Page 66 of Roman & Olivia
“Confessing your love, you big dummy.”
Roman huffed a hard breath and retrieved his coffee mug. “I’m going to work.”
“I mean it,” she called after him. “You have to tell her how you feel if you want to fix this.”
No matter how hard he tried to ignore her words, he couldn’t get them out of his head. She couldn’t be right, could she? Olivia didn’t love him. Not like that.
And yet a very small sliver of hope cut into him.
If Camilla was right about him, who was he to say she wasn’t right about Olivia, too? It was entirely possible that Olivia had some sort of feelings for him. And he could be better for her than Mason ever would be.
Over the course of the day and into the afternoon, Roman mused over everything his sister had said to him.
He was tempted to stop by Olivia’s place and do everything that Camilla had suggested.
But there was one thing holding him back.
Roman was utterly terrified.
By the time the sun went down, he found himself seated on the porch steps staring out at the night sky. Right now, he could deal with the pain he was experiencing—the hurt of knowing that Olivia had chosen a boyfriend over her friendship with him. It was a normal decision.
It’s not normal.
Her words still stung.
If he decided to do something about his feelings, then he’d have to experience a different kind of hurt. Olivia would have to choose one man she had feelings for over another. As of now, his heart hadn’t been shattered. She hadn’t told him outright that she didn’t love him.
What if that was all he had to look forward to?
“You okay?”
He glanced over his shoulder to find his sister Sophia leaning against the railing. Slowly, he turned his focus back to the sky. Then he shook his head. The pressure in his chest had continued to grow all day. At any given moment, it might even burst. “No, I’m not okay.”
“Is this about Olivia?”
He flinched at hearing her name.
“I thought so,” she murmured gently. Then she moved to sit at his side. A deep sigh rattled in her chest, and then she turned her head to face him. “You want to talk about it?”
“Not particularly, no,” he said.
Sophia nodded. “Yeah, I get that.”
But shedidn’t. Not Really. Olivia was his best friend. Besides his family, she’d been his one constant all his life. Their connection went deeper than a simple friendship, though. Hecould feel it like an invisible tether that tied them together. He didn’t want to go on living his life without her in it, and right about now, that seemed to be the only path forward.
His sister sighed again. “Camilla said some stuff…”
He scowled at that. “Camilla needs to mind her own business.”
“Like you?”
Roman wasn’t going to give her a response to that statement. As much as she said she understood, she never would. She hadn’t fallen for her best friend. She didn’t have to sit back with her hands tied as the distance between the two of them mounted to the point of physical pain.
“She’s right, you know.”
His jaw clenched tighter. Before she uttered a word, he knew where she was going to go with this conversation. She hadn’t told many about her experiences with her first close boyfriend—hadn’t even told him outright—but he knew. He’d put the pieces together, and it had infuriated him that someone would betray her the way Brent had betrayed his sister.
“Think about it. If the roles were reversed?—”
