Broken Hero by Olivia Hayle

Author:Olivia Hayle [Hayle, Olivia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-10-19T16:00:00+00:00

15

Lucy

When I woke up and Oliver was gone the next day, I wasn't surprised. My aunt and uncle were already hard at work in the kitchen below and it made sense that he slipped out before. Imagine explaining that!

The only reminder that he’d ever been there at all was the masculine scent that clung to my sheets, and a pleasant, tingly soreness all through my body.

Oliver Morris. I’d slept with him, and I’d be damned if it wasn’t everything I’d fantasied about and more. I already looked forward to seeing him again.

But he wasn't at the ranch when I arrived later.

He wasn’t there the next day, either.

And he didn’t text me.

He didn’t call.

When I asked Mandy if he was in his office, the third day after the fair, she said he was at a supplier meeting out of town. I could take a hint.

I thought I knew a lot about humiliation. It was the reason I'd left Dallas in the first place, but I just wished it didn't hurt so damn much. It wasn't just because the sex had been amazing, even though it had. Some of the things I had done and said—that he had done!—made me blush just to think about.

But it was the way he'd looked at me afterwards that haunted me most. I had thought, for a brief moment, that he would let me in. That I'd been granted a view of the unguarded Oliver. He’d held me as I slept, and I had let myself dream of a future where that could become a regular thing.

And then… nothing.

On the third day of avoidance, I was hurt.

On the fifth, I was pissed.

Thoughts of him refused to leave me. They stayed with me daily, the great letters spelling Morris taunting me when I biked past them up to the ranch. He was everywhere, even if he was nowhere to be found.

I hadn't left Dallas for this. And even if he regretted what we had done, despite how hurtful hearing it would be, he should be able to tell me. I could accept that.

Even during my massage work—one of my favorite things to do—my mind refused to cooperate. It kept running through what happened, thinking of where I went wrong. Oliver’s attempts to avoid me were getting comical. We work together, for Christ sake.

I run my thumb over a painful knot in the client’s right rhomboid muscle.

What’s Oliver thinking, anyway? That we’ll just never meet again? I could text him, but I want to see his face when we talk.

The knot is moving, but it’s not coming undone. I apply more pressure.

Besides, I’m not going to be weak anymore. I was in the past, but that Lucy is gone. That was the whole point of coming to Claremont.

A new me and a new beginning.

Oliver has to talk to me.

I’ll make him.

"Ow," my client says. "I know I asked for a sports massage, but is it possible to lessen the pressure a bit?"

I loosen my death grip on him. “I’m so sorry, sir.

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