THE LAST PERSON I NEEDED

CHAPTER 7

The bathroom door clicked shut behind her, and only then did Olivia let herself fall apart.

She pressed her back against the cold tile wall and slid down until she was sitting on the floor, knees pulled to her chest, her ruined hand cradled against her stomach. The tears came fast and ugly, the kind she hadn't let herself cry in years, not since the night she watched Killian kneel on David's porch with a torn abortion slip shaking in his hands.

Seeing him again was already more than she could handle. Watching his face shift from that cold, unreadable mask to something close to horror when he found her on that filthy floor, that was worse. Seven years spent rebuilding herself into someone who didn't need anyone, and it had taken exactly one look from him to remind her how small she still felt underneath it all.

She didn't know how long she sat there before Karen's voice carried through the door, frantic, calling her name.

"Olivia, open up, it's me."

She dragged herself upright, wiped her face with the back of her good hand, and let her in. Karen took one look at her, at the bruise blooming across her cheek and the swelling already darkening her knuckles, and her whole expression crumpled.

"Oh my god." Karen reached for her hand carefully, like touching it wrong might break something further. "Olivia, what happened to you?"

"Mara's little errand girls happened." Her voice came out hoarse, scraped raw. "I refused to clean the toilets on command and they decided I needed a lesson in manners."

"You need to report this. Today. Right now." Karen was already pulling out her phone like she meant to march to HR herself. "This is assault, Liv, not some workplace disagreement."

"I can't." The words came out sharper than she intended, fear already creeping back into her chest at the thought. "Karen, this job is the only thing standing between Charles and living on someone's couch. If I report Mara, she'll make sure I'm the one who gets fired, no matter what actually happened. She always does."

"So you're just going to let them get away with it?"

Olivia didn't answer, because she didn't have a good answer, and because some small, humiliated part of her already knew she didn't have to. Killian had seen everything.

Down the hall, in an office with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the practice field, Mara was learning exactly how little control she had left.

"You are not firing my staff over some overblown misunderstanding." Her voice carried even through the closed door, sharp enough that the assistants outside suddenly found their computer screens very interesting.

"It wasn't a misunderstanding." Killian's voice, by contrast, stayed level, almost bored, the kind of calm that made people angrier than shouting ever could. "I watched a grown woman hold another employee's face underwater. There's footage. There are witnesses. And there's a hospital record waiting to happen if she doesn't get that hand looked at."

"They were provoked."

"I don't care." A pause, and anyone standing outside could practically picture the flat, immovable look on his face, the one he used to wear on the field right before he tore a defense apart. "My contract has a reputation clause, Mara. Sponsors don't want their brand attached to an agency where staff assault other staff. You want to explain to the board why Kaine Athletics pulled out two weeks into my contract?"

The silence that followed told the whole building who was winning that argument.

By the time the board members filed into her office an hour later, word had already spread, and every one of them sided with Killian before Mara could finish her first sentence. According to one of the front desk girls, who couldn't wait to tell anyone who'd listen, Mara had no choice but to suspend both cleaners pending investigation, her face burning red the entire time she signed the paperwork.

Out on the practice field, a few of the players lingered near the equipment shed, talking low, glancing back toward the building.

"New captain doesn't play," one of them said, shaking his head with something like respect. "Man's been here one day and he's already going toe to toe with the CEO over a janitor."

Olivia wasn't supposed to hear that. She heard it anyway, and something confusing twisted in her chest that she refused to examine too closely.

By the time her shift finally ended, the sky had gone the soft orange it always did right before dark, and she found herself walking the long way to the parking lot, straight across the empty practice field instead of around it.

She didn't know why she did it. Maybe some part of her needed to stand there and remember, needed to feel the ghost of who they used to be before she let herself carry the weight of who they were now. This was the same field where she used to sit in the bleachers after school, watching him run drills until the sun went down, memorizing the exact rhythm of his stride like it was something worth keeping.

How did they end up here. Him a stranger in an expensive suit, plotting revenge against a lie she told to save him. Her scrubbing his footprints off the floor of the company that was supposed to be hers.

She reached the parking lot with her thoughts still tangled somewhere back on that field, and it wasn't until she heard footsteps behind her, deliberate and unhurried, that she realized she wasn't alone.

She turned.

Killian stood several feet away under the flickering security light, a small white first-aid kit held loosely in one hand, his jacket gone, sleeves rolled to his forearms like he'd been waiting there a while.

"I wasn't finished making sure you were okay," he said quietly.

Her heart slammed against her ribs so hard she was certain he could hear it from where he stood, and for one terrifying second, standing alone with him in the half dark of that parking lot, Olivia forgot every single reason she had for keeping her distance.