Hot Commodity (Banks / Kincaid Family #1)(69)

A shudder wracked her body. Cam felt it reverberate through him, making goose bumps mount on his arms. "Holy Lord," he whispered. He was suddenly glad he’d caused Vivian Roark to fear bankruptcy. How could any woman say such a thing to her own husband?

"After he hit the floor," Olivia went on, "She...she grabbed my arms and shook me, saying, ‘I wasn’t here. Do you understand? I wasn’t here when it happened.’ And that’s when I knew how evil she was."

Another shiver rocked her. Cameron pulled the sheet up over them, rubbing the bumps on both their arms.

"When the police came, I lied and told them what she wanted, saying I was the only one in the room when he...when it happened. So they all focused their attention on me. They grilled me for hours, wanting to know why he’d made a point to off himself in front of me, wanting to know what I’d done to upset him.

"But it wasn’t me at all. It was her. She was the evil one that pushed him into it. And I lied for her. I was so scared. I’ve been terrified of her ever since. It made no sense. It was more like a phobia than a reasonable fear. Rationally, I knew she hadn’t killed him. But deep inside me, I was always scared that if I ever disobeyed her, I’d end up like him. I’d die too.

"So when I finally reached my limit, when I went out that night in Vegas to find myself a husband, it was...it was like my suicide mission. She’d pushed me to the brink and I was just as desperate to self-destruct as my father had been."

She stopped talking; he had a feeling she was done. Still lightly stroking her arm, Cam closed his eyes and pressed his nose against her hair, inhaling her familiar fragrance. "She’s never going to hurt you again, Livy," he murmured.

She nodded and reached out to press her hand against his chest, directly over his heart. Unable to stop himself, he covered it with his palm, lacing their fingers together. They lay that way for nearly half an hour, soaking up each other’s silent comfort.

It surprised him when her quiet voice filled the room. "Cameron?"

His eyelashes fluttered open. "Hmm?"

"Not once in those few seconds before he killed himself did he look at me." Her voice was blank, probably numb to the pain. "I’m not even sure if he knew I was in the room. No, actually, now that I think of it, I’m sure he did know. He just didn’t care. He didn’t say anything to me or act concerned about how any of this would affect me." She turned her head to look up at him, her eyes large and pleading. "His blood splattered all over me when he died, and he probably didn’t even care about that either."

Cameron swallowed. "I got Sienna’s blood on me when she killed herself."

Olivia blinked, startled. "You were with her?"

He nodded, his eyes going distant as he glanced over her shoulder. "She didn’t seem to care either. She just looked up at me and said, ‘Let me go.’ Can you believe that? She didn’t apologize for the hell she was putting me through, for the mess she’d made of everything. She didn’t tell me she loved me. She just told me to let her die."

Olivia leaned forward and pressed her mouth to his throat in a show of consolation. "How’d it happen?"

Cameron closed his eyes again, but it didn’t do anything to block out the memory. "I walked into the bathroom one day and found her overdosed on all sorts of pills, hacking away at her wrists. That...that’s why I overreacted so badly after you broke the mirror. When I walked into that bathroom and saw the pills everywhere, the blood on your wrist, it was—"

He shook his head. Olivia buried her face against his throat. He turned toward her, and when she wrapped her arms around him, he shuddered.

"I’m so sorry," she said, running her fingers through his hair. "I didn’t mean to scare you like that in the bathroom. I shouldn’t have slammed the cabinet so hard."

"It wasn’t your fault. It was just an accident."

"I wasn’t trying to kill myself."

"I know. I..." His words broke off. "I wasn’t thinking. Forgive me, Livy."

"There’s nothing to forgive. You’re reaction was natural."

Her easy reassurance was hard for him to swallow. It made him think of his family.

"I think your dad cared about you more than you know," he murmured, stroking her hair.

He felt her body go tense a moment before she pulled back to look up at him. "What?"

"When Sienna died," he explained. "There was a part of me that was so mad at her. I couldn’t understand why she’d done this to me, why she hated me that much. But these days, there’s moments where I actually get it."

He thought of his parents, of Boston. How many times had he apologized to them for holing up inside himself and been forgiven without thought? How many times had guilt eaten at him for hurting them over and over again?

Licking his lips, he tried to explain. "Sometimes, when emotions get the best of you, you know your pain is hurting others, but you can’t seem to function past wallowing in your own misery. You start to think the solution is to get away from them, so you can stop their pain too. Sienna didn’t mean to hurt me, just like your dad probably didn’t mean to hurt you. They just couldn’t see past themselves."

Olivia let out a quiet sigh and rested her face against his neck. After a moment, she said, "That still doesn’t make what they did right."