His Dangerous Love On Ice (Olivia and Zane) novel Chapter 204

Olive’s POV

I left Zane’s apartment without looking back.

Neither could I look back.

Or see through that door, nor think about what was happening behind it, I couldn’t let myself imagine Elena still there with him, offering comfort, sliding into the space I’d just vacated with my dramatic exit and my hurt feelings and my complete inability to handle what I’d walked in on.

My hands were shaking as I fumbled with my car keys.

I dropped them once.

Picked them up.

Then dropped them again.

When I finally managed to unlock the door and slide into the driver’s seat, and for a moment I just sat there in the parking garage beneath his building, hands gripping the steering wheel, trying to remember how to breathe.

Elena’s face.

Zane’s hands on her waist.

The way they’d looked together in that split second before he’d seen me-intimate, familiar, like they’d done this before, like seventeen years hadn’t passed, like I was the interruption instead of the girlfriend who had every right to be there.

I started the car.

Instantly pulled out of the parking garage.

Hit the street with no real destination in mind because going home felt impossible-my mother might still be at my apartment, and I couldn’t face her questions or her concern or her inevitable -told-you-so about getting involved with Zane

Mercer.

And Brenda.

God, Brenda. My chest tightened.

My best friend was pregnant with my stepfather’s baby.

Who’d betrayed my mother in the worst possible way.

Who I didn’t know how to talk to anymore because every conversation felt like choosing sides and I didn’t want to choose, didn’t want to be forced into picking between the people I loved most.

So I drove.

With no plan.

No clear direction.

Just drove through Seattle with the windows up and the radio off, letting the city lights blur past while my brain tried to process everything that had happened in the span of one terrible evening.

I found myself pulling into Volunteer Park without consciously deciding to go there.

Just muscle memory from all the times I’d come here with Klaus when we were kids, when he’d bring me to the water tower and we’d climb to the top and look out over the city and he’d tell me everything was going to be okay even when it felt like our family was falling apart around us.

Klaus.

The memory of Klaus dying thirteen years ago hit me again.

Of how Walter couldn’t look at me anymore without seeing him in me.

Of how Diane had grieved so hard it had broken her marriage and sent her into Grayson’s arms two years later looking for someone who didn’t remind her of loss.

Who’d apparently known Zane years before I ever met him, according to what Judy Byron had told me before he’d died in that mysterious accident that the police had ruled not suspicious despite every instinct I had screaming otherwise.

I parked under a streetlight.

Turned off the engine.

And just sat there.

Staring at nothing.

Trying to figure out how everything in my life had gotten so completely fucked up.

Cole had cheated on me for two years-mediocre in bed, mediocre at hockey, mediocre at being a decent human being according to Brenda’s wine-drunk assessment that had been more accurate than I’d wanted to admit.

I’d wasted two years standing in the rain at his practices, driving three hours to watch him warm benches, rearranging my entire life around his schedule while he was fucking other women and calling me incapable behind my back.

And then Zane.

Zane who’d appeared like some kind of answer to a question I hadn’t known I was asking-intense and complicated and so completely different from Cole that I’d thought maybe, finally, this was what a real relationship felt like.

Someone who actually saw me.

Someone who challenged me and frustrated me and made me feel things I’d never felt before.

Someone who looked at me like I mattered.

Except.

Except he had secrets.

Had known my dead brother and never mentioned it.

Had a childhood friend who looked at him like she owned him and showed up at his home uninvited and ended up in his arms while I watched from the doorway feeling like my heart was being ripped out of my chest.

Had a sister who hated me and a father who’d tried to destroy my stepfather and a whole complicated family dynamic that I didn’t understand and wasn’t sure I wanted to.

Maybe my mother had been right.

Maybe I was making the same mistakes over and over again, choosing the wrong men, getting involved with people who would only hurt me, refusing to learn from past disasters because some part of me was convinced this time would be different.

This time I’d be enough.

This time I wouldn’t be left standing in the wreckage while everyone else moved on.

Except here I was.

Sitting alone in a parking lot.

Again.

Trying to convince myself that what I’d seen wasn’t what it looked like, that Zane’s explanation would make sense, that Elena had stumbled and he’d caught her and I was overreacting like I always did, turning innocent moments into evidence of betrayal because I was damaged and paranoid and couldn’t trust anyone after what Cole had done, after my family betrayal, after my childhood trauma.

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