Page 73 of Under Control
It wasn’t until the sun had set and everything was dark that she finally let herself cry.
Chapter Eighteen
If there was one thing Derek wasn’t in the mood to do tonight, it was smile and act like everything was okay.
But it was a big night for Village Hearts and he needed to be here. Not just because he’d put a lot of time and effort into the event, but because they’d been there for Julia when he and Amber had been wrapped up with her newborn baby brother. He could never repay them for that, but every dollar he could help them raise tonight counted.
He’d told himself Olivia probably wouldn’t show up. She’d put time and money into it, but she didn’t have the emotional connection. It would be easier for her to simply make a donation and not have to spend the evening with a fake smile on her face.
But she was there. Seeing her walk through the door had been such a blow, he’d actually taken a step backward. She looked stunning tonight. The blue dress hugging her curves was elegant and sophisticated, but for a man who knew every inch of that body intimately, it was a torturous reminder of what he used to have and let get away.
Watching her made him ache. His hands ached to touch her. He ached to hear her voice and see her smile. But it was his heart that ached so much the pain made it hard to breathe.
But every time she moved or smiled, he could see that she was hurting, too. She looked brittle, as if she was so tense, she’d shatter if somebody touched her.
He knew the feeling.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” He jerked his attention away from Olivia to look at Scott, and then shrugged. “No. Not really.”
“I’ve been there, man, and it sucks. Honestly, I can’t believe you’re both here tonight. I couldn’t have come to a thing like this with Jamie here while we were broken up. It would have killed me.”
“It is killing me,” he admitted. “Just really slowly for maximum pain effect.”
“If it hurts that much, you might want to consider fixing it.”
“If it was that easy, I would.”
Scott snorted. “Easy? Nothing about it’s fucking easy. But it’s worth it. I had to learn some hard lessons to get Jamie back and it was worth it because every time I open my eyes, I’m excited to see Jamie, even if she’s right there lying in bed next to me.”
“I know that feeling.” He missed that feeling. Now when he opened his eyes, it was to dread facing a day without Olivia.
“It was a lot of work.” Scott tilted his head for a second. “It’s still work. We’re both on the job. She outranks me. We worry about each other. We’re going to have kids soon and that’s a whole new bunch of challenges. But we do the work together because it’s worth it.”
There was a time Derek would have laughed out loud at the idea of Scott Kincaid giving him advice about his love life. And not just love, but the serious and forever kind of love. But Scott and Jamie were the real deal, and somehow the knowledge that they’d gone through a rough time and come out the other side together eased some of the tightness in his chest.
Scott clapped his hand on Derek’s shoulder. “You’ll work it out. In the meantime, some of us want to go in together on a bid for that deep-sea fishing package. You in?”
“That’d be a fun way to ring in the summer.”
“It’s for six but we’re thinking a four-way split. Me, Aidan, Chris and you, and then we all pitch in for Isaac and Chris’s boy.”
Maybe it was because his emotional walls were beaten and battered as hell right now, but that actually choked him up a bit. Losing Jeff to retirement had been a big blow for these guys, but when Derek replaced him, they’d made it clear right from his first day of permanent duty with them that he was family. “Let’s do it.”
They wandered around the tables, checking out the different auction listings and bidding on a few things. He was pretty sure the deep-sea fishing trip was going to end up out of their price range, but they wrote down a bid anyway.
Then he sucked it up, plastered a smile on his face and went to work the room. He lost himself in small talk and schmoozing. George and Ella were in their element, sweet-talking the wealthier people in the room, while he circulated among the rest of the supporters and their families. It got him out of his own head for a while, until George took the microphone and asked everybody to find their names on the place cards and be seated for dinner.
There was a seating chart. And, after much moving around to get a good mix of Village Hearts supporters and potentially generous donors at each table, it had been nailed down before he and Olivia broke up.
This was going to hurt.
After the marathon strategic seating plan session, he didn’t have to look for his name on the place cards. He was sitting at a round table for six, with Olivia seated on his right and a wealthy surgeon whose grandson was a firefighter on his left.
He was almost there when the crowd parted and Olivia was there. The careful, almost unconscious avoidance dance they’d been doing all evening had come to an end, and it seemed as if he had to make a deliberate effort to keep breathing.
“Olivia.”
