Spiralling Skywards: Falling (Contradictions #1) (17 page)

I shook my head just as my brother came through the door with a beer in his hand.

“How old’s your nan now?”

“Seventy-nine,” Sasha told him.

Luke shuddered and pulled a face.

“I’m surprised she’s still got juices to flow at her age. I’d hate to think that my grandad is still banging my nan these days.”

“I don’t wanna think about my nan and the word juices together in the same sentence any time ever,” Will added.

I listened to their conversation about geriatric juices as I poured Sasha a wine and mixed myself another vodka, making it just a little bit stronger this time. I could already feel the effects of the first drink, I felt loose, disjointed, and still shaky.

“So what are you boys doing here tonight? I thought you’d be at home recovering from your trip to Manchester.”

I passed Sash her wine and joined her at the breakfast bar where she was sitting on a bar stool next to my brother. Will flipped on the kettle and started to make himself a cup of tea.

I drank my vodka and waited for someone to explain to Sasha why the boys were at our place. I wasn’t going to. I couldn’t. My face and lips felt numb, my fingers felt tingly, and my chest felt like it had been stabbed with a sharp knife. With a serrated edge. Over and over and over again.

Stab.

Twist.

“Liam’s wife turned up from Australia, we thought it best to get out of their way and let them talk about whatever couples talk about when they’re trying to save their marriage.”

Stab.

Stab.

Twist.

Sasha knocked her glass of wine over. Will passed her a cloth and some kitchen roll to clear up the dark red mess with. It looked like blood. The blood that was pumping from my chest with every beat of my heart and stab and twist of that serrated edge knife.

I passed her the bottle of cab without her asking. I already knew she would want a top up after what Luke just told her. She’d need a drink as much as I did.

I drank my vodka and refused to make eye contact with Sasha.

“Liam has a wife?” she asked.

“Yeah, the marriage didn’t last long. They both fucked around on each other and then he caught her in bed with a business associate of his in their own home. He left her, and as far as I knew, they hadn’t seen each other for a couple of years, but according to her, they were trying to work things out before he left to come here,” Luke explained.

I struggled to hold back a sob.

He lied.

He lied to me.

I felt hot.

I wanted to cry.

I wanted to scream.

I wanted to fly.

I wanted to be somebody else, somewhere else.

“I can’t see that myself. He was adamant that it was over when I spoke to him at your party. The only reason he hadn’t pushed the divorce through sooner was because of the trouble it would cause between their families because the businesses had merged.”

I stared down at my finger as it traced a pattern over the breakfast bar we sat at while listening to Will.

I wasn’t sure if what he was saying was the truth or if he was just repeating what Liam had claimed, to try to make me feel better.

I didn’t really care either way.

It was done.

We were done.

Liam had lied.

He’d lied, and he would leave me.

Just like my dad. Just like my mum. Nobody stayed, because I wasn’t easy to love.

“You okay, Sunshine?” Luke asked from beside me. “You’re very quiet tonight.”

“I’ve got the beginnings of a migraine actually. I think I’m gonna go jump in the bath and then have an early night.”

I stood up. The room spun. I blamed it on the migraine causing black spots to dance in front of my eyes. I said goodnight and gave cuddles to everyone.

“We need to talk,” Will whispered in my ear.

“I’ll be up as soon as they’ve gone.” Sasha gave me a squeeze as she spoke.

I couldn’t be bothered to have a bath. I took off my clothes, pulled on a pair of pyjamas, and climbed into bed.

Why didn’t he choose me?

Just for once.

Why didn’t someone, anyone, just choose me?

I cried. I cried so hard my head, chest, and throat ached.

I cried until I fell asleep.

“Why are you
here?” 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,
that
would
never
happen. 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 Australian
Vogue
and 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 to
our
home
and fucked him in
our
bed
. 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.

“I don’t care about any of that shit. It’s not mine. I don’t believe you.”

They were just words. Words that I was using to try to convince myself, her, anyone that would listen that it wasn’t true. The baby wasn’t mine. She wasn’t even pregnant.

I suddenly felt so tired. I wanted to go back to my flat. I wanted to go back to my flat and find Sarah waiting there for me in our bed.

“Fair enough.” Olivia interrupted my thoughts. “You don’t have to care and you don’t have to believe me.”

“Then why the fuck are you here?”

There would be more to this. I knew her and how her brain worked. She wouldn’t have flown twelve thousand kilometres just to drop that bomb and leave.

She flicked her dark hair over her shoulders, and my stomach rolled. She was so different from Sarah, who was relatively short, curvy, and gorgeous. Sarah’s skin was like porcelain, with just a smattering of tiny freckles on her cute little nose and her shoulders. Her dress sense swung from total vamp to tomboy, and I fucking loved it. I loved her. I should’ve stopped her. I should’ve told Luke what was going on between us and confessed everything before Olivia had even had chance to speak, but I didn’t. I stood there and did nothing. I simply stood by and watched from my peripheral as Will held out his hand to her. Fucking Will. He held out his hand and she took it. She took it because I stood there and did
nothing
, fuck all. I didn’t even look at her. I didn’t even watch her leave.

I had just kept my eyes on Olivia, who was nothing like Sarah and
not
what I wanted. Olivia was tall, slim, and dark. Everything about her appearance was groomed and polished. Olivia would never have let her hair get wet unless she knew her hairdresser was on hand to dry it for her. Olivia would never have gone shopping with me today, she would’ve sent her interior designer out with her personal shopper and had the goods delivered. Olivia most definitely wouldn’t be caught dunking her Hob Nob into her tea. Fuck, Olivia probably didn’t even know what a Hob Nob fucking was.

“I’m here because I thought it only right and proper to tell you in person that you’re going to be a father,
if
that’s what you want.”

“Wha’d’ya mean, ‘if that’s what I want’?”

She let out a long sigh before lacing her fingers together and holding them in front of her chest.

“I’m not raising a child on my own, Liam. If you don’t want to save our marriage and bring up our child together, then I’ll terminate the pregnancy.”

And there it was.

That was what she’d come for. She would use this baby as leverage.

“Of course, termination goes against everything I believe in, so I will obviously need the support of my family.”

“Your family? You’d tell your family that you’re having an abortion? Why the fuck would you do that?” But I knew before I’d even finished speaking why she’d do that.

Her dad would forbid it. He would tell my dad.

I felt pressure on the top of my head. A weight forcing me into the ground, making my legs feel heavy and my chest so tight that I could barely breathe.

“You need to go, Olivia. You need to leave me the fuck alone. If you
are
pregnant, which I doubt, but
if
you are, then that baby is
not
mine. You don’t even want a baby, you never have. So, if you were to have an abortion, there is no way in the world that you would be telling anyone, least of all your family.”

She stood looking at me, like she was a saint, like Mother fucking Teresa.
Sorry, God and Saints!

“Oh, I’ll tell my family, and I’ll also tell every journalist from every tabloid looking for some gossip how you abandoned us. How you abandoned me and our baby and told me to terminate the pregnancy, which of course I’d do, because I’m so sad, lonely, and desperate to win you back.”

She picked up her handbag from the floor and put the straps over her shoulder.

“I can’t imagine that there’ll be many companies out there that would want to do business with you or your family once
that
story hits the trash rags and magazines. What a shame when you’re just in the process of setting up something new.”

She moved to walk past me, but I grabbed at her arm, halting her exit.

“Why are you doing this, Olivia?” I almost cried as I asked her. I hated myself, hated that she would know that she’d got to me.

“Because I can, Liam. Because I fucking can.” She jerked her arm out of my grip.

“You’ve got my number. I’ll be here until Tuesday, if I don’t hear from you by then, I’ll fly home, arrange the procedure, and drop a few lines to Monet Baxter. Her magazine’s always looking for a scoop.”

I let her leave before I rushed to the downstairs toilet and threw up just about everything in my stomach.

***

I stood at the kitchen sink in Luke’s house and attempted to stop myself from shaking. I wasn’t sure if it was shock or anger that was causing my entire body to tremble the way it was, but it was likely both.

I opened the freezer compartment in the fridge and pulled out the bottle of vodka I knew would be stashed there. Grey Goose, the good stuff. I didn’t even bother to mix it, just drank it neat, straight from the bottle. Obviously vodka wasn’t exactly what my empty stomach needed, but bad life choices seemed to be my thing right then.

With the bottle still in my hand, I went to the bedroom I’d been staying in and retrieved my phone charger. I went back to the kitchen, and plugged it in to both the socket and my phone. I stood silently, my heart banging against my chest as I waited for the small technological miracle known as a Nokia to kick into life enough for me to be able to call Sarah.

The device lit up, I waited for what seemed like minutes before it allowed me to press call against her number. It rang. My heartbeat echoed in my ears.

Once.

Twice.

“Hey, this is Sarah. I can’t take your call right now so do your thang after the beep, and I’ll get back to you when I can.”

“Sarah.” I had to physically swallow down the sob that was trying to punch its way out of my throat. “Bub, please pick up or call me back. I’m gonna start making my way over to your place either way.” I paused for a few seconds. I was desperate for her to know exactly what and how much she meant to me but I didn’t wanna be telling her over the phone.

“I’m so sorry, Sarah. I’m so fucking sorry.” It was all I managed before my allotted time ended.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” It was aimed at no one, anyone, and everyone.

I had no clue what I should do.

Go to Sarah.

What about Olivia?

Fuck Olivia.

Yeah, that was what caused all this.

I didn’t believe that she was pregnant, and if she was, I was pretty sure that the baby wasn’t mine.

But what if it was. What did I do? Could I live with myself if she terminated the pregnancy? What would my family think if she told them? My sisters and my mum couldn’t stand Olivia, but they’d probably like me even less if I didn’t stand by her.

I took another long swig from the vodka bottle. My throat and stomach protested, and for a few seconds, I enjoyed the diversion from the ache in my heart.