For the moment, he was happy to simply hold her, inhaling her scent and revelling in the warmth of her against him, treasuring the feel of her even though he knew now he’d lost her somewhere, and he didn’t know how or why, only that Livvie was gone, and he was holding a stranger.
Over the next few days, going by things she said, and did, it became more and more obvious that nothing had changed or was going to change; the walls she’d built were her best defence, and she was keeping them high and strong, protecting herself against the further hurt she knew with rock-solid certainty and without a shadow of a doubt was coming her way; her loss of faith, of vision and trust in Ryan was almost complete now, and they were continuing to fragment almost by the hour.
Ryan mentally sobbed in agony and loss as his world splintered and fell away, each jagged moment another rent in his heart. She was still clinging to all the misgivings and feelings of loss and betrayal. She still couldn’t let that go, and he didn’t know how to get through to her anymore.
Maybe some of her alienation had been his fault. Maybe she was right. Maybe he had spent too much time at work, but he had only done it for her, he rationalised, done it to make a better life for Livvie and Jack, and now that he was trying to reach out to her, she wouldn’t, couldn’t respond, because she was convinced his single-minded quest to reach the top was all that mattered to him; she was just collateral damage, as far as she was concerned.
With a sinking heart, and a dull stab of despair, he accepted that she didn’t believe in him anymore, and because of that, she didn’t believe in herself either. Livvie truly was losing herself in this, and losing him in the process. Her heart had convinced her this was so, that she’d been used, and now was about to be cast aside, and so she was pre-empting that loss, pushing him away before he did that to her, no longer able to connect with him, and unwilling to try, because it only meant more hurt.
Ryan spent the next few days in a haze, unable to concentrate on his work, thoughts of Livvie and the resigned acceptance of the pain she’d convinced herself was her lot, the pain he’d seen so clearly in her eyes uppermost in his mind; her comment that he was always working had struck home, and he began to question his own ways, his life outside the family, his reasons for coming to this place in the first place.
Granted, his job was important, and a major part of who he was, but was it worth sacrificing his life with the woman he loved, was it worth his family? Was he in fact destroying their present because he was only looking to their future?
Perhaps Livvie had been right to feel lost and used, bred by him to get the family he so desperately wanted, then abandoned, her part complete. Maybe she was right, she had been abandoned to endlessly lonely, dragging days, her life consisting of nothing but the baby and loneliness while he worked punishingly long hours miles from her, hardly a word passing between them for days on end, because he was too tired to listen to her, and too tightly focussed on bringing in his latest pet project on time and within budget.
Luckily his latest project, an advanced new weapon system code-named “Devastator”, was off the drawing boards and the prototype was away being tested. He was proud of his part in designing the autonomous RADAR-controlled, quad 30mm cannon array co-axial with a 30mm Phalanx-type CIWS and intelligent LASER Designator, designed to deliver an awesome close-range, missile-killing punch and be easily integrated into existing fire-control systems. It was a new weapon for the new century, designed to augment and support the changing role of the new, slimmer, more readily deployable Royal Navy.
The system was now at the Acceptance-Testing stage and was currently being put through its paces by the Royal Navy at Faslane in Scotland, so his desk was now clear; his part of the project, managing the design & build, was at an end pending the successful testing of the system, so his focus had inevitably shifted away from his role, and he had begun to prepare the specifications for the next major project.
Was that where he’d gone so wrong? Instead of decompressing, taking a little family time, maybe a long holiday, just the three of them, had his mistake been in leaping right back in to the punishing schedule he’d devised for himself? How in God’s name was he going to undo this knot he’d tied himself in, or was it already too late? Was their life together already over?
That thought alone jolted him like nothing ever had in his life; he’d done this, he’d taken that beautiful, sparkling girl, who’d loved him deliriously, and hammered her flat under the weight of his ego, crushed the spirit and belief out of her with his neglect, and now look what was left…
He drifted like this for several days, running the things she’d said, and the things she’d left unsaid, through his mind over and over again. Now he understood what had brought this all into being, now it all made sense, and now it was probably already too late to salvage anything from the God-awful mess he’d made of their lives together.
They slept in the same bed, they lived in the same house, but they’d stopped communicating at even the most fundamental levels; she’d cut all ties with him, and the longer it went on, the deeper the hurt and the loss cut. There was nothing that seemed capable of breaching that barrier; he was losing her, maybe already had, and there seemed to be no solution.
*
The solution, when it finally came, literally came out of the blue. Chloe, Ryan’s secretary, had noticed the changes in him, and had increasingly seen less and less of Olivia over the last few months. She could feel that something was very wrong with Ryan and his beautiful wife, and, as she considered herself a friend of theirs, she could finally hold her silence no longer.
Her chance came when she found Ryan sitting alone in the staff restaurant, moodily picking at his lunch and staring blankly at the wall. She slid into the seat opposite him and tapped his hand, watching him start as he came back to reality with a bump. She leaned closer, so she was almost nose to nose with him.
“What’s going on, Ryan? Really?” she whispered. “I haven’t heard a word out of you in days; I haven’t seen Livvie in weeks; you roam around the halls like a lost soul; what the hell’s going on? Is it you and Livvie? Talk to me, Ryan!”
Ryan looked straight at her. She was shocked to see tears glittering in the corners of his eyes.
“It’s Livvie. She thinks we’re done. I made her think we were done. I don’t know how I managed to cock it all so completely, and now that’s all she thinks, and I don’t know how to get her back! What am I going to do, Chloe, without Livvie I have nothing, nothing!”‘
He looked directly at her and Chloe recoiled from the desperate, resigned, pain-filled stare.
“That was a lie, Chloe; even now I’m lying to myself, because I know exactly what’s wrong, and I don’t know how I could have done this… God, why was I so stupid!?”
Chloe’s own eyes filled in sympathy at his obvious distress; she knew just how much Ryan adored his wife, and she remembered Livvie as being almost as besotted with him; they could barely keep their hands off each other; what had gone so wrong?
She probed gently, asking questions about Livvie, about their home life, about her attitude towards Jack, and towards Ryan himself. Ryan, finally having someone to unburden himself to, found himself telling her more and more, the whole story coming out in a rush. Because she was a friend, and she was a good person, and he trusted her, he found himself telling her how he’d finally seduced Livvie and made her his, how he’d acted out her deepest fantasy for her, finally revealing himself and asking her to marry him.
Chloe was intrigued, not just by what he told her, but also by what he wasn’t telling her; there were gaps in the narrative that just didn’t make sense, so she probed deeper, reasoning that the only way she could help her friends was if she knew what was missing, what he wasn’t telling her, and how it had led to this.
There was no denying the fact that Ryan was a mess; this business between him and Livvie was eating him up inside. He’d lost track of what was going on around him; he moped around, he barely spoke, he drifted along like a lost soul, his eyes and mind far away and unfocussed, he signed anything that was put in front of him; if she hadn’t been bird-dogging him he’d be up on embezzlement charges right now as he’d innocently, unheedingly, signed requisitions and invoice approvals that people tried to slip past him, his concentration shot to pieces by whatever was going on in his life.
As she dug deeper, she began to put the pieces together. Ryan never spoke of his past life, before the Royal Navy; he seemed to have no past, no old friends, other than former naval colleagues, prior to coming to work at Northstar Naval Systems; he never spoke of his childhood, where he grew up, nothing, and neither did Livvie; she’d always deftly sidestepped questions asked by her few girlfriends here in Gosport about where and when she’d met such a gorgeous guy, and she too seemed to have no past and no life prior to coming to Gosport.
While they talked, the cafeteria slowly emptied, until at last they were alone, tucked away out of sight in the far corner, safe from prying eyes and twitching ears. Chloe decided to grasp the nettle.
“Ryan, you’re a man of mystery here; no-one knows anything about you; you share nothing, say even less, and Livvie’s exactly the same. Talk to me, Ryan! Who’s Livvie, Ryan? Where did you meet her? It’s only me here now, you can tell me. I can’t help you unless you tell me everything. We can’t fix this unless you’re completely honest with me, so tell me, Ryan, we’re friends, you can trust me.”