Chapter 72: Emotions Unleashed

The air inside Olivia's loft seemed heavy, thick enough to be cut with a knife. Three molded into the triangle of barely contained emotions: Olivia herself, with a hand still on the doorknob, as if she were thinking at that moment of flight from all this; Nathan's going back and forth between Olivia and Mark, desperate and full of regret; Mark, a rock beside Olivia, his face wreathed in impassive concern. It was Nathan who finally broke the brittle silence, his words all tumbling out in a rush as if some dam had broken inside him. "I'm so sorry," he said, his voice cracking with emotion. "God, Olivia, I am so sorry. I was a coward. I walked away when you needed me most, too blind and self-absorbed to see what was right in front of me. I failed you in ways I'm only now beginning to understand." Olivia flinched as if he'd hit her, tightening her grip on the doorknob with white knuckles. "Nathan, please—" But he persevered, and years of pent-up emotion came rushing out in an unstoppab