Thief (Love Me With Lies #3)(70)

I know exactly the type.

“Anyway, Christopher’s mother — Shoshi — happened to see it and scheduled an appointment at the office. When she filled out her client information, I noticed that she listed your address as her own. So, I pulled her in before Bernie could get to her. She wanted to talk to someone about her teenage son. She’d sometimes take him with her to work and pay him to do some of the harder things. Apparently Leah was so impressed with his work ethic, she asked Shoshi to bring him on weekends and she paid him to do stuff around the house. After a few months of that, Shoshi found condoms in his wallet and a pair of panties that she said she’d seen a hundred times since she folded them.”

I groan. Olivia hears it and laughs into the phone. “What? Did you think she was normal after that little Who’s my baby daddy? stunt she pulled on you?”

“Okay, so why was this Shoshi character coming to you about sexual harassment? Why not call the police and get Leah jailed for statutory rape?”

“This is where it gets complicated, my friend. Shoshi said her son was denying the whole thing. He refused to get Leah in trouble for sleeping with a minor since he was over eighteen by the time she came to me, but his mother did get him to agree to nail her for sexual harassment.”

“What did you do, Olivia?”

Her eyebrow was up. I knew it was.

“Nothing. Before I could do anything, Shoshi changed her mind. Sounds like Leah paid them off. But I could still get him to testify and she knows it.”

“Ah,” I say. “Well, thank God you’re cunning.”

“Thank God,” she repeats.

“You slapped her, Duchess.”

“Mmmm,” she says. “And it felt so damn good.” We both laugh.

There is a long, awkward silence. Then she says, “Noah and I are divorced.”

The world freezes for one second … two seconds … three seconds …

“Remember that coffee shop? The one we went to after we ran into each other at the grocery store?”

“Yeah,” she says.

“I’ll meet you there in ten minutes.”



When I walk into the coffee shop, she’s already there. She’s sitting at the same table we sat at years earlier. In front of her are two cups.

“I got you a tea,” she says when I sit. I grin at the irony. This time it’s me asking about her breakup.

“So, what happened?”

She tucks the hair that has fallen into her face behind her ears and looks at me sadly.

“I got pregnant.”

I try to pretend that I’m unfazed by this little piece of news, but I can feel the awkwardness all over my face. I wait for her to go on.

“I lost it.”

Agh! So much pain in her face. Our hands are both resting on the table, so close, that I reach a finger out and stroke her pinkie with it.

“He agreed to have a baby with me, but when I lost it, he looked so relieved. Then-” she pauses to hide her watery eyes and take a sip of coffee, “-then he said maybe it was for the best.”

I flinch.

“We made it a few more months after that, then I asked him to leave.”

“Why?”

“He wanted to go back to life as he knew it. He was happy and laughing. In his mind, we tried and it wasn’t meant to be. I couldn’t go back after that. It was my second miscarriage.” She looks up at me and I nod.

“Whoever thought the cold, heartless Olivia Kaspen would want to have children?” She smiles bitterly.

“I knew you would,” I say. “It was just a matter of time and healing.”

We finish our drinks in silence. When we stand up, I stop a few feet away from the trashcan with my coffee cup in my hand.

“Olivia?”

“Yeah?”

“If I make this shot, will you go out with me?” I hold my cup like it’s a basketball and look from her to the trashcan.

“Yeah,” she says, smiling. “Yeah, I will.”

I make the shot.





This is the start of our life. This is our choice. We barely have our shit together. I terminated my contract in London, moved home and sold my condo. She sold hers too, and we moved into an apartment near both of our jobs. It’s not even a nice apartment — there is too much linoleum and our neighbors fight constantly. But, we don’t care. We just wanted to ditch the past and be together. We’ll figure it out. Might take some time. We don’t have a plan yet, we don’t even have furniture, but we are both okay with the surrender. We have little fights all the time. She hates that I don’t throw away my trash — water bottles, cookie bags, candy wrappers. She finds them all over the apartment and makes a big show of crinkling them up and throwing them in the trash. I hate the way she soaks the bathroom floor. The woman doesn’t dry herself. Goddamn if it’s nice to look at her soaking body as she walks from the bathroom to the bedroom, but use a f*cking towel already. She always makes the bed. I always do the dishes. She drinks milk straight from the carton and that kind of pisses me off, but then she reminds me that she has to live with my snoring and I call it even. But, holy hell is she fun. How did I not know that we could laugh this much? Or sit in absolute silence and listen to music together? How did I live without this for so long? I watch her sit on one of our two chairs, one from her house, one from mine — her fingers clipping lightly across her keyboard. It still feels like I’m dreaming when I come home to her every night. I love this dream!