Always Hers

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟏𝟔 - 𝑂𝑙𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑎

Whenever I think of all the shit he put me through, I end up blaming it on myself. When I know it's not my fault and that night Tyler already said it wasn't anything I didn't do wrong.

"Okay, I'll come over then."

Kacy being her usual hyper self, jumps up and down on the bed shouting a mass of 'yays'. After a lot of shouting for her to get down, she finally relents and holds my hands to guide her off the bed.

Walking into Kacy's house the smell of garlic hits me instantly. Walking over to the kitchen where Kacy dad is leaning over the oven cooking, I look over to Kacy in shock.

Is James actually cooking right now? Is he ill? And is he smiling?

It's one thing to see him smiling in the presence of my mom, but in his own house. And cooking? Fucking weird.

I'm not complaining though, because it smells delicious.

"What are you cooking Mr. Evans?" I'm sure if I looked properly I could tell, but I'm too shocked to use better judgement right now.

"Spaghetti Bolognese and some garlic bread. Is that alright Olivia? I'm not promising it'll be nice, but I have a little hope. And you can't go wrong with garlic bread can you?. So if I screw up the sauce at least we'll have that, right?"

Certain the world is ending, I mutter a rushed "I'm sure it'll be lovely," and follow Kacy upstairs.

We talked for a while, as usual with Kacy it's the weirdest of topics, Aliens, but I can't deny I loved talking about weird shit with Kacy.

When James tells us that the food is ready, I tell Kacy to run ahead while I use the toilet quickly.

Walking down the stairs I stop dead when the kitchen is in view. Surprisingly the food looks amazing, but it's the two new people sitting around the food that have me frozen in place.

Tyler and Grace.

They can't see me just yet, but I have a feeling in a second they will. Shit.

Kacy notices me almost instantly, looking like she had been waiting for me to walk down so she could shoo me back upstairs, which is exactly what she did.

Feeling like that was the best option, because hell no, I begin to turn to walk back upstairs. It's just my luck that Tyler makes eye contact before I can start moving.

Deciding to just do my best with this dinner, because frankly it looks amazing and I'm really hungry, I make my way down the stairs to sit next to Kacy. Which of course happens to be opposite Tyler. Could this get any worse right now?

Apparently the universe took that as an opening to just make this dinner 10 times worse. While twirling some pasta on my fork, I see Tyler move his arm to rest on the back of Grace's chair.

Doing my best to ignore him, I eat the pasta from my fork. "Holy hell, James. This is actually amazing."

He feigns hurt and puts a hand to his chest, the ones that's clad in a pink apron I hadn't noticed before, and shouts, "Wow Liv, don't act so surprised."

Laughing at his mood today, I continue this weird interaction, "Like you weren't when you actually tasted it." Muttering a soft, "Fair play, Fair play," he let the easy conversation drop.

Eating the pasta again, I chance a look at Grace and Tyler and see his hand stroking her arm. I can tell he's doing it to get a rise out of me, but he won't.

Thanking my observational character for once, I take in Grace's appearance.

Tense shoulders.

Pinched brows.

Tight lips.

She looks uncomfortable.

Really uncomfortable.

I accidently let out a small giggle, and all eyes move to me. James is too oblivious to even look at his son and notice the tension in the room. Grace is glaring at me, clearing having seen what I had a few moments prior. Kacy looks concerned, like I might be going insane. But it's Tyler's reaction that has me full on laughing. He looks all smug, like he had just cracked me, and that I was mad or something. I have no idea what sound he thinks I made, but it definitely isn't a laugh.

I managed to make it through dinner without crying from the tears, and helped James clean up. He'd asked me if I was okay, as he had heard my trying not to laugh at dinner, and I just dismissed it as a weird thought that came into my head.

Laying in bed at the end of the day, I couldn't stop the nagging in my brain. I just kept on wondering what kind of sick game he wanted to play, why was he doing that with Grace. He has done it purposefully to annoy me, but it wasn't my fault he always jumped to conclusions and didn't even talk to me.

This toxic game he played pushed all my buttons, and it lasted a year. I was done. I would go into high school, and show him that I don't care.

He clearly cares, or he wouldn't be trying to get a rise out of me every single week.

I'd show him.

Game on, Evans.

I'm way to excited to finally get to where this book will get good. I may have added a tad too much of the childhood than planned, but I couldn't help myself. I enjoyed it.

Also about the year time skip at the end, I wanted the timeline to be right, because they were too young for it to be what I wanted, so I had to improvise. I thought it would work better now as well since they're at the same school more can happen.

Anyways, thank you for everyone who has stuck with this book while I tried to work out how to even write a story, but I love you all.

Thank you so much for all the love and support you all give me.

And please vote and comment your thoughts on anything and everything. I fuckin love reading comments <33