The Winner Takes It All

Beckett Archibald Graves | Outfit
Friday, March 8, 1997
Olivia's Flat

She had thrown him out. Out of her flat. Out of her building. Out of her life. It was impossible to get rid of him completely. He was everywhere. Just as much as he had been everywhere two and a half years ago when she had been trying like hell to ignore him. Now he was even more everywhere. He was everywhere, and Olivia was avoiding him like her life depended on it. Because she thought that in a way it did. Her life depended on getting over him. It wasn't supposed to mean anything. There weren't supposed to be any strings. The first time it had just been sex. The first time it had just been his hands on her on that dance floor, and the fact that the tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife. The first time had been to try and make it the last time... And it hadn't been. It hadn't even come close. She hadn't meant anything to come of it. She wasn't trying to break up a marriage, to break up a life. Olivia didn't want to be the home wrecker. She didn't want to be the tramp that had done that. The slut that had stolen another woman's husband away. She hated that feeling. 

If there was a way to escape that feeling, she would take it. And so she had thrown him out. The moment she had realized that this feeling was more than her caring. She thought that she had cared about him for a long time now, but this... This was different. She had fallen in love with him, and she hadn't meant to. She hadn't meant for it to mean anything at all. But it did. It had started to mean everything, and she wasn't going to do that. She wasn't going to do that to herself. She was worth more than that. And so he had a choice. He had to make a choice. And in the process of outlining his choice to him, she had thrown him out. It was her, or it was Eliza. He couldn't have both. Not anymore. She was second to no one, and he was going to have to choose. That had been weeks ago. She had thrown him out weeks ago, and she had been avoiding him ever sense. She didn't want to see him, she didn't want to talk to him. She didn't want to stand there, and listen to him talk, and have to see that damn band on his hand that was just a reminder that she couldn't actually have him. That he belonged to someone else. 

It was cruel, making her fall in love with him had been cruel. Because she hadn't pursued him. He had come after her. Olivia may have been the one that had kissed him first, but then she had realized that he was married, and she had done exactly what she was doing now. She had avoided him. She had stayed away from him. Except for that close call in the meeting room, it had been okay. And then he had danced with her. He had rescued her from Ludo Bagman, and his hands had never strayed, he had held her in a way that was more than appropriate, and all it had served to do was ignite a spark. It fueled a fire that neither one of them had had the power to stop. And then she hadn't wanted to. She hadn't wanted to get lost in him, and that had been exactly what it was. He was a forest of trees so dark and dense that one wrong turn and there was no way out. And that was where she still was. She was trapped. And it wouldn't have been so bad, but she knew that there was no way out. Because she loved him, and he wasn't hers to love. 

Olivia had taken to ignoring most everyone, and she knew that Aurora was starting to get annoyed with her for it. She had ignored three owls this week about going out with the other witch tonight. She didn't understand why she thought that leaving Nick with his father to go out with her was something that her best friend was going to want to do, but Olivia didn't want to go. There was always a chance that they were going to go somewhere, and he was going to be there, and she didn't want to risk it. She didn't want to chance being around him out. She didn't want to be around him with alcohol in her system for sure. That wasn't going to be good for anyone. Because her guard would be down, and something was likely to slip out. Something that sounded a hell of a lot like the 'I love you' that she had never said. The knock at the door was enough to jar her from her thoughts, and Olivia huffed as she stormed towards the door and wrenched it open, "Aurora Wentzell! I told you-" her words cut off when she realized who was standing on the other side of the door, and her grip on the doorknob tightened just a little bit. It wasn't Aurora at all... "Beckett..."

THE WINNER TAKES IT ALL

OUTFIT

He had fucked up. There was no other way of putting it. He had royally screwed up. Beckett didn't know if it was too late to fix it. He didn't know if too much time had gone by. It was possible that it had. But Olivia had given him an ultimatum. After all of this time, she had finally decided that she'd had enough. She didn't want to be the mistress anymore. She didn't want to have to sneak around in secret--to shag in broom closets, or hotel rooms. She didn't want to go on dates towns away so that no one had a chance of recognizing them. She'd had enough, and she had wanted him to make a choice. It wasn't something that he had been expecting in the slightest. He hadn't known that this was something that was even on his mind. For a long time now, he had been pissed at himself. He could admit that. He had been pissed that he had married Eliza, that he had settled, and that he hadn't wanted for Liv to come along. Beckett knew that he couldn't have actually known that at the time, but still. He had been so quick to marry Eliza, because he thought that a political marriage would do him just fine.

Then he had met Olivia. It wasn't as if he had regretted marrying Eliza immediately. It had taken months before he and Liv had even done anything. But they had danced at that Ministry ball, and being that close to her… it was lucky that he hadn't kissed her then and there. But he'd held back. He had told her to meet him in the coat closet, and the first time that they'd shagged had been in there… with hundreds of people in the other room. It had just been shagging at first. That was all that it had been. He hadn't even felt all that bad about it, because it wasn't as if Eliza thought that he was in love with her. Yes, he knew that she thought that he was loyal. She thought that he wasn't straying with any other woman, but she didn't think that he loved her either. But after a while, it had turned into more than just sleeping together, and that was when it had really hit him. He was pissed at himself. Pissed at himself for settling for Eliza, for marrying her and then meeting someone like Olivia. He realized that he loved her, and that he should have waited. That now they were in a hell of a mess.

He had political ambitions, after all. He wanted to rise through the ranks of the Ministry, and he did not want the negative impact that an affair could have on his reputation. He didn't want the backlash from a messy divorce, and he knew that Eliza would make it messy. She would do everything in her power to ruin him, because she was that vindictive. So they had kept everything the way that it was. He was still married to Eliza, and Olivia had just been the mistress. He'd had no idea what was on her mind, no idea what she was thinking, until she had finally given him that ultimatum. She was done. And she had left. He hadn't known what to do. He didn't know if she had wanted him to stop here then and there, but he had let her walk away. It just hadn't taken all that long for him to realize that he wanted her back. He wanted her. To hell with the backlash, to hell with whatever stunt Eliza would pull to try to ruin his reputation. He'd deal with it. They would deal with it, because that was worth it to him. She was worth it to him.

But he wasn't going to go back to Liv with just words. What were words, without something to back it up? He wanted to go back there having done something. Having proven something. So he had gotten papers written up. He had given them to Eliza, and he had told her that he wanted a divorce. He hadn't beaten around the bush, and he hadn't lied. He had told her that he was in love with someone else, that she wasn't going to talk him out of it. That she could have whatever she wanted out of their marriage to get her to sign the papers without a fuss. But of course, she was Eliza. So there had been a fuss. But eventually, he had gotten her to sign the papers--and he had even gotten to keep the house, which was a surprise to him. She had wanted the chateau in France, and the chalet in Switzerland, but he had gotten to keep the house.

Honestly, he would have given her it if she'd wanted it. He could buy another. But he had to admit that it was nice not having to move. Now that he had officially gotten rid of Eliza, he felt like he could go back to Olivia. He wasn't coming over with just words--he had done something. He had chosen her, even if it was too late. He was divorced regardless, even if she didn't want him anymore. He didn't know if she would even answer the door, but when she did, he realized that she just hadn't expected it to be him. But that was fine. Seeing her again was better than he could have imagined. It had been too bloody long. "Hey Livvy…" He didn't quite know what else to say. He didn't know if she planned on slamming the door in his face here in a second.

Moving on from Beckett Graves was not going to be an easy task. Olivia hadn't meant to fall in love with the man in the first place, and then she had. She had fallen in love with him, and there was no two ways around it. Shaking him was going to be more than a little complicated. Because she didn't think that there was any way to make it easier on herself. She didn't think that she was going to just be able to have enough wine that she forgot that she loved him. It had been long enough since she had thrown him out that she was supposed to have been over it. That she wasn't supposed to care anymore, and yet, here she was, standing here, caring. Because he was a pain in her ass. And he always had been. He had made her fall in love with him, and he had been married. Eliza. Eliza Graves was Olivia's problem. And she didn't think that she had any right to even hate the woman. If anything, they had been careful enough about this that she didn't know. Because they had careers to think about. They had ambitions, goals, things that they wanted to do that him being a cheater, and her being a homewrecker, weren't going to help.

That was just one of the things that she called herself in the mirror, because she had given him a choice. It wasn't a goodbye, get out, don't come back. It had been a choice. And now it had been weeks, months, even, and she thought that avoiding him was working out well. Anything that came into the office that had anything to do with Games and Sports, she somehow managed to get assigned to anyone but her, and she didn't want this. She didn't want to tiptoe around him for the rest of her life, because she had fallen in love with him, and he had gone back to his wife. That was the way that the story went. That was the way that every story went. And Olivia couldn't even blame him. They had had goals, she knew about his goals, his plans. He wanted to rise through the ranks. He wanted Bagman's job. And she wasn't going to get it if something as scummy as an affair came out. She knew that. She knew that she didn't stand a chance in hell against that. But dammit if she didn't want to. If she didn't want to believe that for one second, she could have thought that she meant more to him than that.

There was a point when she thought that she might have. For those first couple of weeks she thought that she might open the door and find him standing there, saying he was sorry. And that he had made his choice, and that it was her. She had thought that it might have been a faint possibility. And then it hadn't happened, and she had resigned herself to the fact that there was no way that she was going to ever be good enough to leave his wife over. That she shouldn't have let herself believe that he cared too. That wasn't going to end well for her. She didn't think that she wanted to see him at all now. To see him standing there, Merlin help her if Eliza was with him. She thought that she would have had to have left. Just turned around, or stood up, or anything to get out of there as fast as possible. He had stolen her heart she didn't have a damn clue how to go about getting it back.

She didn't want to think about the fact that she was just going to be stuck like this. That she was going to be stuck trying to move on without her heart. Because he had taken it with him. When they had split, when she had gone one way, and he had gone the other, he had taken every last bit of her heart with him. And her best friend didn't seem to understand that. She knew that Aurora had Dominick, and she knew that she had whatever was going on with Ares that she adamantly denied, but Olivia didn't have anything. She didn't want a husband, and a best friend, and whatever else it was that Aurora had between the two of them that managed to make a complete marriage. She just wanted Beckett. And she couldn't have him, because he wasn't hers to have in the first place. Olivia's heart nearly skipped a beat when she realized that it wasn't her best friend on the other side of the door though. It was him. He was here, and she didn't know what he wanted. He wouldn't want anything good. It had been months. For a moment she was frozen, not really sure what to do, and then her brain was arguing with the spot where her heart should have been. The only reaction that she could come up with was to shut the door. She didn't want to see him, she didn't want anything to do with him. And so she was moving, pushing the door back closed between them as she tried to figure out what he was doing here.

It had been months. He knew that. Beckett knew that there was a good chance that Liv wouldn’t want to see him at all, because she had given him that ultimatum months ago. He could have picked her that night. He thought that he had known that he had wanted her even then. But he had been so surprised by her words, and the fact that he hadn’t seen this coming. He hadn’t known that she was unhappy or anywhere close to making him choose. Beckett had thought that everything had been working out the way that it was. But he knew that was a selfish thing for him to think. He was the one with the wife and the mistress. He was the one that had both. He got to spend time with Liv, and then go home and get into bed with his wife--who had no idea where he had just been. As much as he would rather be in bed with Livvy, he had still known that it was nothing compared to what she dealt with. She had to watch him leave and know that he was going back to his wife. She got to lay in bed alone at night and think about him sleeping next to Eliza, in his house with Eliza.

That couldn’t be an easy thing for her to do. She had to watch him leave her and go back to his wife. Beckett left her alone--he didn’t worry about her going and falling asleep next to some guy every night. As a matter of fact, he thought that dealing with something like that would make him absolutely insane. He didn’t think that he could have done that for a month, let alone years. But she had dealt with it without complaint so he had thought everything was okay. He had selfishly thought that it could possibly be okay when she was dealing with that. Even when he knew that it would drive him mad if he was the one having to share her with her husband. Share her with the person that was actually supposed to have her. He couldn’t have handled that, and yet he had made her deal with it for far too long. He wasn’t proud of that. That was something that he’d been thinking a lot about in the past couple of months. She didn’t deserve everything that he had put her through, and yet she hadn’t complained until she’d had enough.

He had just been so surprised that he hadn’t been able to react right away. By the time he had been ready to, by the time he’d been ready to tell her that he didn’t need to think about it, he wanted her… she had been walking away. She had been gone. So he had decided that he needed to come back to her with actions, not with words. He didn’t want to come back and tell her that he wanted to be with her. He wanted to prove it. That meant that he’d had to tell Eliza that he wanted a divorce. He had to get talking to a lawyer, get the papers drawn… convince her to sign them, which hadn’t been easy. Giving her the chalet in Switzerland and the chateau in Switzerland had been two major concessions, and that had helped. Eventually she had signed them, and he knew that he could finally go back to Liv. Assuming that she still wanted him. He knew that was part of the risk of waiting. If he had gone to her the next day, and said he wanted her and he’d leave Eliza… at least she’d know where he stood. But he had waited until he could come back a divorced man. And maybe she had gotten tired of waiting.

That was a risk that he was willing to take, and that was hopefully even more telling of how much he wanted to be with her. He had divorced Eliza knowing that Liv might not want him when this was all over. He would rather be divorced and alone, if Liv didn’t want him. He wasn’t going to go back to Eliza and go back to his normal life. It was her, or it was a divorce that he was going to have to explain for months to come. A divorce that could negatively impact his reputation if he let it, but he thought that it was worth it for even the chance of being with Liv for real this time. If she slammed the door in his face after he told her he was divorced, fine. She still knew that he had chosen her, even if she wasn’t choosing him anymore. To him, that would be worth it. He would figure the rest out, regardless of what happened. When the door opened, he hadn’t known exactly what to expect. It was good to see her. It had been too long and he was lucky he’d even thought to say anything--drinking in just seeing her again could have kept him quiet for several moments otherwise. Instead of answering, she began to close the door. “Liv--” But it was too late, and the door was shut before he could say anything else. He didn’t move, though. He wasn’t giving up that easily…

Falling in love was not in the plans. She wasn't supposed to fall in love with anyone. She was most certainly not supposed to have fallen in love with a married man. But she had. She had fallen in love with him, and Olivia thought that that was almost torture. That she knew that she couldn't have what was right in front of her. She knew that he would always leave. That she was always going to be the one that was left to wake up alone in the morning. She was the one that had had all of these plans. All of these dreams, and aspirations. She was going to be a damn good lawyer. She was going to work her way up through the ranks. National Security. She had decided that that was a solid field to get her to the top. She was a National Security lawyer. She had been called in to deal with the aftermath of the World Cup and that had been years ago. She hadn't thought two years ago when he had danced with her, that she was going to end up in that coat closet. She hadn't thought that she was going to go, and she hadn't thought that two years later she would be trying to get over him.

Two years. It had been two years of this. Two years of sneaking around. Two years of sex that had started out as just sex. It wasn't supposed to have strings, and then it had had them. And suddenly they were everywhere. She didn't know how it had snuck up on her that she was in love with him. But she had seen them. Together. Somewhere, and it had bothered her in a way that it had never bothered her before. She had seen them together for two years. They all ended up at the same Ministry parties, it wasn't like Olivia hadn't seen them together before that, but that last time… It had been like someone had shoved a knife straight through her ribs and into her heart. It had hurt in a way that she hadn't known that something could hurt. It had been out of nowhere, and she didn't know what that was, she couldn't explain it, until she had realized exactly what it was. She loved him. And that was it. She wasn't going to live like that. She wasn't going to let herself love him if she was only going to get hurt.

She had told him that he had to make a choice. And that had hurt like hell too. Telling him to choose, and then walking away. Because she had walked away. She hadn't thought that he would come after her, she had been sure that she was walking away from the love of her life. But there wasn't another choice. There was no staying when he was married to her. There was no letting herself get her hopes up and get hurt over and over again. She wasn't going to put herself through that version of hell, and so she had chosen this instead. She had chosen to live without him, and work on getting over him. Which was much easier said than done… Olivia thought that really it shouldn't have been this hard. It was just two years of her life that she was trying to get over. It was just the only man that she had thought that she had ever, or would ever, love. It shouldn't have been this hard. She could have just logically worked herself out of it. But she couldn't. She couldn't get her brain to convince her heart that this was the right thing.

Olivia knew that she was torturing herself, and she knew that Aurora kept trying to convince her that she needed to get out of the house. That it wasn't worth moping over. But she didn't think that she was moping. She was mourning. Sort of. In her own way. And she didn't want to go out. She didn't think that Aurora needed to be going out either. She had a toddler at home that she was supposed to be taking care of, and not trusting his father to watch out for him. Olivia wasn't stupid. She knew what was going on. Beckett had had one of those marks on his arm too. She knew what it meant. She knew what they believed in, what they did. And she had been prepared to tell her best friend to go to hell when she had opened the door, but what she hadn't been prepared for was him. Shutting the door had seemed like the only option. It stopped anything and everything that was going to come next. She didn't want to see him. She didn't know what he wanted. It had been months. It had been months of hell that she had inflicted on herself over this. The door was shut, but not before she had heard him say her name again… It had been enough, just enough, to have her standing there with her hand pressed against the wood. After another minute she finally spoke to him, her voice loud enough to carry through the closed door, "What do you want Beckett?"

the winner takes it all And the the loser has to fall

Beckett had known that he needed to fix this. From the moment that Liv had walked away from him, he had known that he had to figure out how to make this right. There hadn’t been a single part of him that had considered just going back to Eliza. He knew that it was the easy choice. It was. He could go back to her and not tell her about the affair. She would never even have to know and then they could just move forward with their lives. Maybe he could even finally let her have a kid if that was what she wanted. He had never really been interested in having kids with her and once he had met Liv, he really hadn’t. When he pictured having kids with anybody, it was her. And he knew that that meant something. That it meant that he wanted to be with her, because she was the one that he could actually picture a future with. He knew that there wasn’t a chance in hell that he could make the easy choice and stay with Eliza. He couldn’t imagine his life without Liv in it anymore, and he knew that the same couldn’t be said for Eliza. It wasn’t even her fault. She hadn’t done anything to deserve this but he just didn’t love her. Their marriage had been for politics, because he had thought that it was the best decision to make. But he had never loved her, and he knew that her being out of his life would not be all that difficult to bear. Liv being out of his, however… it was something that he’d hardly been able to take even in the months that it took for Eliza to agree to the terms of the divorce. It had felt like a part of him was missing, knowing that he couldn’t see her and talk about their day or go get pizza or anything at all. It had been miserable. He couldn’t imagine the rest of his life like that, without her in it. But he knew that he was at risk of that happening. He knew that there was a chance that Liv really was done by now. It was a risk that he’d taken when he had decided that he wasn’t going to come back to her until he was officially divorced from Eliza. He had wanted it all finalized and of course she was going to make a play for everything that she wanted. She couldn’t just make it easy. But that had been fine. He had gotten to keep his house, and that was all that mattered to him. If she wanted the chateau in France and the Swiss chalet, then so be it. She had always liked those places more than him anyway. She had something about how inspired she got in the chateau. He didn’t quite know why she had to be to inspire lingerie, but whatever. He didn’t care. She could have it if it meant that she signed the papers, and she finally had. It was over. He just had to hope that it hadn’t taken so long that Liv had moved on. He had to hope that he still stood a chance there because the past months had been miserable without her and he really didn’t want to experience anymore of that. And even if she didn’t want him back, he was divorced from Eliza. She would know that he had done that for her, for them, even if she didn’t want to be with him. That mattered to him too. Either way, his marriage was over. He just had to hope that he hadn’t lost Liv in the process. The door getting slammed in his face was not a good start. But he wasn’t going to call it quits that easily. He knew that she was going to be upset. She had been upset when she had walked away and he hadn’t come after her. She had probably thought that he’d chosen Eliza. That was the risk that he’d taken in wanting to make sure that it was all sorted out and if that was the reason that this all fell apart… so be it. He didn’t regret making sure that Eliza was out of the picture. He wanted to prove himself with more than just words. Actions mattered too, and now Eliza was gone. That meant something to him and he hoped that it meant something to Liv too. Hopefully. If he could get her to open the door long enough to tell her anyway. He sighed when he heard her speak--obviously he was glad that she hadn’t walked away entirely, but talking through the door wasn’t exactly ideal either. “I want--I need to talk to you…” He ran a hand through his hair, knowing that he had no right to be frustrated after everything. “Please open the door, Livvy…”

The Winner Takes It All

This was not the way that life was supposed to have gone right now. This was not the way that anything was supposed to have gone. Olivia had been doing just fine on her own. She hadn’t asked for Beckett Graves in her life. She hadn’t thought that she was going to have to deal with something like this. Her life wasn’t supposed to revolve around how she felt about someone else. It wasn’t supposed to catch her off guard, and ruin everything, when she fell for someone that she couldn’t have. Because she couldn’t have him. He wasn’t hers. He was Eliza’s, and she was just the harlot that had managed to get in the middle of someone else’s marriage. She was the trollop, the tramp, the mistress. She was every dirty title that you could come up with because she loved him. And she knew that that wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair to any of them. It wasn’t something that any of them could control. There was something going on, and Olivia knew that they didn’t have a way around it. She didn’t have a way around it. So, she had done the only thing that she could think to do. He had had to go. To leave. She couldn’t be all of those things anymore. She couldn’t ruin someone else’s life.

And it hadn’t mattered to her. She knew that she had been ruining Eliza’s life this whole time, but when there hadn’t been strings attached, it hadn’t felt that way. He could go home to his wife, and it was fine. Nothing had to change, nothing was getting ruined. And then something had changed. The way that she felt about him had changed, and he had started to mean something to her. Olivia thought that that was true, even before she had realized that she was in love with him. He had meant something to her, and then that had turned into love. She loved him. There was no denying that she loved him. If she hadn’t, she thought that they would still be doing the same thing that they had been doing for years. They would have been shagging in closets, and sneaking dinners in other countries when they wanted to get out of her flat. But that wasn’t the case anymore. Those dinners had become special. Seeing him at work had become agonizing. Because she wanted to touch him. She wanted to be possessive of something that wasn’t hers to be possessive of.

She didn’t think that she would have even realized that everything had changed if Eliza hadn’t been at the party that night. She couldn’t even remember what it was for. Some pre-holiday party or something that the Ministry was throwing. Something that meant that they both had to be there. As ambitious as they were, working their way up in their fields, they didn’t miss gatherings like that. They didn’t miss those opportunities to shine. But that was where she had had to watch it. To see him with her. And know that she could never have that. That she couldn’t be that. Because he belonged to Eliza. He was Eliza’s, and not hers. And no matter what he said, or what she felt, that wasn’t changing. It would have been a career ender to leave his wife for the woman that he had had on the side. It could have ruined them both if it got out. It had to stop. And it had to stop right then. Because things weren’t as easy to hide when she felt something. When her neck had almost turned green with envy just watching them. Olivia knew that she couldn’t do that. She wouldn’t.

Subjecting herself to that torture was never going to end well. It was going to make her miserable. And this… This had made her miserable too. There was no situation where she didn’t lose. That was what happened when you were the whore. When you were the mistress, the harlot, the other woman. You were the one that was supposed to lose. He was supposed to go back to his wife. He was supposed to play by the rules. You were the one that got hurt, and so Olivia had hurt herself. She had thrown him out of her life. Because she wasn’t going to let him have that power over her. He wasn’t going to get to hurt her. She would do it herself. But now he was back. He was here, and standing outside of her door, and she wanted to open it. She wanted to open it, and she wanted to see him. And she wanted him. That was what she wanted. But that was hell. Why in the world would she open the door, let him back in, and put herself through hell again? Livvy… No one else had ever called her Livvy, and there was something about the way that he said it that made the icy walls she had thrown up against him melt a little bit. “I’m just going to get hurt…”

WORDS: 849 TAGS: @ beckett Olivia's Outfit

SHIN OF GS + ADOX

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[attr="class","ctopline"]the gods may throw a dice

[attr="class","cscriptde"]their minds as cold as ice

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[attr="class","clyrics"]And someone way down here[break]
Loses someone dear[break]
The winner takes it all

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[attr="class","cbody"]Once Eliza had finally signed the divorce papers, Beckett had felt… freer than he had in a very long time.
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He hadn’t been sure exactly how he was going to feel after it was all officially over. He didn’t know if there was any part of him that might think it was bittersweet, or… what. But he hadn’t. He hadn’t thought it was sad, or anything, he was just glad that it was all over. He was glad that he could go to Liv and he could tell her that it was over between him and Eliza. Even if she didn’t want anything to do with him anymore, at least she would know that he was not going to be with his now ex-wife regardless.
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It put all of the cards in her hands, he thought, and that was what she needed. That was what she deserved, really. She deserved to know that she got to make the choice. She got to decide if she wanted him around, and if she didn’t, he was still going to be a divorced man. He didn’t have the option of just crawling back to Eliza. It was all up to her.
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Beckett hoped that it wasn’t too late. He hoped that that they could be together for real. It was all that he had wanted for a long time, but he had somehow gotten caught up in everything being fine the way that it was. That hadn’t been fair of him at all. If anything, it had been selfish. Yes, it had been fine for him, but it wasn’t fine for Liv. She was the one that had to watch him leave her and go back to his wife. She was the one sleeping alone at night and knowing that he was in bed with Eliza--knowing that he would be with Eliza if she initiated anything, because he hadn’t done much initiating of intimacy with his wife for a long time.
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It did make him wonder if any part of Eliza had been suspicious, if she had known what was going on. She had seemed surprised, but she had always been a good actress. There was quite a good chance that she had known, and she had found it in her benefit to act like she hadn’t. There was no way of knowing with his ex-wife, and at this point… it didn’t matter.
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He had been willing to give her whatever she wanted. He would part with a few houses if it meant that she signed the divorce papers without too much fuss, because he didn’t want a spectacle. He knew that she had probably been tempted to make it all public, and make him look as bad as possible, which was why he had been so willing to part with houses if it made her less dramatic.
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Now, it was time to see if the woman that he loved was going to give him a second chance now that Eliza was officially out of the picture. It had been months, he knew that, but he thought there was something to be said that he’d waited to come to her until he could say that he was a divorced man. That had been important to him. Actions were what mattered here, not words. They’d had years and years of words, but they didn’t mean anything if he wasn’t willing to do what it took to back them up.
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If he had to tell her that he had left Eliza through her door, he would. He had wanted to say it to her face, but he realized there was a good chance that she wasn’t going to open the door for a while. He couldn’t just hold that information in until he was looking at her. He thought that telling her might be what it took to get her to open the door anyhow. “I’m not going to hurt you… I…” he paused for a moment and took a breath. “I left her. I’m officially divorced.”
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[attr="class","cnotes"]673 ● @ livvy

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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winner takes it all

The loser standing small

Beside the victory, that's her destiny

Throwing Beckett out of her life was not something that Olivia had wanted to do. She hadn’t wanted to see him leave. She hadn’t wanted to walk down the halls in the Ministry and know that he was going to be in her next meeting and want to be anywhere else. She didn’t need that kind of stress in her life. But she had made her choice. It was one or the other. It was her, or it was Eliza. He couldn’t have both anymore. She couldn’t handle being the one that he left every night. The one that got to see the man that he could have been, and to watch him go back to her. Olivia had fallen in love with him, and that was the last straw.

If she hadn’t have fallen in love with him, it would have been fine. She would have been able to continue on like that, nad never worry about any of it. But that wasn’t the case. She had slipped, and fallen, and it had been a slow fall. At first it had been just the tension, and the kiss, and everything that it had led to. The dance… His hands. They had been the most appropriate hands she had been in that night, and yet there had been something about that that had sent her over the edge. She had wanted to be with him. To leave that room with him, and never come back. But it wasn’t that simple. It couldn’t have been that easy. Because Eliza was there. His wife had been across the room.

And so, it had been secret. And it had been exciting, and then it had become harder. Dates, actual dates, and not ones that could be passed off as work dinners, had to happen in other countries. They had had to spend holidays the week before, or the week after, in places like Brussels. Or Madrid. They had been to Paris, and Milan, and anywhere else that she had wanted to go. And Olivia had loved it. She loved every minute of being reckless, and dinner in foreign countries, but then she had realized what it meant. When the other side of the bed had been cold in the mornings. When she had woken up on her own again. When the tug in her chest had hurt badly enough that it had finally snapped. That was when she knew. She loved him.

And she hated him. Olivia thought that that was what it came down to. She loved him so much that she hated him. And so, she had done the only thing that she could think of. She had hurt herself, before he had had the chance. Before he had gotten the chance to break her heart, she had ripped it out of her own chest. She had ended all of it, sent the whole thing up in flames, so that she didn’t have to face what would have happened if he would have been the one that had called it off.

Olivia didn’t know that he ever would have. It had been perfect for him. He had gotten to have them both. He had gotten everything, and she had gotten to be the slut. She had been the one that could have ruined her career, and his, over the fact that she loved him. That she took him to her bed, and that she could never be in his. He had told her all of the pretty lines. Every perfect thing that she could have wished to hear come out of his mouth, he had said. He had known how to tell her what she wanted to hear. And she had never doubted him. But the moment that she had felt it. The moment that it was more than just words. The moment that she had thought that she was going to accidentally say those three little words. She had pushed back. She had slammed the door.

The door that was very clearly closed between them now. She was going to get hurt. If she opened this door. If she let him back into her life, she was letting him back into her heart. And her heart was a whole lot more fragile than she wanted to admit. To anyone. Let alone to Beckett Graves. The words came through the door almost as if she were underwater. She heard them, but she didn’t quite hear them. Left her? He hadn’t… That was… He had a career to think about. A life. And he had…

Sighing once more, Olivia didn’t move for a moment, and then her hand turned around the door knob. Stepping back enough that she could open it completely between them. She didn’t say anything at first. For a moment she couldn’t. There was pain in her eyes, but underneath that, there was something else. Hope. “Say that again…” She wanted to see it, in his eyes, when he told her. She wanted to know that it was true.

@ beckett • 840 • olivia's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

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[attr="class","ctopline"]THE GODS MAY THROW A DICE

[attr="class","cscriptde"]their minds as cold as ice

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[attr="class","clyrics"]AND SOMEONE WAY DOWN HERE[break]
LOSES SOMEONE DEAR[break]
THE WINNER TAKES IT ALL

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[attr="class","cbody"]It had nearly been surprising, how easy it had been to make that choice. When Liv had walked away from him, Beckett had realized that he didn’t even need to think about it. He didn’t need to weigh his options. In the choice between her and Eliza, there was really only one choice to make. He didn’t want a loveless marriage anymore. He didn’t want to be with a woman that he had never honestly cared about all that much.
[break][break]
Yes, she was perfectly acceptable as a wife. That had worked out for him just fine when he had been looking for a Ministry wife. Beckett had never thought that he would need more than that, but that had been stupid. It had been so idiotic and selfish to get married to Eliza and not wait for Liv to come along. It would have been so much easier if he had waited. If he hadn’t rushed into a marriage just because he had wanted someone who knew the right thing to say at Ministry functions.
[break][break]
He had thought that he just needed someone that could help charm the right people, because that was really incredibly beneficial when it came to seeking power in the Ministry. It was about more than just the job and how well they did it. It was also about the people they charmed at parties and talking to the right people. Eliza had known how to do all of that, and Beckett had thought that was all that he needed in a wife.
[break][break]
But he had been wrong.
[break][break]
Meeting Liv had proven that to him. Maybe not right away. At first, it had just been an attraction. But over time that had grown until he realized that he loved her. Until he realized that he could have something more than a wife that knew what to wear and what to say at parties.
[break][break]
And Liv knew how to do all of that too. It wasn’t like she was completely ill-equipped at that. She worked in the Ministry too. If anything, she was better at it than Eliza could ever hope to be. She was everything that Eliza wasn’t in the best ways, but she also was everything that he’d originally needed Eliza to be. She was perfect.
[break][break]
The last thing that he wanted was to lose her, but he had known that he needed to do this right. He had been determined to, actually. Getting officially divorced was the best way that he knew to do that. He needed to be more than just talk. Proving that he was serious about her was the right thing to do, but it had taken awhile. Even with him giving Eliza the properties that she wanted, she had still tried to push back at everything. Honestly, he thought that she was just trying to drag it all out as long as possible, but it was finally done. She was out of his life.
[break][break]
Now he had to see if it was too late to get back the woman that he actually loved.
[break][break]
Her slamming the door in his face wasn’t completely unexpected, after everything. But he wasn’t going to walk away. He would tell her what he needed to through the door if he had to, but he’d rather say it face to face. He would rather see her when he told her that he had divorced Eliza, but he had to get her to open the door to do that.
[break][break]
In the end, he realized that he just needed to say it. There was nothing else that would get her to open the door, to let him in. She needed to know that he had heard her ultimatum and that he had made his choice, assuming that it wasn’t too late to choose her.
[break][break]
The door swung open after he spoke, and his gaze moved to hers. “I left her.”
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[attr="class","cnotes"]652 ● @ livvy

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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