My Ex Husband Lost Me To His Rival

CHAPTER 17 : OLivia's Record

(BLAKE POV)

I was looking for a charger the spare one I kept on the study shelf behind the books.

My hand caught the edge of a notebook and it fell and I picked it up to put it back and the page opened I saw my name on it,it caught my attention

I stood there and started reading it.

Every page had a date. Every date had a time.

My name is on almost every line,not written with rage but the heat of a woman who had reached her limit. Written the way you write something you intend to use.

7:15pm Blake walked past household staff directly to garden. Nathaniel was inside his room.

School event,Physical contact with Aria in front of thirty parents. Nathaniel ignored my presence

Singapore files original language is mine. Submitted under Blake's name without credit or acknowledgment.

I closed it and stood there holding it for a moment.Then I went to the bottom of the stairs and called her name.

She was already coming down and stopped three steps from the bottom when she saw what was in my hand. Her face didn't change,she maintained her composure.

"Olivia." I held up the notebook. "What is this."

"You read it," she said. "You know what it is."

"What are you planning to do with it?"

"Whatever I need to."

"That's not an answer."

"I don't have any other answer to give you."

I looked at her,she looked back.No fear sitting anywhere in her face, no anger I could grab onto and use.Showing she has decided something long before this moment and was simply waiting for the moment to arrive.

"This is irrational," I said.

"Is it."

"You're building a case against your own husband."

"Based on facts." Her eyes didn't move from mine. "The dates,times and things that actually happened in this house." She tilted her head slightly. "Which part is irrational?"

"You don't know what you're dealing with."

"I know exactly what I'm dealing with." Her eyes dropped to the notebook in my hand.

Then back up. "Every detail is in there."

She took one step back. Calmly Like she'd already decided exactly where her line was and had no intention of moving it for anyone including me.

I looked at her standing there on those stairs — the woman I had lived with for six years, slept beside, eaten across from, built a child with looking at me like I was something she had already finished calculating.

Reaching for the notebook would tell her something, Something I wasn't ready to say out loud.

I put it on the side table.

"We're both adults," I said. I kept my voice level very reasonable. The voice that closed boardrooms.

"Olivia I know things haven't been perfect between us

I know the last few months have been hard. "The contract expires soon.

Whatever you think you're doing with that notebook — let's talk before it goes any further. Before either of us does something we can't walk back."

She stood there and listened to every word I said and never interrupted or reacted meto any. Just taking it in with that quiet focused look that had been making me uncomfortable for months without me being able to name why.

I finished saying everything I could remember to her and everywhere was quiet within us.

She looked at the space between us for a moment.

"Blake."

"Yeah."

"I've been talking to you for six years."

"This is what your listening looks like."

You failed me countless times but that's not what am here to talk about,I have important things to do.

I had no single thing to put in the space her words left.

She stepped down the last three stairs and

Picked the notebook up from the side table unhurried, then turned and walked back up and never turned again.

I stood at the bottom of the stairs and watched her until she was gone and kept standing there.

Everything blurred in my eye like a movie. She didn't shout,didn't cry as usual nor throw anything or slam a door or do any of the things I had somewhere in the back of my mind —thinking she’d do.

She just looked at me and said what she said and walked away with the notebook in her hand like she'd already won something I hadn't finished losing yet.

I stood there staring at the top of the stairs for a long time.

The garden door opened behind me.

Aria came in from outside. She took one look at my face and both her hands came up slightly — that particular careful movement she made when she was reading things happening around and adjusting.

"Come outside ," she said and placed her hand on my arm. "Come sit with me."

The garden was cool and quiet.

We sat on the bench. Aria still kept her hand over mine and talked in that low warm voice she used when things got heavy, unhurried, she's a woman who knew exactly how to make a room feel safer than it was.

I let her say every word she has in mind to tell me but my eyes kept going back to the upstairs window.

Olivia would be at her desk by now I knew it without seeing it — She must be adding tonight to the record both date,time and every word I said at the bottom of those stairs.

"She's been building this for a while," Aria said.

I turned my face and stared at her.

"Hasn't she," Aria asked?

"How far back does it go?"

"It's far enough from what I saw in the book, she's been writing for a long time."

Aria was quiet for a moment.

"Whatever she's building against you," she said, "I can help you stop it."

"How would you know what she's building?"

She smiled for a moment

"I have my ways around that, Blake."

I looked at her and didn't say anything

But I kept it in my brain— somewhere quiet, that I wasn't ready to open yet. I looked back up at Olivia's dark window and sat with the strange feeling that held me. just understood that there are two people in his house I don't fully know.