His Dangerous Love On Ice Chapter 226: Olive's Pov

I left Zane's apartment without looking back.

Neither could I look back.

Or see through that door, nor think about what was happening behind it, I couldn't let myself imagine Elena still there with him, offering comfort, sliding into the space I'd just vacated with my dramatic exit and my hurt feelings and my complete inability to handle what I'd walked in on.

My hands were shaking as I fumbled with my car keys.

I dropped them once.

Picked them up.

Then dropped them again.

When I finally managed to unlock the door and slide into the driver's seat, and for a moment I just sat there in the parking garage beneath his building, hands gripping the steering wheel, trying to remember how to breathe.

Elena's face.

Zane's hands on her waist.

The way they'd looked together in that split second before he'd seen me—intimate, familiar, like they'd done this before, like seventeen years hadn't passed, like I was the interruption instead of the girlfriend who had every right to be there.

I started the car.

Instantly pulled out of the parking garage.

Hit the street with no real destination in mind because going home felt impossible—my mother might still be at my apartment, and I couldn't face her questions or her concern or her inevitable I-told-you-so about getting involved with Zane Mercer.

And Brenda.

God, Brenda. My chest tightened.

My best friend was pregnant with my stepfather's baby.

Who'd betrayed my mother in the worst possible way.

Who I didn't know how to talk to anymore because every conversation felt like choosing sides and I didn't want to choose, didn't want to be forced into picking between the people I loved most.

So I drove.

With no plan.

No clear direction.

Just drove through Seattle with the windows up and the radio off, letting the city lights blur past while my brain tried to process everything that had happened in the span of one terrible evening.

I found myself pulling into Volunteer Park without consciously deciding to go there.

Just muscle memory from all the times I'd come here with Klaus when we were kids, when he'd bring me to the water tower and we'd climb to the top and look out over the city and he'd tell me everything was going to be okay even when it felt like our family was falling apart around us.

Klaus.

The memory of Klaus dying thirteen years ago hit me again.

Of how Walter couldn't look at me anymore without seeing him in me.

Of how Diane had grieved so hard it had broken her marriage and sent her into Grayson's arms two years later looking for someone who didn't remind her of loss.

Who'd apparently known Zane years before I ever met him, according to what Judy Byron had told me before he'd died in that mysterious accident that the police had ruled not suspicious despite every instinct I had screaming otherwise.

I parked under a streetlight.

Turned off the engine.

And just sat there.

Staring at nothing.

Trying to figure out how everything in my life had gotten so completely fucked up.

Cole had cheated on me for two years—mediocre in bed, mediocre at hockey, mediocre at being a decent human being according to Brenda's wine-drunk assessment that had been more accurate than I'd wanted to admit.

I'd wasted two years standing in the rain at his practices, driving three hours to watch him warm benches, rearranging my entire life around his schedule while he was fucking other women and calling me incapable behind my back.

And then Zane.

Zane who'd appeared like some kind of answer to a question I hadn't known I was asking—intense and complicated and so completely different from Cole that I'd thought maybe, finally, this was what a real relationship felt like.

Someone who actually saw me.

Someone who challenged me and frustrated me and made me feel things I'd never felt before.

Someone who looked at me like I mattered.

Except.

Except he had secrets.

Had known my dead brother and never mentioned it.

Had a childhood friend who looked at him like she owned him and showed up at his home uninvited and ended up in his arms while I watched from the doorway feeling like my heart was being ripped out of my chest.

Had a sister who hated me and a father who'd tried to destroy my stepfather and a whole complicated family dynamic that I didn't understand and wasn't sure I wanted to.

Maybe my mother had been right.

Maybe I was making the same mistakes over and over again, choosing the wrong men, getting involved with people who would only hurt me, refusing to learn from past disasters because some part of me was convinced this time would be different.

This time I'd be enough.

This time I wouldn't be left standing in the wreckage while everyone else moved on.

Except here I was.

Sitting alone in a parking lot.

Again.

Trying to convince myself that what I'd seen wasn't what it looked like, that Zane's explanation would make sense, that Elena had stumbled and he'd caught her and I was overreacting like I always did, turning innocent moments into evidence of betrayal because I was damaged and paranoid and couldn't trust anyone after what Cole had done, after my family betrayal, after my childhood trauma.

But what if I wasn't overreacting?

What if that small voice in the back of my head that said something was wrong, something wasn't adding up, something about this whole situation felt orchestrated—what if that voice was right?

What if Sophia had set this up deliberately?

What if Elena hadn't just stumbled?

What if Zane's careful explanations and his desperate phone calls and his insistence that nothing happened were just another version of Cole's lies, dressed up in prettier words and delivered with more sincerity but ultimately meaning the same thing?

I don't know.

I didn't know anything anymore.

Didn't know who to trust.

Didn't know what to believe.

Didn't know if I was being smart by questioning everything or stupid by not giving Zane the benefit of the doubt.

My phone had been buzzing in my purse.

I'd turned it off after the seventeenth call.

I couldn't handle hearing his voice.

I couldn't handle the way he'd sounded on that one call I'd answered—desperate and raw and so genuinely upset that part of me had wanted to turn the car around and go back to him and let him explain everything until it made sense again.

But I hadn't.

Because the other part of me—the part that had survived Klaus's death and my parents' divorce and Cole's betrayal and every other disappointment that had taught me people leave and relationships end and the only person you can really count on is yourself—that part knew better.

Knew that going back would mean accepting whatever explanation he offered because I wanted to believe him so badly.

Knew that I needed space and time and distance to think clearly instead of just reacting to the way he made me feel.

Knew that if I went back now, if I let him hold me and comfort me and promise that everything would be okay, I'd lose the part of myself that knew how to protect my own heart.

So I sat in that parking lot.

Under that streetlight.

In the park where Klaus used to bring me.

And I let myself feel it.

All of it.

The hurt and the anger and the confusion and the bone-deep exhaustion that came from trying so hard to be okay when everything kept falling apart.

The fear that I'd never be enough for anyone.

That I was fundamentally broken in some way that made people leave.

That Klaus had died and taken my family's ability to love me properly with him.

That Walter had looked at me and seen his dead son and decided he couldn't handle it so he'd just left, started a new family, replaced me with twins who didn't carry the weight of loss in their eyes.

That Diane had remarried and moved on and built a new life where I was still included but not central anymore, not the most important thing, just one piece of a larger puzzle that revolved around Grayson and the baby she was carrying and the future they were building together.

That Cole had used me for two years and never really seen me at all.

And maybe—maybe Zane was the same.

Maybe I was just convenient.

Maybe whatever he said he felt was really just about revenge against his father or getting back at Cole or using me for some purpose I didn't understand yet.

Maybe Sophia had been right when he'd said Zane was using me, that whatever we had was connected to something bigger, something that had gotten my brother killed.

Maybe I was in danger just by being involved with him.

Maybe tonight—seeing him with Elena—was the universe giving me an out before things got worse.

Before I got hurt worse than I already was.

Before whatever secrets he was keeping caught up to both of us.

I should go home.

Should try to sleep.

Should deal with all of this tomorrow when my head was clearer and I could think rationally instead of spiraling in a parking lot at midnight having a breakdown in my car like some kind of dramatic teenager who couldn't handle adult relationships.

I started the engine.

Pulled out of the parking spot.

Headed toward home because there was nowhere else to go and I was tired of running, tired of hiding, tired of trying to avoid the inevitable conversations and confrontations that were waiting for me.

Tomorrow I'd have to face the office.

The Quantum AI campaign.

Elena and Sophia and whatever fresh hell they'd prepared for me.

But tonight.

Tonight I just needed to make it home.

Needed to lock my door and fall apart in private and try to figure out how to put myself back together before morning.

The streets were mostly empty at this hour.

Just the occasional car passing by.

Streetlights creating pools of orange light against the darkness.

I wasn't paying attention to the route.

Wasn't really focused on anything except the mess inside my head—Elena's face, Zane's hands, Klaus's memory, Judy's warnings, all of it swirling together into a chaos I couldn't sort through.

The light ahead turned yellow.