“The best I can do for you is to try and get his address tomorrow. My shift starts at one, but it’s risky. I’m putting a lot on the line for you.”
“I’ll take care of you,” I said, meaning every word. Usually, I wouldn’t put anyone on the line for me, but Mia? There was no line.
Jinx stood and gripped my shoulder. “I know you will. You’ve never done me wrong.”
After every sip, it became harder to hold it together. I clenched my teeth and fisted the plastic cup at the smiles surrounding me, couples rubbing against each other, and people pairing off. My eyes burned from the memories swirling inside me, reminding me how far apart Mia and I were.
“Jinx says you’re a writer?” L asked with a hand over my stretched thigh and vodka in her breath. I climbed to my feet and snapped my eyes to where Jinx had been sitting moments before. “He’s gone,” she added, tugging on my arm.
“Where did he go?” The room spun as sweat, the beat, and the laughs infiltrated my useless fucking brain. The dizziness sent me back over the couch, and I dropped my head into my hands.
“C’mon, I’ll take you to him.” The girl with the L name lifted me off the couch and led me down a hall. We squeezed through sweaty bodies, and drinks spilled down the front of my shirt and pants until we pushed through a door. The room was bright, and all I wanted was to lay my head to stop the world from spinning. The last time liquor hit my tongue had been with Mia on New Year’s, and my tolerance for it had since ceased. “You’re wet.” She giggled, her hands crawling over my chest.
We were in a small room, separating the kitchen from another door leading somewhere else. Disgusted by the touch, I gripped L’s wrist and pushed her arm away. She had blonde hair, but brown seeped from her roots, and her black eyes looked up at me from below as she held my hips steady against the wall. Everything about her screamed my mum, and I wanted to curl inside a ball until she disappeared.
“I have to go. Tell Jinx I’m leaving for me?”
A curtain of blonde hair surrounded the faux innocence in L’s black eyes. She was too close, and the air around me thickened. I laid my hands over her shoulders to keep her at a distance, but she was too drunk to take notice in my placid rejection.
“It’s okay. We’re alone in here.” L’s voice hit my skin, sounding like syrup pouring from sticky red lips. She gripped my bicep, and naturally, I jerked away from her.
The wall behind me was the only source to steady myself through the swaying fog. Time didn’t pass normally in this black hole. “I need air … I need to find air. I need to find Mia.”
“Is she your girlfriend?” L asked, and my head snapped forward at the sound of Mia’s name coming from somewhere else other than my head.
She’s my love. Why couldn’t she meet me? We’d made a promise. Hell, we fucking made promises. Plural. “I can’t feel her anymore.” I scratched at my chest. The alcohol was poisoning me—my heart and mind. “Why can’t I feel her? Something’s not right. I don’t feel right.”
My back hit the wall again, and I dragged down until two hands gripped my hips to keep me upright. “Oliver,” my name slithered into the space between us. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m okay! I’m fine!” I pushed past her, stumbling through the other door, into a garage, until reaching the side of the house. My fist punched the stucco, breaking the skin, and I turned and slid down the rough siding until my bum hit the floor. Fist pounding and blood spilling, I was drunk in despair and stuck in the middle of nowhere.
I shoved my hands into my pocket for my mobile.
Ringing Travis, he picked up with a tired tone, and my fingers pinched the bridge of my nose. “I’m not okay, Trav,” I finally admitted, dropping my forehead into my hand. My shoulders shook against the side of the house. “I’m not fucking okay. I’m a fucking mess right now.”
“Where are you?”
“She’s gone, man. Fucking gone,” I slammed my eyes shut as the world spun around me, “What if she left me? What if she doesn’t want me to find her? I don’t know what to do anymore,” I turned into a bloody drunken wreck, “I have to believe something happened, that she wouldn’t leave me like this. She wouldn’t turn her back on us—”
“That’s it. I’m coming to get you.”
After counting three sunrises and three moons, the days smeared into a never-ending blur. Every day had been the same old routine, Ethan fed me breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Then he’d bathe me before rescuing me from the terrors in the middle of the night. Between all this, I’d stayed locked in this room and over this mattress. Dolor had prepared me for confinement, and Ethan wasn’t forthcoming with words or reasoning.
A few hours a day, I’d overheard muffled sounds coming from upstairs as Ethan talked on his cellphone, or no sounds at all. He’d hardly left, and when he did, it was only for a short period. The times I didn’t have tape around my mouth was when Ethan fed me. And the only times he didn’t have my wrist bound was when he’d let me go to the bathroom on my own.
I didn’t fight him or speak a word, even when the tape was gone.
A time would come when he’d slip or learn to trust me, and each day he was trusting me more and more. Or maybe I was trusting him. Regardless, I hadn’t had an opportunity to get away yet, and each day that passed, I felt myself falling deeper into a dazed and paralyzed state. Every second spent here made the past seem like a dream, losing grip on what was and what could have been.
None of it actually happened.
Ollie never existed.
It was all in my head.
Because if he did exist, he would have come for me, and he didn’t.
So, that’s what I’d decided.
Ollie was a dream.
The large white tees were the only clothing to keep me warm. Ethan was kind enough to wash my clothes, but today was wash day, and my legs were left bare to the cold.
It was morning, and my eyes never left him as he cooked sausage over the griddle. Ethan had cracked the window above the sink open, allowing in the brisk morning air. I shivered inside the shirt, but my bare legs had nothing to hide behind.
Ethan wore jeans and a plain black shirt, his red hair in disarray.
He cut off the griddle and placed the sausage over a plate before turning to face me. His eyes roamed down to my chest to see my nipples responding to the cold. There was a longing in his deep blue eyes, but it was short-lived before he yanked the chair out and dropped the plate over the table for two.
He always looked at me with conflict. It wasn’t a combination, more like flashes from one need to another. Flash. I want her. Flash. I have to keep her safe. Flash. What have I done? Flash. I’m going to hell. Flash. Might as well drag her with me.
Every single time.
“Ethan,” I whispered, and the single word slowed his cutting of the sausage. His eyes didn’t leave the plate in front of him. “I miss the way we used to be.” It had only been half a lie. I did miss how we used to be. I missed being able to see him as nothing more than my security blanket. But I missed my fantasy of a man with green eyes, a warm heart, and a loving touch more. “Talk to me. Why are you doing this?”
The knife clanked against the plate, and Ethan adjusted in his chair. “I can’t think right now, Jett,”—he stabbed the sausage with a fork and dropped his elbow over the table between us— “Eat.”
I opened my mouth, and he slipped the sausage in before he took a bite for himself.
Swallowing, I locked my gaze on to a book of matches next to a candle over the counter. “Untie me. You can keep my ankles bound, Ethan. I’m not running anywhere. Just let me feed myself.”
After a long pause of silence, Ethan stood and cleared the table free of silverware, dropping both knives and forks into the sink, then crouched behind me and undid the zip ties from around my wrists. Instant relief set into my arms, and they felt like Jell-O as I tried bringing them up to my plate. “Thank you.”
He knew I wasn’t going anywhere either.
Not yet, anyway. With my ankles bound, I couldn’t run. Ethan returned to his seat and picked up a piece of sausage with his fingers. A smile fought its way through, knowing he shed the table of weapons I could stab him with, but it was just as easy to force the smile back down. I was a caged animal in these restraints, in this cabin, and my mind.
After breakfast, Ethan cleaned the mess, hand-washing every article of dishware and placing everything back where they belonged. He swiped the book of matches from the counter and dropped them into a drawer beside the small fridge. Once the kitchen was spotless, Ethan lifted me into his arms and proceeded to carry me down the flight of stairs. How long would he be able to keep this up?
He kept my arms free, and I laid over the mattress, ready for my morning nap.
This routine was my life now, but I refuse to let it be my forever.
“I’ll grab you pants today,” he offered, looking down at me.
I kept my eyes forward, glazed, unblinking.
Believe it or not, this was me fighting.
Each day was a struggle to not surrender to the fade. Instead, my body stayed in reserve. Comatose and utterly compliant on the outside, but on the inside, I never stopped planning my escape. Smart. I had to be smart.
Ethan stood over me, awaiting a response he’d never get. All I wanted was for him to go upstairs and make his call so I could fall asleep to the muffled sounds of his voice and dream of the angel who came to me when my eyes closed—my green-eyed angel with the voice of song and gentle, slow hands.
Ollie …
“Keep them closed,” he whispers in my ear. I know he’s beside me, his free and gentle spirit is radiating and raising every hair over my tingling skin.
We’re lying over his bed, completely still. It’s quiet now, aside from the air releasing through my nose and the shallow breaths coming from him. I don’t know what his plans are yet, but everything Ollie does is not without purpose.
His sculpted yet slender body moves over me effortlessly, and instinctively my legs fall to the sides to let him in. He’s holding himself up because I don’t feel his weight, and his palms clasp around my ears. I no longer hear anything, only a soft and continuous beating from within. It’s either his heartbeat or mine. I can’t tell.
His minted breath hits my lips first, and it makes me dizzy. I’m trying to remain still, but when Ollie’s mouth traces mine, the heartbeat in my ears slams harder and quickens with every sweep of his tender lips. Mine quiver, his breath shatters, and I taste him upon each inhale. We’re not even kissing, but his mouth still has a way of exploring mine and my lips part, anticipating his every move.
His mere taste is nostalgic, a slice of heaven, and I long for more. Slowly, his lips stroke mine, unapologetically yet forgiving. And how is it possible? He nips at my bottom lip, and a flame lights as I crumble. Each time I lift my head for more, he pulls away, and the loss slices through me.
It’s exhilarating. Almost too much to bear any longer. An ache forms inside my chest from the inescapable vibrant torture. Why can’t he give me what I’m needing? But I trust him, and so I remain still as I’m breaking apart beneath him.
Suddenly, Ollie’s tongue sweeps against mine, and every nerve bursts into flames. A fire flares behind my eyes. I don’t know why, but I want to cry. He’s inside my head, inside my chest, teasing my very heart, but he’s barely touching me, and it’s all too much.
A whimper escapes me, and Ollie surrenders, catching my mouth. My chest, it clenches with every stroke of his tongue, and we kiss as if emotions are bleeding out between the sheets. Tears roll down my face, and the salt mixes with his sweet taste. I don’t understand what is happening to me. I’m shaking. The beating inside my ears is so loud now. Its fast pace doesn’t match the slow and consuming rhythm of his kiss.
Finally, Ollie pulls away and grazes my wet cheek with his thumbs. Both his forearms and words shudder as he says, “Now, love. Now open your eyes.” Speechless, I blink three times as glossy green eyes stare down under wet lashes. “What do you feel?” he asks nervously, and his eyes bounce between mine as the crease between his brows appears.
I suck in air then release a steadier breath. Ollie was able to show me a remnant of the way I made him feel. The constant dilemma to fight or let go, and this was only a kiss. But Ollie managed to by shutting off my other senses. I closed my eyes. He blocked out my sound. The only touch was his lips his hands, feeding me his bohemian heartbeat. “Everything. I feel everything, Ollie.”
Ollie closes his eyes for a moment and licks his lips. “Do you understand now?”
I bring my palm to his face, nodding. “Yeah. I do.”
Shaken awake, I blinked my eyes open to Ethan, standing over me with a bag in his hand.
“Did you have a terror?” he asked with his brows bunched together. “You’re crying.”
I swiped the back of my hand across my cheek and shook my head.
“I’m sorry I left you alone,” the mattress dipped as he sat beside me, “I have pants for you. A pair of jeans and these,” he took a pair from the bag and examined them, “sweats. They’ll probably be too big, but I grabbed the smallest size.”
It was the most he’d said in days.
Ethan was trying to reverse the damage he’d done, but couldn’t. We would never be the same, and all I wanted was to go back to sleep and be with the man in my dreams.
He would only come when the sun was out, never in the middle of the night, never when Ethan slept beside me.
I wished there was a way I could stay locked inside the dream forever and never leave, but Ethan always woke me. Ethan always took me away from him.
“Let’s take a walk,” he offered with a single shoulder shrug. “You need exercise. You can’t sleep your days away anymore.”
The last time we went for a walk, I’d taken off running into the woods but didn’t get far. He’d quickly caught up to me, wrestled me to the ground, and put me to sleep. Ethan was good at that. He knew just how much oxygen to cut off for me to lose consciousness. And the less I struggled, the quicker I was out and back in Ollie’s arms. That day had been the first time I dreamt of Ollie, and since then, it was all I wanted to do.
“Okay,” I mumbled through a sigh and sat up.
Victory laced his expression, and he broke the zip ties around my ankles. Once my feet would touch grass, it was game on. I would run, and he would catch me and put me back to sleep—back with Ollie. It would be a win-win for us both.
Ethan was right, the sweatpants were loose, but didn’t fall off my hipbones. Once my feet were securely inside my combat boots, he walked behind me up the stairs and toward the front door.
The same silver Nissan was parked in front of the cabin. The last time I’d seen it, I’d memorized the license plate number just in case, but I’d since forgotten the plate number, unable to contain information any longer. Even Ethan’s expressions had become unreadable. His body language, too. I had no idea what his plans or intentions were. Simply, I’d become a ghost, moving along to every demand and adhering to what Ethan had expected of me. I was nothing more than a shadow with morbid thoughts of everything I wanted to do to him.
I thought about breaking the glass cup against the dining table and slicing his throat. I thought about suffocating him in his sleep with a pillow. More than a dozen murders played out inside my sick head, none of which I had the heart anymore to carry out. There was a nagging voice stopping me. Ollie’s voice. The angel.
Side by side, we walked the trails in silence until we came across a clearing in the middle of the forest. Ethan paused and turned to face me with curious eyes. “I hadn’t always been like this, you know,” he began, and I pried my eyes away from him and toward the tree line. “I had my first kiss here,”—in my peripheral, he took a few steps to his right— “Actually, right here to be exact. Her name was Ashlyn. I was fifteen when she showed up one night on the doorstep of my family’s cabin wrapped in a winter coat over her pajamas, asking if we had a b
ottle opener.”
Ethan’s chuckle should have made me feel lighter, but it didn’t. I froze, catatonic and eyes fixed out before me, refusing to look at him and counting how many steps it would take before reaching the forest.
“I mean, what on earth could she need a bottle opener for? She was fourteen at the time, hardly of drinking age, especially at one o’clock in the morning. But later, I discovered it was for her father.”
“I don’t care,” I finally whispered, but the frozen, lifeless parts of me slowly chipped away. The only thing it revealed was a rage. For some reason, Ethan’s confession made me angry.
“No,” he appeared before me, cutting off my direct line to the trees, “It’s time you heard my story.” His eager tone stirred the calm of the woods, causing birds to fly from their branches. I held my gaze, not moving an inch. “I walked her back, all the way to her cabin. It was a tad over a two-mile walk. Four thousand one hundred and forty steps. But it didn’t take all of them for me to fall for her. It only took half. Right here, I stopped her rambling about how crazy it was that we found ourselves walking in the middle of the night in the cold, two strangers. She joked that I could easily murder her and throw her body into the woods, but said she felt safe with me. And something came over me. If I didn’t kiss her right then and there, I was so afraid I would never have the chance again. So, I kissed her,” his voice faltered. “I’d never kissed before, and I’m sure she hadn’t either, and it was sloppy and messy, but it was ours.”
I kissed Ollie in my dreams. Over and over, we kissed, and it wasn’t sloppy or messy. Every single time it was earth-shattering, breathtaking, and painted an endless array of color in my black and white dreams.
“We walked the rest of the way after that, hand in hand until we reached her cabin. Her dad yelled from the inside once he heard us laughing, so we said our goodbyes after I kissed her again. It was the first and last time I ever saw her. The next morning, I woke up to helicopters flying over us, firetrucks, and alarms going off. Her cabin went up in flames because her drunk dad fell asleep with a cigarette in his hand. Ashlyn and her little sister never even made it out of their beds. They died in their fucking sleep, but her dad and his mate made it out alive. I punished myself every godforsaken day for not listening to my gut. I should’ve never let her back inside that house with those two drunks.”
Now Open Your Eyes (Stay With Me series Book 3) Page 4