Forbidden

Epilogue: Olivia

Olivia sat out on the front of their camp in Tanzania. Thankfully Lewis had planned this trip with months  in advance, way before she canceled in the first place, so she had been considered for the whole thing. They had been staying for a week in Africa, first they visited Namibia and just a few hours earlier that afternoon they had arrived to Tanzania. They were staying in these grand, beautiful camps, fully furnished and with big comfortable beds. Lewis always traveled in style after all. Everything around their camps was grass, trees, and the setting sky. Nothing else, just nature enveloping them. As Olivia watched the sun setting and the sky turned slightly pink she instinctively reached with her hand to the sun necklace that usually laid on her neck but she didn't find it. She felt a sharp stab of pain remembering why it wasn't there:

After the race, when Olivia was looking for her phone and saw the white envelope in Max's backpack she grabbed what was inside thinking it would be her apartment key. The first thing she saw was the baby polaroid and she felt her heart stop beating for a second. That's why she read the letter. She couldn't stop herself. As she read every line she felt like she wanted to scream. She felt betrayed; because something was very clear from that letter, Max had told Ashley to run. That's why when the police looked for her she had magically disappeared. Why nobody could explain it. Why Max kept telling Olivia he was sorry on the roof in Zandvoort. 

If only she would have let him talk then, while they were still in Zandvoort up on that roof, maybe he would have admitted to it. But she didn't let him talk, she told him to stop apologizing, and the asshole kept it to himself. He actually helped the woman who had tried to kill Olivia multiple times, helped her get away. Then as she kept reading the letter she realized, that bitch named her son after Max. 

At the garage, for a moment she was torn between crying, screaming, storming out and punching Max in the gut. The pain in her chest was unbearable, it felt like somebody was tearing at her with a knife. Like her heart was being torn to shreds. So she pushed it down. She wouldn't allow herself to feel any of it, not anymore. She couldn't, she was pretty sure that if she allowed herself to feel it, it would kill her. She had suffered enough. 

She had felt the urge again. The urge to run away, and this time she decided to go with it. She just knew she couldn't stay there, and she couldn't listen to any more of Max's excuses. She took tape from the garage and stuck the letter and polaroid up on the wall, but not before taking a picture of both and sending it to her lawyer. Filled with anger she reached out for the clasp of her sun necklace. Then she hesitated, was she actually doing this? For a moment she thought about Max, about why he must've done it, but as much as she wanted him to have a good reason, none of them seemed like reason enough to help Ashley. She also couldn't imagine getting past this. With pain in her chest she unclasped the sun necklace she always wore, she read the engraving one last time and then she placed it delicately on the table. 

She slowly walked out of the driver room. None of it felt real, it felt like a bad dream, a nightmare. She had some experience with those. She started hearing the crowd boo Max as he got the microphone for his podium interview. It got her out of her daze, in that moment an idea started rolling in her head. She had to get out of there, but first she had to finish her job. She took her camera and walked over to the podium ceremony. 

As Max came onto the podium he spotted her immediately, he smiled at her and once he was given his trophy he lifted it in her direction. Olivia had no idea how he did it. How he could stand there and lie to her, smiling like nothing was wrong. She kept her head behind the camera, knowing if she stopped looking through the lense and she looked straight at him she would start crying, but she had no time for that. She didn't have time at all.