Page 60 of Spiralling Skywards
“Why are youhere?” I asked Olivia again.
I’d let Luke and Will get Sarah out of the way. I felt sick to my stomach for not saying anything to Sarah before she left, but I couldn’t let Liv know that there was something going on between us. I was hoping for an amicable dissolution of our business partnership, along with a quick and easy divorce. If Liv knew I was happy and was planning to settle down with Sarah,thatwouldneverhappen. It was something I couldn’t risk. My dad’s health wouldn’t take it if things got messy, and I didn’t want Sarah having to put up with me going through a messy, drawn-out divorce.
Our family’s names and business dealings weren’t known worldwide but they were newsworthy in Australia. Our wedding had been covered by AustralianVogueand there’d been rumours about our split in the tabloids. I’d threatened, via my lawyers, to expose Olivia’s affair with Sebastian Markham and to confess my heartbreak over catching them in bed together to anyone that would listen if Liv didn’t agree to a straight split down the middle of our assets. I wasn’t heartbroken. I was relieved. We married for all the wrong reasons, and I was glad to be out of it.
I would admit that my ego took a bit of a bashing when I found out she was fucking someone I did business with on a regular basis, but I was even more pissed off that she brought him toourhomeand fucked him inourbed. Whatever my misdemeanours might have been, I respected her enough to be discreet. I never slept with anyone that we knew mutually, I always took them to a hotel, and I never saw them again, at least not to fuck.
“Like I said, we need to talk.”
“You couldn’t have called or emailed?”
“You don’t reply to my emails, Liam, and I’ve only just got your new phone number. I’ve called the old Australian one numerous times, I had hoped that your calls were being diverted, and I’d reach you eventually, but apparently not.”
I did have my calls diverted to my new phone, but I wasn’t gonna admit that I’d deliberately ignored her attempts to contact me. Something I was regretting.
“You could’ve contacted Lennard. He would’ve passed on your message.”
She looked down at the tiled floor and wrapped her arms around her waist.
“This is personal. I didn’t want to involve Lennard.”
She finally looked up and met my gaze, her head was slightly tilted back as she struck her usual superior stance and looked down her nose at me. It was the way she looked at most people she came across in life.
Olivia had always had a high opinion of herself and her standing in society. Her goals were wide and her ambitions high, which were things that I would generally admire in a person. The problem I had with Liv, though, was that she didn’t care who she hurt to reach them. She wanted me because I was the best thing available in our small Aussie beach town, and she didn’t want anyone else to have me.
Next to hers, my family were the wealthiest and the most well-known. That was all that really mattered to Liv.
Image. Pretence.
We stared at each other in silence for a few moments. I had no clue what she was playing at by turning up here, we’d said all that needed to be said before I’d left Sydney. We’d been done two years ago and nothing had changed my mind on that score.
I wanted her to say what she had to say, and then I wanted her to fuck off out of my life once and for all.
I wanted to go and find Sarah. I wanted to sit down with Luke and explain that I was in love with his little sister and wanted to move on with my life. A life that Olivia would play no part in.
“I’m pregnant. It’s yours.”
The floor, the world, my entire fucking life fell away from beneath me. I reached out and steadied myself on the kitchen worktop.
“We used a condom. Both times, we used a condom. You’ve got an implant too. No. No fucking way are you pregnant.”
She reached for the large black handbag that was sitting at her feet on the floor and pulled out a couple of pieces of paper to hand to me.
One was just a print off of a hospital pregnancy test result, the other was a letter on headed paper from an obstetrician, and both had Olivia’s name on them. Both were dated last Thursday. Both confirmed that she was pregnant.
“No, Liv. I’m not having it. You might be pregnant, but there’s no fucking way that it’s mine. We were careful. We’ve always been careful. You’ve got an implant, we used a fucking condom!”
“My implant expired over a year ago and condoms are not one hundred percent full proof. Accidents happen and an accident has happened to us.”
No.
I could hardly catch my breath.
I’d just spent the most amazing twenty-four hours of my life with Sarah.
I was the happiest I’d been in years.
This! This wasn’t happening.
