AN: Hey guys! I know this was like the longest wait in the world, and I apologize. I cut this chapter in half so I could get something out for you guys, so it's shorter than I intended, but I hope you all enjoy anyway! Look for the second half soon; read & review!
Chapter 16 – The House, Part I
Olivia knew Elliot rather well. Better than almost anyone, he thought. And part of that was all the time they spend together, but it was more than that. Olivia understood Elliot. There were times when she looked at him and he swore she was reading his mind. She knew when he wasn't telling the truth, or when he was only telling part of it. She knew to grab his hand to calm him down when he was angry and how to make him smile when he was sad. But Sunday night proves that Olivia also knew things that she had no way of knowing; like where exactly to place her hands to make his entire body light up, or exactly when Elliot would raise his head up to find her lips. And this made it seem to Elliot, almost, that Olivia had been made just for him and he for her.
Elliot wanted to know Olivia just as well as she knew him. And so, he spent every minute of that Sunday night trying to get to know her better. He was intent on learning her body, what made her flinch, what sent her over the edge. This proves to be an enjoyable experience. Elliot knows that it sounds selfish, but he chooses to pretend, just for the night, that Olivia is his and only his. And this feels inexplicably right. For so long, he had tried to prevent himself from wondering what it would be like with Olivia; forced himself to stop imagining how she would respond to his touch, his lips. And still, everything goes even better than he had tried not to imagine it would. Olivia's body reflexively arches against his, her hands find his at the perfect time, his name whispered from her lips makes his head spin and his heart pound. It felt like he had spent his whole life looking for this. He doesn't ever want to let go.
And so, in the early hours of the morning, the displeasure of the removal of Olivia's body heat against him is enough to make him wake up. His mind is sluggish at first, and so he doesn't register much more than a persistent knocking on the front door, but when he blinks his eyes open and sees Olivia starting to sit up and climb out of bed, he's able to speak.
"You expecting someone?" he asks, closing his eyes again before she glances back at him, trying to hide his discontent with being physically separated from her. Olivia manages to wiggle out from under his arm and stand, and Elliot hears her search around the room briefly.
"No," she says. She sounds annoyed, which makes Elliot feel slightly better. He hears her pad out of the room, and after a few seconds, he opens his eyes and stares at the ceiling as his barely awake brain begins to come to life. For maybe the first time, he notices that the walls of her room are sky blue. A smile finds its way to his lips. The color fits her.
"Just a minute!" he hears Olivia call from outside. She comes back into the room now. Elliot sits up a little to see her better and is startled to see a worried look on her face as she opens her closet and begins shuffling through it in a hurried manner.
"What's wrong?" he asks.
"Nothing," Olivia says. But there is worry in her voice, too. She pulls a robe out of the closest and sheds Elliot's shirt before pulling it on. She works to tie a bow around the waist as she turns to face him, but her eyes don't lift to meet his. "I need you to stay in this room, okay? Just sit quietly, please?"
"What?" Elliot says, his brow furrowing in confusion. This was not how this was supposed to go. He was supposed to wake up with Olivia in his arms, kiss her forehead maybe, laugh some joke she'd tell. Everything up until this point had been going so well, and yet, Olivia almost looks like she could be sick. "Olivia, who's at the door?"
"Elliot," Olivia says, and she looks up at him briefly, her eyes concerned, wavering. "Please. The walls are thin. I'll be right back."
"Olivia," Elliot repeats, but she slips out of the room before answering. Frustrated, he scoffs softly and stands. Then quietly, he begins to search for his clothes on Olivia's floor, deciding that with the way the morning was currently going, it was unlikely that Olivia was going to climb back into bed anytime soon.
In the living room, Olivia is running a hand through her hair anxiously. There is no need to be nervous, she tries to tell herself. You didn't do anything wrong. And she hadn't, really, and in her heart, she knew that. But for some reason, she feels guilt creeping into her mind, and it takes a considerable amount of effort to push her memories of Elliot's lips on her skin and the imagined reaction of Jonathan's parents to her actions last night from her mind.
Olivia nearly trips over her coat now, which is in the middle of the living room floor, and she clucks her tongue nervously before picking it up and throwing it into the coat closet. As she approaches the door, she catches a glance of herself in the foyer mirror and gives herself a half second to try and relax the muscles in her face. She quickly decides this is hopeless before opening the door.
"Olivia!" says Vivian, immediately pulling her into a brief hug. Olivia quickly registers with waning gratefulness that she is not holding any luggage. Olivia tries her best not to tense up too much and forces a tight-lipped smile onto her face after she pulls away and guides the Rhoades into her apartment.
"It's good to see you, Olivia," she hears Joshua say. And immediately, Olivia diverts her eyes, choosing to focus only on Vivian. Vivian is a thin-faced woman with wispy, honey blonde hair and deep-set blue eyes. Aside from the color of her hair, she didn't look very much like her son at all. Olivia knew the exact opposite to be true of Joshua. She didn't think she could look into his hazel eyes just yet.
"We were worried that if we came any later, you'd already be at work and Luke would be at school," Vivian says, looking around for her oldest grandchild. "Is he still asleep?"
"No, I'm sorry, he and Grace spent the night at a friend's," Olivia begins, "And I usually go into work at…" She pauses briefly before remembering the clock in her room showing the time 8:01 am.
"Shit," she whispers, forgetting, momentarily, who she is with. This lapse in memory ends quickly as she meets Vivian's eyes, which are mingling with something between concern and disdain.
"Olivia," she says softly after throwing a quick glance at Joshua. Olivia tries very hard not to resent the change of inflection in her voice. "Are you doing alright, dear? Honestly, I can't say that we didn't expect you to have some difficulty dealing with the children and work and all of your affairs after the funeral. Maybe it would be a good idea for you all to get out the city? You could move upstate, breathe a little easier, and Joshua and I would be close…"
"I'm not moving," Olivia says, shaking her head a little. She knew where this conversation was going and had no interest in continuing it. "Luke has friends here. And my job is in the city."
"Well it's not like you really need to work, is it?" Vivian asks. Olivia looks at Jonathan's mother, who is watching her with a slightly tilted head and a knowing look. Olivia knows exactly what she is asking. Jonathan had left a very large sum of money to Olivia when he'd passed: the combined efforts of his trust fund, life insurance, and savings. Olivia supposed Vivian was curious as to whether Olivia had miraculously found a way to spend all of it in such a short period of time.
"No," Olivia says, trying to keep her voice from growing too hard. "I don't. But I suppose I enjoy working. And like I said, I don't want to take Luke away from his friends."
"Well, wouldn't it be in Luke's best interest, in the end really?" Vivian says, still pushing. "I mean, you'd be able to spend all day with him and Grace. Don't you miss them while you're working? They spend so much time with friends and sitters…"
Olivia nearly snorts at this point. She knows for a fact that Jonathan had had a nanny when he was growing up. Restraining herself is proving to be a difficult task, and so she decides that it is best to hurry this conversation along.
"I do miss them. Constantly," Olivia says flatly. "And I really should be going to pick Grace up, if you don't mind…"
"Of course," Vivian says, her thin-lipped smile from earlier returning. "We only stopped by to drop off the children's Christmas gifts. It's a shame really that we won't be able to stay for the holiday."
"Right," Olivia says, looking behind Vivian to see that Joshua is holding the presents. She takes the large stack from him and moves into to the living room to place them under the tree. She's disappointed to hear footsteps following behind her as she moves. When she straightens up, Joshua has taken a seat, and she draws her eyes away from him as quickly as possible to look at Vivian, who is sitting gingerly on the couch arm. Olivia follows her questioning gaze to Elliot's coat, which is draped haphazardly on the back of the couch. She nearly bites her tongue in surprise.
"Thank you," she says abruptly, trying both to force the panic out of her own voice and to get Vivian to look back at her. "For the gifts. I'll be sure to tell Luke you sent them."
"It's no problem," Vivian says, still smiling in the same way. She shows no evidence that she noticed Elliot's coat, even though she'd been staring at it intensely only a few seconds prior. She does hold Olivia's gaze for a second more than necessary, however, and unwillingly, Olivia feels a blush start to rise on her cheeks.
"There's another reason we stopped by," Joshua says, surprising Olivia into looking over at him. The second his hazel eyes pierce her, she feels a second wave of guilt wash over her and her eyes hit the floor reflexively. "Right, Vivian?"
Thankfully, this gives Olivia an excuse to look away. Unfortunately, this means that Olivia has to look back at Vivian. Her gaze has let up, however, and she no longer appears to be aiming to look into Olivia's soul.
"We're selling the house," Vivian says, her eyebrows raising just slightly. Olivia's interest peaks for a moment. Jonathan's childhood home was a source of pride for the Rhoades. It was an 8-bedroom colonial-style home that had been in the family for at least three generations, as far as she knew. It didn't make sense for them to sell it.
Joshua must see the confusion in her face. He begins to clarify.
"Jonathan was an only child. We intended to pass the house to him," he says. His voice lifts briefly at the end of this statement, and Olivia is reminded, however briefly, that the Rhoades has lost a child in Jonathan. However badly he had treated her, she is able to understand the magnitude of this. "You were his wife. You had children together. You're family."
"You mean…" Olivia begins, so shocked that she looks straight at Joshua again. This time she holds his gaze, and in looking at him longer, she is able to see that he doesn't look as much like Jonathan as she remembers. He's aged in the past couple of years. The crinkled lines around the corners of his eyes and his almost all snow-white hair have softened his appearance and he's thinner than Olivia remembers. He smiles slightly; a soft, encouraging smile that she had never seen on Jonathan before.
"We want to sell to you," Joshua clarifies. "For a discount, of course. It should belong to you."
"I can't," Olivia says, the words rolling out of her mouth before she even thinks about them. But the idea frightens her. She can't imagine it. Living in Jonathan's house would mean being constantly surrounded by him, constantly feeling the bubbling guilt in the pit of her stomach that she's trying so hard to ignore now. Inexplicably, she remembers Elliot laying in her bed, sees him smiling in the dark at her, feels him kissing her. She feels like she could vomit.
"I'm sorry," she says, softly, ignoring the confused looks on both Vivian and Joshua's faces. "I'm so sorry. But I have to go."
She rushes them out of the house after this. It's rude, she knows, but she can barely even hear them, barely even recognizes their faces.
"Well, dear, at least look at it," Vivian says, dropping a key in the dish on the foyer table. "Take the kids up over the break. They'll love it. There's even a swing set in the backyard."
This is the last thing she says before Olivia successfully ushers them out of the door, shutting and locking it behind them. After they're gone, she takes a shaky breath, blinks back the stubborn, rising tears in her eyes, and goes back to her bedroom.
Elliot is not in her bed. And not in the bathroom, either, she sees, when she ducks her head in to look for him.
"El?" she calls, feeling like she's losing her mind. Her head is buzzing; she can't seem to catch her breath. And then Elliot pops his head in the window and nearly scares her into screaming. He sees her jump and he smiles sheepishly as he climbs off of the fire escape into the room.
"Sorry," he says. "Didn't mean to scare you. I didn't realize it was so late. I had to call out of work, but I didn't want you to hear me, so I figured the fire escape was my best bet. You know I told Fin I was taking you out this weekend? He's never going to let me hear the end of this…"
It's only now, when he's only about two feet away from Olivia, that he notices the look on her face. His face drops and he reaches for her, though cautiously. Olivia hesitates for just a moment before stepping into his arms, taking in another deep, unsteady breath.
"Olivia, what happened?" he asks. "Who was at the door?"
Olivia can't find the words at first. They all catch in her throat and her head is still spinning and her skin is tingling. She can't bring herself to put her arms around Elliot even though she wants to, but he seems to understand somehow. His arms slip around her instead and he holds her tight to him. Olivia hates herself for reacting this way and hates the fact that she feels like she's overreacting in the first place. She hates that she wants to be present in this moment, in Elliot's arms, but that she's stuck in her head somewhere between the disappointed look on Joshua Rhoades face and the eerie smirk that Jonathan used to wear.
"Liv," Elliot says, his lips pressed to her forehead, pulling her back to him. "Who was at the door?"
"Jonathan's parents," she manages to whisper finally. Her self-hatred is filling up inside her, threatening to spill over. Olivia feels a sudden, inexplicable urge to pull away from Elliot. She holds off for as long as she can, but eventually, she can't restrain herself anymore and she steps backward and out of his arms, wiping the tears from her eyes. "They dropped some presents off for the kids."
Elliot is watching her carefully, and Olivia knows that he wants to pull her back into his arms, but she can't be there right now. Now is not the time to break down. This shouldn't have been such a big deal. With a very large amount of effort, she pulls herself back from the brink of her impending collapse and takes a deep breath, managing to steady her voice.
"They dropped off presents," Olivia repeats, more for herself than Elliot. She runs a shaking hand through her hair and walks around Elliot so that she can go to the bathroom and avoid his eyes.
"Okay," Elliot says. Olivia hears him sit on the edge of the bed. He's waiting for her to continue. And after she picks up her washcloth and begins to wash her face, she does.
"They want to sell me the house."
"The house?" Elliot asks. Olivia nods before remembering he can't see her.
"Their house. Where Jonathan grew up. It's upstate," she says, her voice growing quieter even though she doesn't mean for it to. "They want me to move the kids out of the city. They think it might be easier for them. For us, I guess."
Elliot is quiet as Olivia starts to brush her teeth. For so long that eventually, she steps out of the bathroom to make sure he's still there.
"Do you want to move?" he asks after a minute. Olivia's eyebrows knit and she shakes her head quickly before going back to the sink.
"Of course not," she says after she spits into the sink. "Of course not, El. Even if I was thinking about getting out of the city, I couldn't live there. Not in his house." She feels her chest tighten slightly, but she ignores this.
"Okay," he says. He sounds more relaxed. Olivia wipes her mouth and looks at herself in the mirror.
"I'm going to go look at it though," Olivia calls softly. "Just to say that I did before I tell them no again." Elliot doesn't answer, so she continues. "I'm going to go see it now. If I drive up within the hour, I can look at it and be back in time to make dinner for the kids."
She steps out of the bathroom now, fiddling with the ribbon on her robe. Elliot's eyes travel over her body slowly, then his eyes shoot up to meet hers. She feels her cheeks warm. For some reason, last night feels like it happened so long ago. It takes her a minute to keep talking.
"All of this is contingent on the hope that when I call into work to lie about why I'm not there, they don't call me in to fire me in person," Olivia says as she glances at the phone, worry finding its way to her face again.
"Liv," Elliot says, getting her to look back at him. He holds out his hand and Olivia hesitates for a moment before she takes it, then lets him pull her closer to him. He reaches up and cups her cheek with her free hand, guiding her face down so that he can kiss her deeply. Olivia feels electricity and lingering guilt shoot through her body, but she kisses him back anyway; kisses him until her head feels light.
After Elliot lets her go, he strokes her cheek gently. His blue eyes don't leave her brown ones.
"I'm sorry," he says. He sees Olivia's eyes knit in confusion and elaborates. "I'm sorry about work. It's my fault you didn't make it in."
"Kind of," Olivia says softly, managing to smile. Elliot's touch has managed to bring her heart rate back down to a reasonable pace. She hated how fickle her body could be. Only five minutes ago, she felt like couldn't touch him, and yet, right now, she didn't want his hand to ever leave her face. "But it's mine too. I asked you to stay."
"Yeah," Elliot says, smiling. "I guess you did."
Olivia leans in and kisses him again. She can feel his smile against her lips. When they pull apart, the concern that had been lingering on his face earlier is mostly gone.
"Alright," Elliot says. "You go ahead and call in, then we can get ready and we'll go."
"We?" Olivia asks.
"Yeah," Elliot says. And he looks at Olivia with such an intensity that she realizes that he had not been completely fooled by her attempt to collect herself and save face. Then carefully, he raises one of her hands to his lips, kissing it gently. "We. If that's okay with you."
He takes the phone off the hook and offers it to her. Olivia watches him for a second before smiling gently and nodding.
"Yeah, that's okay," she says, taking the phone. Elliot pulls her into his lap, surprising her, and kisses her exposed shoulder gently before he dials the number of her office for her. Olivia's smile widens as she realizes that he must have memorized it. Her body warms as Elliot's arms wrap around her waist as the phone starts ringing. Oliva looks at him, tracing over his jaw gently before pressing her lips to his temple; a silent thank-you. Jonathan might be in her head, but Elliot was here, with her now. And that mattered more.