Filed To Story: Cheating with My Boyfriend's Best Friend Novel Read Online (Olive & Aaron)
Cinder’s voice was thick with emotion, and any pretense of self-control was abandoned. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw her this vulnerable.
Her emotional outburst was contagious, and soon enough, I found my vision blurring and tears streaming down my face. I hugged her back, whispering apologies into her hair.
“Did Aaron contact you?” After the initial surge ofemotions had subsided a bit, my rational mind took over.
It was more of a rhetorical question. I had a hunch about the answer.
Sure enough, Cinder rolled her eyes dramatically.”Yes, but it won’t change my opinion of him. And I suggest you do the same.”
“Is he outside?” I asked, glancing toward the door.
A tall silhouette lingered just outside. At my inquiry, the door swung open again.
Aaron stepped in, his cheek red and swollen. I stared at him in shock before shifting my gaze back to Cinder.
“I did that. I’ve been wanting to do it for quite some time,”Cinder confessed nonchalantly. “Don’t tell me you’re going to blame me for it.”
“Of course not!”I blurted out.
Aaron looked at me with a profound sadness etched in his eyes. I averted my gaze from him.
My loyalty lay with Cinder, always. She was my rock and my haven.
“Did you hear that? Now, off you go.” Cinder didn’t mincewords, her dismissal of Aaron as nonchalan t as her confession.
She shooed him away, not bothering to hide her disdain, but Aaron stood rooted to the spot. Feeling the tension in the room escalating again, I quickly turned to him.
“You should go tend to your face. I want to catch up withCinder alone for a while.”
Cinder shot me a disgruntled look, clearly miffed that I was even considering Aaron’s feelings at this point. However, she held her tongue at the determined look on my face.
Aaron had the good sense to not prolong his stay. His eyes lowered, a picture of dejection.
Cinder’s POV:
Olive’s reappearance was a shockwave that rattled the core of my being.
Not long before, she had been painting grand, luminous pictures with her words, describing the stark, untouched beauty of Antarctica to Nick and me.
Her sudden urge to venture to the South Pole, driven by the quest to find her parents, wasn’t without its worries. I feared that she wouldn’t get the outcome she desired, but it was definitely not this situation.
A few days into her expedition, when our communication line went eerily silent, a sense of foreboding washed over me. I tried to pacify my racing mind by blaming the poor internet connect ion at the station.
But the universe had a cruel sense of irony. Olive was caught in a maelstrom of unthinkable calamities.
When Aaron’s call came through, the gravity of the situation didn’t immediately hit me. It was only after a relentless barrage of questions that the horrifying truth unfurled.
Desperate to reach my bestie, I traversed continents, switched flights, and endured landings. As I stepped out of the plane onto the Antarctic tundra, the frigid wind sliced through me, drawing a harsh curse from my lips.
Aaron Morris, the architect of the chaos, stood before me. I summoned my fury, striding toward him and delivering a stinging slap to his face.
“You owe her that!”I shouted, my teeth chattering fromthe combined onslaught of rage and cold.”If not for you, she wouldn’t have suffered all of this.”
I panted in rage, using all my strength in that slap. His face was struck to the side, and a distinct imprint of my palm quickly bloomed on his cheek. His flashing anger only fueled mine further.
“Just because Olive holds back doesn’t mean I will. To behonest, I’ve been waiting to give you a piece of my mind!”
When Aaron looked back at me, the anger had subsided in his eyes.
“This is the last time I’ll tolerate this, for Olive’s sake,” hewarned.
I scoffe d at his words. The Morris Group might be formidable, but my Swann lineage wasn’t far behind. My dad and his dad were friends. If pushed to the brink, I wouldn’t hesitate to go back and succeed in my family. I was the only heir, and he was not.
Another icy gust whipped past, threatening to freeze me solid.
“Damn it! Hurry up and lead the way!” I snapped,wrapping my coat tighter around me and quickening my pace.
During the drive from the airport to the hospital, Aaron sat in stony silence.
The more I studied his unreadable face, the deeper my irritation burrowed.
“What is Olive to you, really?” I demanded.
I couldn’t fathom how he could claim to love Olive, when another woman, Lukita, held a place in his heart.
I’d been around my fair share of men, enough to decipher their complexities. I once believed that beneath Aaron’s flirtatious veneer was a loyal, passionate heart. I’d dared to hope for Olive’s happiness with him. But even I’d been deceived.
“We love each other,” Aaron declared, his gaze meetingmine.
I rolled my eyes.
“I know you don’t want to admit it, but it’s the truth.”Histone was calm, yet it held an undercurrent of arrogant pride.”She confessed her love to me.”
“When?” I was taken aback. This didn’t sound like Olive.
“On the snowy mountains, when she thought she wasdying.” His face turned serious as he recalled the scene.
His words ignited a fresh wave of fury within me. Despite his apparent sincerity, I remained skeptical. “Why would she reach out only to you in her final moments?”
“I dreamed of her and called her via satellite phone,”Aaron replied.
His answer only served to infuriate me further. Since he acted so devoted, why wouldn’t he be honest?
As I looked at his face, there were several moments when I couldn’t resist the urge to ask the question on behalf of Olive.
“Who is Lukita?”
No woman could bear the pain of hearing her beloved man whisper another woman’s name in a moment of intimacy. For that betrayal alone,I could never forgive Aaron.
The moment I laid eyes on Olive, a torrent of raw emotion threatened to sweep me away.
Tales of her avalanche ordeal had reached me, painting a harsh sketch of broken bones and battles against death. But it was only when I saw her swathed in plaster casts, her skin ashen and drawn, and her frame whittled down, that the star k reality hit me.
Aaron had spoken of her brush with death, how her heart had stilled its steady rhythm, and how she had teetered on the precipi ce of oblivi on for two harrowing days. Tubes and wires had been her lifeline, only recently removed, yet the ghost of their presence lingered in the form of side effects:bouts of vertigo, waves of nausea, and arrhythmia at the slightest provocation.
“Was it Aaron who contacted you?”
One look at Olive’s face, and I knew it. As her best friend, I could read her like an open book. Her heart had softened for Aaron again. How frustrating!
But nestled among the frustration was a reluctant admission.
Aaron tried to stay, but I sent him away. There were truths I was not ready to share with him, and I suspected Olive felt the same way.
“What on earth happened, Olive?” I asked, my heart heavywith concern.”Aaron said you seemed low. Did something happen with your parents?”
“They’re not my parents. I don’t have parents anymore.”
Olive’s voice was cold and distant. From her reaction, I could vaguely tell what was going on. It was apparent that her current battle was not with Aaron. In a twisted way, this brought a sense of relief.
“Tell me, Olive,”I implored.
With tears lingering on her face, she looked at me. Her sorrow was illuminated by the melancholic light filtering through the window.
“Kristy always regretted my birth. Chris and she thoughtthey could handle a child. But once I was born, they quickly realized their mistake and abandoned me. And after all these years, they still don’t feel any remorse.”
She continued. “They pretended to be sorry when I first arrived here. But soon, they could no longer keep up the facade.”
“Facade?”I seized on the word.”Why were theypretending?”
“It was Aaron’s doing. He believed that it would help meundo the knob in my heart.” Olive mentioned Aaron with a slightly elevated tone, conveying a mix of blame and other underlying meanings.
“Him again,” I muttered, my annoyance clear. “Don’t tellme you still have feelings for him after all this.”
A blush crept up Olive’s face, confirming my suspicions.
“Alright.”I sighed heavily.”For now, I’ll let him off thehook, considering he was trying to help you and even asked me to visit.”
I proceeded to ask about her health. Contrary to Aaron’s reports, Olive claimed she was stabilizing.
“I don’t really want to go back with him.”
This was her reason for delaying her return to America. But I couldn’t shake off the feeling that she was holding something back.
Olive was clearly in a poor men tal state, and soon her eyelids grew heavy. I gawked at her sleeping face before my gaze fell on the phone on the nightstand.
New Book: Returned To Make Them Pay
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