I turned because I didn’t want to wait for her to respond. I knew she was having a rough day. I knew I was letting her down. But there was a pain in my chest I just couldn’t shake. It bothered me that I had no idea why, or where it was coming from. But, nonetheless, it was there.
I headed back for our shelter, unsure if I’d be able to fall asleep on wood, when I felt Luce behind me.
She was coming with me?
I said nothing. She said nothing.
At the shelter, I climbed inside, lying on the bamboo floor. We’d put big, round leaves down over the logs—but it did little for comfort. She followed me in, lying flat on her back beside me.
For so long, I lay there with her, staring up at the roof of our shelter. I watched the way the light shined through in patches. I listened to the birds squawking and to the sounds of Luce breathing.
The peace was extremely nice, actually, just what I needed, even though I felt bad I wasn’t giving her what she needed. “Sorry,” I muttered, unsure if she’d fallen asleep or not. “Sorry I’m doing a shit job of cheering you up today.” I recalled then that today was her friend’s wedding, the friend she’d told me she loved. Whoever he was—I hated him. He was obviously a fool.
“I just realized that I don’t know you very well,” she said. Not asleep but very much awake. “I thought I knew you. That you were super easy to read. That you were a certain type of a person. But I don’t think I know you at all.”
I shifted on the wood. “What do you want to know?”
It kind of hurt that she didn’t have even the slightest clue who I was. Of anyone in this world, I thought she might have known me just a little more than that.
“Did you always want to be...you know, you? Ollie Mills, famous Rockstar, and all that?”
I took a breath. “No. I mean, it was kind of thrust on me. I barely graduated high school. I was only a sophomore when Caleb handed me the bass guitar and told me to fucking learn. So I did just that. I spent a month in my parent’s basement, smoking weed, and forcing myself to become what I am today. Thank you, YouTube. I learned fast. I had to. Then I finished school on the road those first couple years. I got lucky.”
“Lucky how?”
I frowned. If she wanted total honesty, I’d give it to her. “You know the day I met your niece Emma, right after we met I asked her to have sex with me in the bathroom, she told me I’d be nothing without Caleb. That he and Luke were the talent. She was right. I’m famous because of my brothers. Without them, I wouldn’t be me.”
“Oh my God, you tried to have sex with Emma?” She made a noise in her throat. “See—that’s the kind of shit I’d expect from Ollie Mills. My sweet, innocent niece, who’s like a little sister to me, goes to Tennessee for the first time in her life. All bright eyed and bushy tailed—and you’re trying to fuck her in a bathroom. Seriously, Ollie?”
Fire hit my blood. “Yep, that’s me, just trying to fuck whoever in a bathroom. You know me so well.”
I was ready to sit up and leave. But she squeezed my arm before I had a chance to move. Her touch caught me so off-guard, I flinched. “This is exactly what I’m talking about. Your reaction is exactly what I mean.” She sat up, resting her arms over her knees, her back to me. “You’re confusing the hell out of me,” she said softly. “I can’t read you.”
I didn’t know what she meant. Or what she was trying to figure out. If I was just some kind of fuckboy? Was that it? What was it that was confusing her so much?
She lay back down. And much to my surprise, she situated herself closer to me, her face touching my arm. She rested against me, using me as her pillow, and my heart went off hard, pounding like a kick-drum. I would have thought, after everything I just admitted to, our conversation would have ended with her pissed off. More than ever at me. The way she’d screamed at me when we were first stranded on this island came back to me. She’d yelled, ‘I fucking hate you.’
This didn’t feel like hate.
I don’t know what this felt like. Something brand new. Something surprising. Something I never wanted to let go of.
~ CHAPTER 10 ~
LUCE
I fell into some kind of weird half-sleep, laying against Ollie’s arm. There was something so intoxicating about the smell of his skin and sweetness of his sweat. Something that got under my skin. Something that made me want to do more than just lay next to this man. He had me tingling in places I didn’t want to be tingling in. At least not for him.
Because I swear to God, every time I looked into his brown eyes, it was doing something to me. I needed off this island. I needed some distance from him before I did something crazy. We hadn’t explored the island thoroughly enough. We’d only seen one half, if that. Tomorrow, first thing, I would walk the full circle along the shoreline. There had to be something here.
Something!
At some point I drifted into deeper sleep. When I woke, it was pitch black. We’d slept through the evening and straight into the night. There was no rain tonight. Instead, the bugs were having some kind of contest. Who could be the loudest? And, dammit, if they all weren’t winners.
My legs felt like they were on fire. Between the fly bites and the mosquitoes that were feasting on me right this second, I wanted to scream. I breathed in sharp breaths, wiggling against Ollie’s side.
“You okay?” he asked. I hadn’t realized he was awake now, too.
“Fine,” I mumbled. Until I heard some kind of rustling just outside the wall of our shelter. I squealed and hooked a leg over Ollie’s waist.
He moved. His hands were on my thigh.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Okay. Sorry.” He removed his hands.
“I’m so itchy. The mosquitos are eating me alive. Aren’t you itchy?”
“No, actually. They aren’t biting me.”
Probably because they’d already gotten their fill of my delicious type-O blood. I heard another small sound somewhere to our right now. Fuck, I was going to have a heart attack. Or a panic attack. Between the singing bugs, the biting bugs, and all the random noises—my heart was speeding. My lungs were burning. My skin was crawling. Not to mention, the air was humid and stagnant and sticky. And Ollie, who practically oozed sexiness through his pores, was not helping what-so-ever.
“I can’t do it!” I squawked. “I can’t sleep in here. Maybe laying in the sand on the beach would be better.” I sat up, moving for the exit.
It was the worst time ever not to have shoes! Fuck-ity-fuck. I was stuck.
“You want me to come?” he asked.
“Yes! And could you carry me?”
He chuckled. The easy sound of his voice was the only pleasantry right this second. “I can do that.”
We moved out of the shelter. He found his shoes. Then he picked me up, scooping me in his strong arms. He started to walk. There was enough moonlight to see gray outlines of everything. “There are no big animals on islands. There are no big animals on islands,” I chanted against his neck, squeezing my eyes shut.
“Is that true?” he whispered. “There might be wild pigs. Or small rodents like rats. Snakes, at the very least.”
“Don’t tell me all that!”
He laughed just as we made it out of the woods. He set me down. My toes hit sand. But that was when I remembered about ghost crabs. Back home, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, the beaches had ghost crabs. These little white translucent crabs that liked to come out from their holes in the sand at night. Holy crap—I wondered what sort of crabs came out here at night.
Probably monstrous ones.
“Ollie,” I whispered, clinging to his waist. “I’m freaking the hell out.”
“I can tell. Breathe.” He said the word against my ear. “I’m here. I have you.”
“Not really reassuring.”
“Just sit with me then.” He sat in the sand, obviously unaware that tiny and big crabs were probably scurrying everywhere around us right now. Oh Jesus!
I could
n’t sit. I wouldn’t sit.
But he grabbed my body, pulling me down to him, down to his lap. I fell into him. He moved his arms around my waist, holding me in place against him.
“See. Nothing bad is getting you.”
Sitting on his lap wasn’t the worst thing. I wasn’t in the sand. And it did feel better here on the beach. Cooler. A gentle breeze. Less noise from the bugs. The sound of the waves crashing close by. But now I had a whole new set of fears. My heart started racing for a whole new reason.
“I know something that would distract you from everything else,” he suggested.
“Sex?” I chuckled, because what else would be on Ollie Mills’ mind?
“Yeah. We could fuck until morning and the only distraction would be one mind-blowing orgasm after another.”
He wasn’t even joking. “You’re dangerous, Ollie Mills.” I shifted in his lap.
Shit, was I considering this? Because suddenly I ached between my legs like never before. My clit thumped at the possibility of being with Ollie right here right now on this beach.
He ran his fingers up my arms, making goosebumps spread over my skin. “That bikini, Luce,” he whispered, his breath hot on the back of my neck. “I could be inside you in a second. If you wanted.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, working at focusing on whatever inner strength I had in me. The bugs and the crabs went forgotten. Especially when he next moved his hands to my neck.
“I want to kiss you. I want to kiss you so fucking bad.”
He meant it too. I could hear the tremble in his voice. Every ounce of me wanted to give in, to turn around and kiss him. But I knew better. I knew the moment my lips touched his, it would only be the beginning of inevitable heartbreak. I’d been down that road before. That road’s name was Rhett Morgan.
“No. We can’t.” I said it. I think I meant it, too. But, God help me, I made no effort to move off Ollie or out of his grip.
“Okay,” he breathed. For a moment he stayed still. But then, having enough control for the both of us, he moved. He helped me move off his lap. He stood. And I stood with him.
“Let’s go back to the shelter. I don’t think we are better off on the beach. I don’t know. I have a bad feeling out here. I know the jungle has all kinds of noises, but it felt safer somehow. I don’t like being out in the open.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Fine.”
I thought turning him down was the right choice. But as we walked, as he carried me again, as we climbed into our shelter, even as I laid down beside him once more, snuggling in against his arm—I felt like shit. I felt pain lingering in my stomach. I felt an ache in my heart that had nothing whatsoever to do with Rhett, but it sure felt similar to the way I’d always felt about Rhett.
The bugs and the strange noises suddenly weren’t as big of an issue. Not when I felt like this on inside.
~ CHAPTER 11 ~
OLIVER
Last night was torture. Being so close to Luce, not being able to touch her when I’d never wanted to touch someone like this before—pure fucking torture. Then today I woke up feeling weak. I guess that was what only grapes and coconut water for two days will do to a person.
“I feel nauseas,” I told her.
She touched me. Her fingers light on my shoulder. “You didn’t try any other ‘eight-hour taste tests’, did you? Or whatever you called that?”
“No.” I swallowed. I had a bad feeling about this. The cut on my arm hadn’t healed like I would have liked. What if this was related to that? “I need to work on trying to make a fire today.” Before I got too weak.
“I want to walk the full circle around the island. What if there’s something on the opposite side and we’ve been camping in the woods for fun this whole time?”
“Good point.”
“So are you coming with or staying here?”
Fuck. I guess the fire could wait. “With.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
After we both went our separate ways to use the bathroom and whatnot, we set off together walking down the beach. After walking in silence for a while, she reached across my body and felt my head. “You’re hot, Ollie.”
I knew what she meant. That I had a fever. But I couldn’t help but smile. “Thanks, babe. You too.”
“No.” She smacked my chest. “You know what I mean.”
“I’m still standing. I’m okay.”
She stared up at me hard, concern in her pretty blue eyes. Concern for me personally or over the possibility of being alone on this island if something were to happen to me? What if something did happen to me? What if I died of some dumb fever never once saying what I really felt?
That single thought shook me. And as we continued walking, finding nothing but more sand, I started to talk. And I mean, really talk to her. “I like you, Luce. I don’t think I’ve ever liked anyone before. I mean, I like being around other people. I like parties and attention. Being on stage and getting likes on Instagram. But genuinely enjoying someone’s company? You might be the first. I’d never wish you here with me. But at the same time, I’m so glad it’s you who’s stuck with me.” I shrugged. I didn’t know what else to say.
“That’s actually one of the—oh, holy shit.” I think she’d been about to say something in response, to probably the most honest thing I’d ever said in my life, but instead she squeezed my arm. “There’s a dock.”
My eyes hadn’t been on the beach in front of us, but on her instead. Sure enough, I looked up and saw a dock.
Luce left me and jogged toward it. I moved slower. I glanced at the trees. It was odd—there was nothing else but the dock? It looked like new construction, too.
Luce stood there on it, checking around. “I don’t get it,” she called out to me. “What’s it for? Why would someone build a dock here and nothing else?”
“To show the island to potential buyers,” I guessed. I sat down where I was standing. The world was spinning. My stomach—too queasy to handle. Fuck. I was dying. “Luce,” I muttered, my vision blurring. “Luce!”
* * *
Three days later.
Sweet Jesus. My head was on Luce’s thigh. Her hands were in my hair. She had big tears in her eyes as she stared down at me. “Oliver?”
“Yes,” I spoke, my voice cracking. It felt like I hadn’t talked in days. Maybe because I hadn’t. “What happened?”
“Holy shit, you’re awake.” She squeezed her arms around me in an awkward hug. “You’ve been in and out of consciousness for three days now.” Her body was trembling. “I can’t believe you’re awake. Here—here.” She moved away from me, and she grabbed something. “Drink some water.”
She brought a glass to my lips, forcing me to sip something that wasn’t coconut water. It was nasty water, but not coconut water.
“The glass,” I muttered. “A real glass?”
I tried to remember anything from the last couple days. My memories were a blur. I think she’d dragged me back to our...shelter?
This wasn’t our shelter. We were somewhere small, confined, but made of wooden boards and nails.
“Fill me in, Luce,” I whispered, taking slow sips of the water from a real, solid glass. Fuck—this had to be good news. “Were we rescued?”
“No. It’s still the island. My guess is there used to be a private home on this island, and it was destroyed by a hurricane. I’ve found a few useful things. Like this shed. It was still intact, just covered in plants.”
“That’s where we are?”
“Yeah.”
A few blurry memories came back to me. One in particular of me vomiting. Shit, she’d witnessed everything. Every moment of everything over the last few days.
“You’re allergic to something. You got so swollen, and at one point barely breathing. I think you’re allergic to coconuts. And then your fever was so high, I didn’t know what to do. Then you had to have been severely dehydrated but I didn’t know what
to give you for water.”
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m collecting water a different way. Some boy-scout way you mumbled about. Thank God, you knew that.” She sniffled, moving a few more inches away from me, not making eye contact. A minute ago, she’d had her hands in my hair and now that I was awake, she seemed like she was afraid to get too close. “If you hadn’t told me that. I don’t think you would have made it. I think you would have died.”
Jesus. She’d saved my life. I glanced at the spot on my arm, where the cut had been. It was still there—but more of a scab now. So that hadn’t been the cause of my fever?
Beside hunger, I wasn’t hurting nearly as much now. “Thank you,” I muttered. “Thank you, Luce. You saved my life.”
“Barely.”
She looked exhausted—bags under her eyes, her hair a mess, and her eyes blood shot. She also looked thinner, like she hadn’t eaten much at all in the days I’d lost.
I moved to stand.
“Ollie—Ollie!”
I was weak, but I managed it. “I’m gonna get some fresh air. I’m okay.”
She stared at me like she didn’t know what to do. “Okay. Be careful.”
“I will.”
~ CHAPTER 12 ~
LUCE
Great.
Perfect.
This was just freaking perfect.
I rolled my eyes at the ceiling. My hands were shaking. They were shaking over Ollie. He was better, and I was still shaking.
I closed my eyes, breathing in deeply. The truth was—I felt something for him. Something unexpected and strong. Seeing him get as sick as he’d gotten had changed something in me. I cared for him. Pretty damn deeply. And all the while, I knew, the moment we got off this island none of this would matter. He’d go right back to his normal life. A life of girls and partying—a million miles from me and my life. I would lose him then.
Never Leave a Rockstar (Never Trust Book 4) Page 4