His Dangerous Love On Ice (Olivia and Zane) novel Chapter 68

OLIVE’s POV

It had been almost two weeks since I made a deal with Zane Merger, and a lot of things had happened-most of which involved getting my entire life turned completely upside down.

I knew I should’ve left when I had the chance.

Should’ve listened to Grayson, to my father, to everyone who’d warned me that being with Zane Mercer came with a kind of danger I’d never experienced before. The kind that didn’t just threaten your reputation-it threatened everything you thought you knew about yourself.

And now my life was on fire.

Everyone I loved probably hated me or was waiting for me to drop a full episode explaining why the video they’d seen was fake, wasn’t real, wasn’t me at all.

I stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows in Zane’s bedroom, watching as his black Mercedes pulled out from the circular driveway below, disappearing down the tree-lined path that led away from his estate.

I released a deep breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.

A sharp hiss escaped my lips the second I took a step toward the bed.

I chuckled lightly despite myself. I was still sore from last night’s marathon with Zane-the kind of sore that reminded you exactly what you’d been doing and with whom every single time you moved.

After what happened at my apartment-after he’d fucked me in the bathtub like he was trying to erase every bad thing that had happened that day-we’d ended up back here at his place. And it had been quite a long night.

Multiple rounds. Different positions. His hands everywhere, his mouth claiming every inch of my skin like he was trying to prove a point that still made my mind blurry.

I could still feel him-every inch of him-in my body, in my core. Could still feel his hands inside me, his tongue on my breasts, the way he’d whispered “mine” against my skin like it was a prayer and a threat all at once.

“Fuck, Olive,” I whispered to myself, pressing my palm against my forehead. “You just got publicly framed and you’re standing here thinking about a dick.”

Now that Zane was gone, now that I was alone in this massive bedroom, I could actually think about what had happened. Process it. Face it.

I’d been too scared to open my phone last night. Too terrified of seeing the notifications, the alerts, the messages that would confirm my worst fears-that my life as I knew it was completely over, that I’d need to flee the country and change my identity just to escape the scandal.

I took a deep breath, clutching the towel wrapped around my boly tighter, and bent down to grab my phone from where I’d left it charging on the nightstand.

“Okay, Olive. You can do this.” I closed my eyes for a second, stealying myself. “You can take the abuse. You can endure seeing a fake woman on the media who isn’t you. It doesn’t matter. It was never you.”

I whispered the words like a mantra, like if I said them enough nes they’d actually become true.

Taking one more deep breath-the kind that made my chest expand and my hands shake-I opened my phone and turned off airplane mode.

At first, nothing happened. My screen stayed blank except for the time and my wallpaper-a photo of me and Brenda at

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16:02 Mon, Feb 16 G G.

Chapter 68

some work event, both of us laughing at something stupid.

That was weird.

Then I heard it-a vibration. Then another. Then another. Different messages dropping in all at once, my phone buzzing like an angry hornet in my hand.

I stared hard at the screen, my heart hammering, because all the messages dropping were from my SMS inbox. None from social media. None from news apps. None from the celebrity gossip sites that had probably been having a field day with my alleged scandal.

“That’s weird,” I muttered, my fingers shaking as I scrolled through the messages.

Texts from my mom. Texts from Brenda. A few from Hunter tha I didn’t have the emotional capacity to read yet. But none -absolutely none-from media outlets or random numbers or he kind of hate messages I’d been expecting.

That wasn’t possible.

I should’ve had at least fifty different bullet points from the media, from random people who’d somehow gotten my number, from reporters asking for comments exclusive interviews.

But there was nothing.

I quickly opened Gram, my thumb hovering over the app icon for a second before I forced myself to tap it.

My profile loaded and I braced myself for the onslaught-the comments, the tags, the viral posts about “Olive Monroe, gold- digging fraud.”

But there was nothing.

It was as if nothing had happened at all. As if that video had never existed. As if I’d imagined the entire nightmare.

How was that possible?

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