Thief (Love Me With Lies #3)

Later that night, I’m going for a jog. When I reach the lobby in my building, my steps die. At first I don’t recognize him. He’s not as put together as the last time I saw him. What is it about men refusing to shave when their hearts are breaking? F*ck. How is this happening? I run a hand along the back of my neck before taking the necessary steps toward him.

“Noah.”

When he turns, he looks surprised. He glances at the elevator, then back at me.

Man, the guy looks ragged. I’ve looked like that a couple times in my life. I almost feel bad for him.

“Can we talk?” he asks.

I look around the lobby and nod. “There’s a bar on the corner. Unless you want to come up to my place.”

He shakes his head. “Bar’s fine.”

“Give me ten. I’ll meet you there.”

He nods and walks out without saying another word. I go back up to my place and call Olivia.

“Noah’s in town,” I say as soon as she picks up. “Did you know?”

There is a long pause before she says, “Yeah.”

“Has he been to see you?”

I feel the tension creep into my shoulders and spread to my hands. I grip the phone a little tighter as I wait for her answer.

“Yeah,” she says again.

“That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say?”

I hear her shifting things around, and I wonder if she’s in court today.

“Did he come to see you?” she whispers into the phone. I can hear her heels clicking as she walks.

F*ck. She is in court, and I’m dropping this on her.

“It’s fine. I’ll call you later, yeah?”

“Caleb-” she starts to say.

I cut her off. “Focus on what you’re doing right now. We’ll talk tonight.”

Her voice is breathy when she says, “Okay.”

I hang up first and head back downstairs. I walk along the crowded sidewalk, barely seeing anything. My mind has latched onto her voice — or maybe her voice has latched on to my mind. Either way I can hear it. And I know something is wrong. I’m not sure I can handle all of this at once. Estella is my priority, but I don’t think I can do this without Olivia. I need her.



Noah is sitting at a small table to the rear of the bar. It’s an upscale place and like everything in this neighborhood, you pay dearly for its services. There are only two other patrons aside from him at this hour; one is old and one is young. I walk past both of them, my eyes adjusting to the dim light. When I pull the chair back and take a seat, the bartender approaches me. I wave him away before he can reach us. Noah is drinking what looks like a scotch, but my only interest is being in full control of my mind.

I wait for him to speak. I really don’t have anything to say to him.

“I told you to stay away from her,” he says.

I lick my lips as I watch the poor son of a bitch. He’s scared. You can see it all over him. I am too.

“That was before you left your wife alone to deal with a stalker.”

He cracks his neck before he looks up. “I’m here now.”

I want to laugh. He’s here now. Like it’s okay to just be part of a marriage part time and show up when you please.

“But, she’s not. That’s what you don’t know about Olivia. She doesn’t need anyone to take care of her. She’s tough. But, if you don’t force yourself in and do it anyway, she moves on. She’s moved on. You f*cked up.”

Noah’s eyes flash. “Don’t talk to me about my wife.”

“Why not? Because I know her better? Because when you were gone on one of your damn trips and she needed help, she called me?”

We both stand up at the same time. The bartender sees the commotion and slams his fist on the counter. The bottles around him rattle with the impact.

“Hey! Sit down or get out of here,” he says. He’s a big f*cking guy, so we both sit down.

We take a moment to calm down — or to think — or whatever men do when they are compelled to beat the shit out of each other. I’m about to leave when Noah finally speaks up.

“I was once in love with a girl, the same way you’re in love with Olivia,” he says.

“Hold on right there,” I cut him off. “If you were in love with a girl the same way I’m in love with Olivia, you wouldn’t be with Olivia. You’d be with this girl.”

Noah smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “She’s dead.”

I feel like an a*shole.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Think about what you’re doing, Caleb. She’s not yours anymore. We made a commitment to each other, and it’s like you said — I f*cked up. We need to be able to work on what we have without you showing up every five minutes getting her high on nostalgia.”

Nostalgia? If only he knew. You couldn’t sum Olivia and me up to nostalgia. The day I met her under that tree, it was as if I breathed a spore of her into my lungs. We kept coming back to each other. The distance between our bodies grew wider over the years as we tried to live separately. But that spore took root and grew. And no matter the distance or circumstance, Olivia is something that grows inside of me.

His nostalgia comment pisses me off so much; I decide to go with a low blow.

“So, you’re going to have a baby then…”

The shock that passes through his eyes is enough to tell me I’ve struck a nerve.

I rotate my phone between my fingers as I watch his face and wait for the answer.

“That’s none of your business.”

“She’s my business. Whether you like it or not. And I want to have a baby with her.”

I don’t know why he doesn’t hit me. I would have hit me. Noah is a classy guy. He rubs his hand across his stubble, which hosts mostly gray, and finishes his scotch. His face is wiped of emotion, so I can’t tell what he’s thinking.

“My sister had Cystic Fibrosis,” he says. “I used to go with her to her support groups. That’s where I met Melisa. She had it too. I fell in love with her and then had to watch her die before she had the chance to turn twenty-four. My sister died two years after her. I’ve seen two women that I love — die. I don’t want to bring a child into this world with the chance of passing them the gene. It’s not fair.”



I order a scotch.



I try to rub my headache away. This is becoming more complicated by the minute, and the last thing I want to do is feel sorry for this guy.

“What does Olivia want?” I don’t know why I’m asking him that instead of her, but all I can think about is the way her voice sounded on the phone. What is she going to tell me?

“She wants to save what we have,” he says. “We met last night to talk about things.”



I’ve felt so many forms of pain in my years with Olivia. The worst was when I walked into the hotel room and saw the condom wrapper. It was a jealous, ripping pain. I’d failed her. I’d wanted to protect her, she wanted to self-destruct, and I couldn’t stop her no matter what I did or how hard I loved her. The only thing that came close to that pain was when I showed up at her apartment and found out that she’d left me again.

What I feel now may be worse than that. She’s leaving me, and she has every right to. There is nothing I can do to morally justify her walking away from her marriage for me. Noah is right, but that doesn’t mean I am able to accept it.

The last few months we’ve gotten to know each other as adults, made love as adults, seen into each other as adults. And Olivia can deny it until her snobby face turns blue, but we work together as adults. How can she walk away from me again? We were in love. We are in love.

“I have to talk to her.”

I stand up and he doesn’t try to stop me. Had they planned this together? Noah would come tell me what her choice was? I’d have to deal? She’s obviously forgotten what I’m willing to do to have her. I drop a twenty on the bar and walk out.





One week before my baby came into this world, I received a call from Olivia’s office. Not Olivia. Just her secretary. It was a new secretary, thank God. The one she had when she first started at Bernie’s firm was a psycho. The new girl’s name was Nancy, and in her clipped, professional voice, she informed me that Ms. Kaspen had asked her to make the call. Three weeks ago — she said — a woman named Anfisa Lisov contacted Olivia, claiming to have seen an American news story on CNN in Russian. She said she was the mother to the woman in the picture with Olivia, Johanna Smith. I almost dropped the phone.

She wanted contact with the woman she suspected was her daughter. I collapsed into a chair and listened to Nancy talk. No one knew Leah was adopted. We kept it out of the press; we were careful — so careful not to let that information be released. It would have jeopardized Leah’s testimony, or at least that’s what the partners said. I think it would have jeopardized her mental health. And nothing had changed. Courtney was in an assisted living facility, a vegetable. Her mother was an alcoholic. Leah was balancing a fine line of sanity. And she was having my baby. Whoever this woman was, I couldn’t let her near my wife.

“She said she gave up her baby while working as a prostitute in Kiev when she was sixteen.”

F*ck f*ck f*ck.

“She is flying to America to meet Johanna,” Nancy said. “Ms. Kaspen tried to deter her, but she was insistent. She wanted me to call and warn you.”

F*ck. Why hadn’t she told me sooner?

“All right. Give me all the contact information you have for her.”

Nancy gave me the hotel and flight times and wished me good luck before hanging up.

Anfisa was flying into New York first and catching a flight a day later to Miami. No doubt she was who she said she was. Who else knew Leah’s real mother was a sixteen-year-old prostitute in Kiev? Her parents certainly wouldn’t have told anyone. When I tried sending an email to Anfisa using the address Nancy gave me, it came back saying the email had a faulty address. The phone number had been disconnected. I Googled Anfisa’s name and the search came back with a picture of a striking woman with short, red hair, cut no longer than my own. She had written and published three books in Russia. I put the titles into Google translator and they came back as: My Scarlet Life, The Blood Soaked Baby and Finding Mother Russia. She hadn’t published a book in four years. I booked a trip to New York right then and there. I would fly out to meet this woman, send her away, and be back in time for my baby’s birth. I had no idea what she wanted to gain out of this reunion, but the fact that Leah came from a wealthy family was at the forefront of my thoughts. She wanted a new story to tell. Reuniting with her daughter would either give her plenty of money to take a writing hiatus or it would give her the story she was looking for. There was no way Leah would want to meet this woman — mother or not. I needed her to focus on being a mother, not have a mental breakdown about her own. I’d take care of it. I’d give her money if I had to. But, then Estella came early.

I’d told Leah that I had a business trip. She was upset, but I arranged for her mother to come for the days I would be away. I didn’t want to leave Estella, but what choice did I have? If I didn’t stop this woman from boarding a plane to Miami, she’d be knocking on our door in a few days.

I packed a small bag, kissed my wife and daughter goodbye and flew to New York to meet Anfisa Lisov, Leah’s birth mother. I could barely sit still on the plane ride. I’d asked Leah on our honeymoon — just a few days after she told me she was adopted — if she’d ever want to meet her birth mother. Before the last word was out of my mouth, she was already shaking her head.

“No way. Not interested.”

“Why not? Aren’t you curious?”

“She was a prostitute. My father was a disgusting pig. What is there to be curious about? To see if I look like her? I don’t want to look like a prostitute.”

Well then…

We hadn’t spoken about it again. Now here I was, doing damage control. I probably drank too much on the plane. When I got off, I booked into my hotel and caught a cab to hers. She was staying at a Hilton close to the airport. Nancy hadn’t known which room she was in. I asked the front desk to call her and tell her that her son-in-law was there to see her. Then I sat in one of the lounge chairs near a fireplace and waited. She came down ten minutes later. I knew it was her by the picture I’d seen of her on the Internet. She was older than in the picture, more worn around the eyes and mouth. Her hair was dyed, no longer naturally red, still spiky and short. I eyed her face, looking for traces of Leah. It might have been my imagination, but when she spoke, I saw my wife in her expressions. I stood up to greet her, and she stared up in my face with complete calm. My little surprise trip hadn’t rattled her at all.

“You are Johanna’s husband? Yes?”

“Yes,” I said, waiting for her to take a seat. “Caleb.”

“Caleb,” she repeated. “I saw you on television. During the trial.” Then-”How did you know I was here?” Her accent was thick, but she spoke English well. She was sitting ramrod straight, her back not touching the chair. She looked more like Russian military than former Russian prostitute.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

She smiled. “We are going to have to answer each other’s questions if we want to get anywhere, no?”

“Her attorney’s office called me,” I said, leaning back in my chair.

“Ah, yes. Ms. Olivia Kaspen.”

God. Her name even sounded good with a Russian accent.

I didn’t acknowledge or deny.

“Should we go to the bar? Order a drink,” she said.

I nodded, tight lipped. I followed her into the hotel bar, where she sat at a table near the front. Only after the bartender brought her vodka and my scotch, did she answer my question.

“I’ve come to meet my daughter.”

“She doesn’t want to meet you,” I said.

She narrowed her eyes and I saw Leah.

“Why not?”

“You gave her up a long time ago. She has a family.”

Anfisa scoffed. “Those people? I didn’t like them when they took her. The man didn’t even like children, I could tell right away.”

“That doesn’t speak very highly of you, giving your baby to people you didn’t even like.”

“I was sixteen years old and I slept with men to survive. I didn’t have much choice.”

“You had a choice to give her to people you liked.”

She looked away. “They offered me the most money.”

I sat my glass down harder than I intended. “She doesn’t want to see you,” I said firmly.

My statement seemed to jar her a little. She slouched some and her eyes darted around the empty bar like she couldn’t hold it together anymore. I wondered if this whole stiff-backed thing was an act.

“I need money. Just enough to write my next book. And I want to write it here.”

That’s what I thought. I took out my checkbook.

“You never come to Florida,” I said. “And you never try to contact her.”

She downed the rest of her vodka like a true Russian.

“I want a hundred thousand dollars.”

“How long will it take you to write the book?” I scrawled her name onto the check and paused to look up at her. She stared at that check with hunger in her eyes.

“A year,” she said, without looking at me. I held my pen above the amount line.

“I’ll divide it by twelve then. I’ll put money in an account every month. You contact her or leave New York, you don’t get your deposit.”

She eyed me with something I didn’t recognize. It could have been contempt. Hate for a situation that left her dependent on me. Annoyance that her blackmail wasn’t working as well as she wanted it to.

“What if I say no?”

I saw Leah in her defiance too.

“She won’t give you money. She will slam the door in your face. Then you’ll get nothing.”

“Well then, son-in-law. Sign my check and be done with it.”

And so I got done with it.



I changed my flight. Went home early. I didn’t ever hear much from Anfisa. I sent her money even after Leah and I separated and got divorced. I didn’t want her presence to hurt Estella, even if she wasn’t mine. When her year was up, she went back to Russia. I ran an Internet search for her once and saw that her book was a huge seller. Leah might hear from her eventually, but I was done with her.





I go straight to her condo. If she’s not home already, I’ll be waiting there when she arrives.

She is home. When she opens the door, it’s as if she was expecting me. Her eyes and her lips are swollen. When Olivia cries, her lips double in size and turn bright red. It’s the most beautifully fragile and feminine thing about her.

She stands to the side to let me in, and I walk past her into the living room. She closes the door softly and follows me.

She wraps her arms around her body and stares out at the ocean.

“When you left and went to Texas, after we…” I break to let her catch up to what I’m saying. “I came after you. It took me a few months to get past my initial wounded pride, and to find you, of course. Cammie didn’t want to tell me you were there, so I just showed up on her doorstep.”

I tell her about how I waited at the side of the house when I saw the car coming, and how I heard the exchange between her and Cammie. About how I knocked on the door when she went upstairs to shower. I tell her all of it and I can’t tell if she can hear me, because her face is unmoving, her eyes unblinking. Her chest doesn’t even rise and fall with breath.

“I was on my way up the stairs, Duchess, when Cammie stopped me. She told me that you got pregnant after our night together. She told me about the abortion.”

Finally, the statue springs to life. Her fierce eyes turn on me. Blue fire — the hottest kind.

“Abortion?” The word tumbles out of her mouth. “She told you that I got an abortion?”

Now … now, her chest is rising and falling. Her breasts straining against the fabric of her shirt.

“She inferred it. Why didn’t you tell me?”

She opens her mouth, runs her tongue along her bottom lip. I don’t know why I’m doing this to her now. Maybe I think that if I remind her of how much history we have, it’ll stir her to choose me.

“I didn’t have an abortion, Caleb,” she says. “I had a miscarriage. A goddamn miscarriage!”

She swims in and out of focus as I grasp her words.

“Why wouldn’t Cammie tell me?”

“I don’t know! To keep you away from me? She was right to! We are bad for each other!”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because it hurt! I tried to pretend it never happened.”

I don’t know what to do with myself. It’s like the whole world is determined to keep us apart. Even f*cking Cammie who’d had a front row seat to our relationship for all these years. How could she? Olivia is struggling not to cry. Her lips move as she tries to form words.

“Look at me, Duchess.”

She can’t.

“What are you going to tell me?”

“You know…” she says softly.

“Don’t do this,” I say. “This is our last chance. You and I were made for each other.”

“I choose him, Caleb.”

Her words ignite anger — so much anger. I can barely look at her. I breathe through my nose, her announcement reverberating across my brain, burning my tear ducts and landing somewhere in my chest, causing such incredible heartache, I can’t see straight.

Through my crash, I lift my head to look at her. She’s pale; her eyes wide and panicked.

I nod … slowly. I’m still nodding ten seconds later. I’m calculating the rest of my life without her. I am contemplating strangling her. I am wondering if I did everything I could … if I could have tried harder.

There is one last thing I have to say. Something I said before and was so terribly wrong about.

“Olivia, I once told you that I would love again, and that you would hurt forever. Do you remember?”

She nods. It’s a painful memory for both of us.

“It was a lie. I knew it was a lie, even as I said it. I’ve never loved anyone after you. I never will.”

I walk out.

Walk away.

No more fighting — not for her, or with her, or with myself.

I am so sad.



How many times can a heart be broken before it is beyond mend? How many times can I wish to not be alive? How can one human being cause such a crack in my existence? I alternate between periods of numbness and inconceivable pain all in the span of — an hour? An hour feels like a day, a day feels like a week. I want to live, and then I want to die. I want to cry, and then I want to scream.

I want, I want, I want…

Olivia.

But, I don’t. I want her to suffer. I want her to be happy. I want to stop thinking altogether and be locked in a room without thoughts. Possibly for a year.

I run. I run so much that if the zombie apocalypse were to happen, they’d never be able to catch me. When I run I don’t feel anything but the burning in my lungs. I like the burn; it lets me know I can still feel when I’m having a numb day. When I am having a day of pain, I drink.



There is no cure.





One Month Gone





Two Months Gone





Three Months





Four





Estella isn’t mine. The paternity test comes back. Moira makes me come into her office to deliver the news. I stare at her blankly for five minutes while she explains the results — there is no way, no chance, no possibility that I am her biological father. I get up and leave without saying anything. I drive and don’t know where I am going. I land up at my house in Naples — our house in Naples. I haven’t been here since the issue with Dobson. I leave all the lights off and make some calls. First to London, then to my mother, then to a realtor. I fall asleep on the couch. When I wake up the next morning, I lock up the house, leaving a set of spare keys in the mailbox and drive back to my condo. I pack. I book a ticket. I fly. As I sit on my flight, I laugh to myself. I’ve become Olivia. I’m running away, and I just don’t give a f*ck anymore. I trace the rim of my plastic cup with my fingertip. No. I’m starting over. I need it. If I can help it, I’m never going back there. I’m selling our house. After all these years. The house where we were supposed to have children and grow old together. It will sell fast. I’ve received offers for it over the years and there are always realtors leaving their cards with me in case I decide to sell. In the divorce I gave everything to Leah so long as she left the Naples house alone. She hadn’t put up much of a fight, and now I can see why. She had something much crueler planned for me. She wanted to give me back my daughter and then take her away again. I close my eyes. I just want to sleep forever.





Birthday parties made me uncomfortable. Who the hell even invented them? Balloons, presents you didn’t want … cake with all that fluffy, processed frosting. I was an ice cream kind of girl. Cherry Garcia. Cammie bought me a pint of that and handed it to me as soon as I blew out my candles.

“I know what you like,” she said, winking at me.

Thank God for best friends who make you feel known.

I ate my ice cream perched on a barstool in Cammie’s kitchen while everyone else ate my cake. There were people everywhere, but I felt alone. And every time I felt alone, I blamed it on him. I set my ice cream on the counter and wandered outside. The DJ was playing Keane — sad music! Why the hell was there sad music at my birthday party? I slumped in a lawn chair and listened, watching the balloons bob. Balloons were the worst part of parties. They were unpredictable; one minute they were happy little balls of emotion, the next they were exploding in your face. I had a love/hate relationship with unpredictability. He who must not be named was unpredictable. Unpredictable like a boss.

When I dutifully started opening presents, my husband standing to my left, my best friend jiggling her breasts at the cute DJ — I was not expecting the blue packaged delivery.

I’d already opened twenty presents. Gift cards mostly — thank God! I loved gift cards. Don’t give me shit about gift cards not being personal. There’s nothing more personal than buying your own gift. I’d just put the last gift card I’d opened on the chair next to me, when Cammie took a break from flirting with the DJ to hand me the last of my presents. There was no card. Just a simply wrapped electric blue box. To tell you the truth, my mind didn’t even go there. If you work really hard at it, you can train your brain to ignore things. That shade of blue was one of them. I sliced the tape with my fingernail and pulled away the wrapping, balled it up and dropped it in the paper pile at my feet. People had started to drift away and talk, getting bored with the present unwrapping show, so when I opened the lid and stopped breathing, no one really noticed.

“Oh f*ck. Ohf*ckohf*ckohf*ck.”

No one heard me. I saw a flash. Cammie took another picture and moved away from the DJ to see what was making my face contort like I’d sucked on a lemon.

“Oh f*ck,” she said, looking into the box. “Is that?”

I slammed the lid shut and shoved the box at her. “Don’t let him see,” I said, glancing at Noah. He was holding a beer in one hand, his face turned away from me and talking to someone — it might have been Bernie. Cammie nodded. I stood up and bolted for the house. I had to walk around people who were still eating cake around the island in Cammie’s kitchen. I made a right and darted up the stairs, choosing the bathroom in Cammie’s bedroom, rather than the one downstairs that everyone was using. I kicked off my shoes, closed the door, and stood bent over the sink, breathing hard. Cammie came in a few minutes later, shutting the door behind her.

“I told Noah you felt sick. He’s waiting in the car. Can you do this, or do you need me to send him home and tell him you’re staying the night?”

“I want to go home,” I said. “Just give me a minute.”

Cammie slid down the door until she was sitting on the floor. I sat on the edge of her tub and traced the lines of the floor tile with my toe.

“That was uncalled for,” she said. “What’s with you two sending each other anonymous packages?”

“That was different,” I said. “I sent him a f*cking baby blanket, not … that.” I eyed the box that was sitting next to Cammie on the floor. “What’s he trying to do?”

“Umm, he’s sending you a pretty clear message.”

I tugged at the collar of my dress. Why is it so damn hot in here?

Cammie pushed the box across the bathroom tile until it nudged my toe.

“Look again.”

“Why?”

“Because you didn’t see what was underneath the divorce papers.”

I flinched at the word divorce. Bending down, I retrieved the box from the floor and lifted out the stack of papers. Divorce was heavy. It wasn’t official, but he’d obviously filed. Why did he need to tell me this? Like it made a difference anymore. I put the papers next to me on the lip of the tub and stared down at the contents underneath.

“Holy hell.”

Cammie tucked her lips in and raised her eyebrows, nodding.

The Pink Floyd CD from the record store — the case cracked diagonally across, the kissing penny — green from age and flattened, and one deflated basketball. I reached out a finger and touched its bumpy skin, and then I dropped everything on the floor and stood up. Cammie quickly scooted out of the way, and I opened the door and stepped into her bedroom. I needed to go home and sleep forever.

“What about your f*cked up birthday present?” Cammie called after me.

“I don’t want it,” I said. I stopped when I reached her doorway, something eating at me. Turning back, I strode into the bathroom and crouched down in front of her.

“If he thinks this is okay, he’s wrong,” I snapped. She nodded, her eyes wide. “He can’t do this to me,” I reiterated.

She shook her head in agreement.

“To hell with him,” I said. She gave me a thumbs-up.

While our eyes were still locked, I reached out a hand and felt along the floor until my fingers found the penny.

“You didn’t see me do this,” I said, tucking it into my bra. “Because I don’t give a f*ck about him anymore.”

“Do what?” she replied, dutifully.

“Good girl.” I leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. “Thank you for my party.”

Then I walked to my car, walked to my husband, walked back to my life.