it’s been fucking seventeen years!”

Her voice cracked through the space, loud and raw and furious in a way that made me stop walking.

“Seventeen years,” she continued, and I could hear her footsteps behind me now, following me. “Seventeen years and you disappeared one morning without explanation, without goodbye, and after so many blank years of not hearing from you, you suddenly started appearing in billboards as some hot hockey player-and you’re fucking not happy to see me? After all these years, like you owe me no explanation?”

I turned slowly to face her.

“I owe you no fucking explanation.”

My voice came out harder than I’d intended. Louder. Breaking through her words.

“You don’t fucking walk into my home and demand answers that have nothing to do with you. Questions you have no right to ask.”

My eyes were sharp as I stared down at her, watching her flinch.

Good.

She should flinch.

She should understand that whatever claim she thought she had on me, whatever history she was trying to leverage-none of it mattered.

The room went silent.

I could hear her breathing. Fast. Panicked. Like she was trying to process what I’d just said and couldn’t quite believe it.

“I can’t believe you’re being like this,” she whispered finally. “After everything we were to each other. After-”

“We were children,” I said flatly. “We were kids who happened to grow up in the same place at the same time. That’s all.”

“That’s not-

“And whatever you think we had, whatever you think we were supposed to become-it’s not real. It never was. You built a fantasy in your head about us, and I’m sorry if that hurts to hear, but I’m not going to stand here and pretend otherwise.”

Her face had gone pale.

“You’re lying,” she said. “You’re lying because-because you’re scared. Because seeing me brings back everything you’ve been running from-

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