He spun and towered over me, nostrils flaring. “He had one job, Mia. One.” Noticing his tight grip on my hand, he quickly released before turning around and taking off with fists clenched at his sides. I ran after him, calling out his name.
Ollie only saw red—Ethan red.
I yanked on his arm from behind, but there was no stopping one-tracked-mind Ollie.
“Forget it, Ollie. Please. I’m begging you. Let it go!”
Ollie’s hand landed on the doorknob, and he was quickly inside and across the room by the time I pushed through behind him. “Everyone out!” he shouted, his face red and sweat dotting his hairline. People stayed glued to their seats, leaning forward eager for the real show that was about to start. Ethan had already jumped to his feet, his eyes darting around, taking in the scene around. “Get the fuck out!” Ollie ordered again, and that time people scrambled out.
I stepped in front of Ollie, covering his fists with my hands. “Please, don’t do this.”
“Get out, Mia.”
“Look at me! This isn’t going to end well!”
Ollie picked me up and carried me out the door before setting me on my feet. “Jake, don’t let her out of your sight!” Ollie yelled over my shoulder before closing the door.
“Don’t you dare do this!” I screamed through the small window, throwing my fists into the door.
Ollie’s hollowed eyes fixated on me, and the door lock clicked. “Close your eyes, Mia.” Then he turned his back to me and took long strides toward Ethan. Ethan circled the desk, trying to talk sense into Ollie, but Ollie swiftly moved around it. Ollie’s daunting voice shook the walls before he picked up the desk as if it were a feather pillow and threw it across the room. The veins in his neck bulged as adrenaline pumped through emotional and fierce flesh.
Ethan held up his hands, taking a step back, but Ollie moved swiftly and launched his fist into his skull. The ear-splitting sound pierced through the door.
I screamed out, tears spilled from the corner of my eyes, and I fell to the floor along with the rest of me. People smashed into me, trying to get a view of the action inside, but all I could do was press my palms against my ears to drown out the sounds and move along the wall to get out of the way.
Time passed, and eventually people scattered. A wave of cold air brushed passed me, and I shivered against it. The door opened, but I was too scared to look up and face the music. Ollie’s Chuck Taylor’s appeared beside me. Then Ethan’s boots came into view for a mere moment. I lifted my head to see the two shaking hands before Ethan turned and walked away before I had a chance to see his face.
“Mia,” Ollie pressed, his hand landing over my shoulder. “Look at me.”
“Leave her alone. She obviously doesn’t want to talk to you,” Jake muttered, and I had no idea he’d hung around for this long. I didn’t have to look up to know he was standing across from me at the opposite side of the hall.
Ollie slid down the wall beside me. The heat and familiarity emitting from him comforted me, but I was too mad to accept it. “I’m not going anywhere, Mia. I’ll sit here all night if I have to,” Ollie said to me.
Sure enough, Ollie sat beside me. I don’t know who else was around anymore. I was too stubborn to lift my head and check. A few students walked by, but no one talked.
“Well this is fun and all, but I’m going to head out,” Jake mumbled, and his footfalls faded down the hall.
Ollie and I sat in silence. I don’t know how much time had passed. I didn’t know where the hell Ethan had gone or if he was still here. I didn’t know anything anymore. The only thing I was sure of, I was fucking mad.
“I love you, Mia,” Ollie whispered, bumping his leg next to mine.
“That was selfish. You’re selfish.”
Ollie blew out air. “Selfish, yeah?”
“Yeah,” I breathed into the hoodie. “And dangerous.”
I felt his mind racing at the speed of light. Somehow, his thoughts touched me and sifted through me. The need to wring out his worry made my fingers twitch inside my sleeve. He just pounded into Ethan’s head for no good reason. A reason that was all my fault. This had been all my fault, and the two people I loved were stewing in the aftermath.
“Selfish,” he repeated with a shake of his head. He stretched out his legs in front of him and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “You know, I remembered seeing this movie … I can’t remember the bloody name of it and to be honest, I might’ve imagined it, but I’ll never forget what the girl said … something along the lines of you can’t be both selfish and in love. Humans are created to love themselves first and foremost, the reason we can’t physically harm ourselves with our bare hands. You’ll never be able to break skin using your own teeth or scratch beyond the surface enough to draw blood. And the ones who do are considered dangerous—insane even.”
Tilting my head, I laid it across my folded arms to face him. Blood seeped down his busted eyebrow, but I didn’t say anything. He’d probably deserved it, and I wondered how bad Ethan looked.
Ollie put his thumb between his teeth and clenched his eyes, his brows knitted together in determination. I lifted my head as my breath held in my chest. “What are you doing?” It finally dawned on me, and I tried pushing his arm away, but Ollie leaned away, shielding himself with his other arm.
When he pulled his thumb away, blood pumped from the broken skin. My eyes bulged from their sockets, darting back and forth. Ollie straightened his posture and shook his head. “The most dangerous man is a man in love,” he faced me, eyes wild and calm concurrently, “because I’d tear off my own flesh before someone hurts you … and if I’d do that to myself, imagine what I’d do to someone else.”
I stared at him, his adoring green eyes staring back at me. Ollie’s arm hung over his knee, his palm face-up as blood dripped over the marble. “Don’t ever do that again,” I fumed, and grabbed his thumb and wrapped it into the sleeve of my hoodie. “You’re insane.”
He smiled. “I’m in love,” he corrected, and his head fell back against the wall. “Are you still mad at me?”
An incredulous smile rose to my lips, and I wiped my eyes with the back of my free hand. “Yeah. I’m still mad at you.”
Together, we climbed back to our feet. Ollie grabbed my hand in his and sucked off his bleeding thumb. “Hey, Mia?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t ever try what I just did. It fucking hurts.”
“Good.” I laughed and shoved my shoulder into his arm.
My gaze burned holes into the side of Jude’s face before it traced over his temple, his prominent nose, and long hair. Before, I had been a scared little bitch. But that was before.
My fear had since turned to anger.
Ollie’s fingers dug into my thigh, attempting to absorb the rage rolling through me. “Baby, eat,” he said.
Ollie never called me that. He was desperate.
A security guard from confinement, who I nicknamed Yeti, stood in Ethan’s usual place. Typically, we don’t see guards from other areas very often. Not nearly long enough to know their names, and many of them refuse to offer giving it, but Yeti wasn’t much older than me with blonde wavy hair and crystal blue eyes. No facial hair, average height. The kind of guy who probably had girls following him around in high school, or whatever they called it here, and didn’t have a dream to follow after that. Yeti rocked a dad bod, I was still unsure if he had the kid to match, working for a dangerous school on minimum wage. The Yeti nickname came from the silver Yeti cup he carried around, probably laced in liquor from the way he swayed against the wall.
Yeti would be the perfect victim, so easy for me to get access to his set of keys.
“I need to get into Lynch’s office,” I rasped out, a plan formulating in my head. “I need access to files to learn my enemy.” Ollie drummed his forefinger and thumb against my thigh bef
ore pulling his hand away and scratching over his chest. My comment made him nervous, but I was going to do this with or without him. “I need to get my hands on a set of guard’s keys.”
Ollie’s palm ran down his face, looking over every inch of the mess hall before turning his piercing emerald gems to me. I’d just threatened his plan of laying low and walking out of here together. One idea, and I’d threatened our future.
It’s not my fault, Ollie. I’m just playing the same game.
“Got it all figured out, yeah?” Ollie asked.
I set my lips in a hard line.
“Dammit, Mia,”—Ollie slammed his fist into the table, making both Zeke and I jump— “Four bloody months. Until then, the only thing you’re doing is eating, sleeping, and enjoying every fucking night with me.” Easy for him to say. He wasn’t the one trapped in a dark enclosed room for over an hour. And even so, he was quick to take it out on the wrong person. “You have to trust me on this.”
I lifted my chin and hit my gaze back on Jude. That’s what it feels like. The words from the note repeated over and over, and I wondered what he meant by that.
Ollie’s hand grabbed my face, turning my attention to him. “Promise me … you’re going to let me take care of it.” His eyes prayed, and his jaws clenched. “Say it, Mia. Promise me.”
“I promise.” I bit the inside of my cheek to feel the sting of my lie. Looking into his eyes doing it felt like a blade to the throat. Ollie’s lips landed on my forehead, and my eyes closed.
He held his lips there for a moment before pulling away. “Don’t ever fucking lie to me again.” Ollie pushed his chair out, and like the very gentleman he was and couldn’t defy, he pushed his chair back in. “I need to take a walk.” And he took off to the food line.
Ollie wouldn’t leave this room, or any room I was in.
Zeke pounded his fist against the table, grabbing my attention from Ollie’s back.
Mia and Ollie. Forever, Zeke signed adamantly. Not Pam and Jim. Not Ross and Rachel. Not Romeo and Juliet. Mia and Ollie. Go after him.
“No, he needs space,” I reassured, too lazy to use sign language at the moment. “Just a misunderstanding.”
He needs you, Zeke added.
“He has me, Zeke. Forever. He’s not angry with me. He’s angry at a faceless douchebag, and he wants to fix this problem but doesn’t even know where to begin. Ollie’s stuck between morals and destruction. Calm and a storm. Love and hate. He’s stuck in the middle—everything he’s so certain about being questioned.” My eyes dragged until they hit faded tattoos and messy brown hair. The man my soul was promised to posted up on a wall, staring at me from across the room with his hand gripping the back of his neck and his leg propped. “In his beautiful mind, Ollie is carrying the burden of a thousand lost souls yet has the heart of a thousand angels. That’s exactly why I can’t let him do this for me. I lied because I can take this person down without so much as a scratch at my conscious. Ollie walked away because he knows it too.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Sometimes all we need
is someone who will
sit in the dark with us.”
—Oliver Masters
mia.
MS. CHANDLER SAT WITH her cell phone in front of her face, popping gum in her mouth and smiling at whoever she was probably sexting. I’d finished my lesson approximately twenty minutes ago and had another twenty minutes to sit here and listen to her soft giggle and pop of the gum.
“Did you hear what happened in the Looney Bin last night?” Tyler whispered. “Another suicide. Told you … contagious. Spreads like wildfire.”
It didn’t make sense. That made three suicides in one school year. Highly unlikely. “How did you hear about this?”
Tyler shrugged. She’d changed so much since the year started. From the looks of it, twenty or so pounds fell off her. Her blonde hair, which was usually down and hiding her face, was up in a high ponytail. She lost two buttons on her Dolor shirt, showing cleavage. She was confident. Good for her, but at what cost?
Pop.
Tyler groaned. “If I hear that one more time, I’m going to scream … ” Her eyes seared into Ms. Chandler as she continued to whine, and my brain went to a place where math, statistics, and suicide lived. Suicide shouldn’t be associated with math, but unfortunately, we lived in a world where everything’s measured in numbers.
In my world, both Ethan and Ollie seemed emotionally and physically affected by it.
I’d only seen Ethan in passing once since the beating, and it was all I needed to confirm Ollie had released wrath on his face. After the beating, they’d both shook hands and went their separate ways. Ethan’s healing cheekbone looked like a July sunset in Pennsylvania. His lip had a cut, and his eye was still swollen, even after a week. When I’d thought he’d be mad at me, he wasn’t.
I’d learned you didn’t have to be feared to be respected. No one feared Ollie, yet everyone respected him. “If people fear you, you will be ten feet tall amongst enemies. If people love you, you will be a hundred feet tall among loyal defenders,” Ollie had once said. People give you respect if you give them something in return—a choice, an answer, a lesson … And the day Ollie’s fist blasted into Ethan’s skull, Ollie had given everyone a lesson on what happens when you turn your back on the people with whom your loyalty lies.
A spanking had been what it was.
Ethan walked into the classroom, and his eyes hit mine before steering toward Ms. Chandler at the front of the class.
“Officer Scott, what a surprise,” she cooed, fucking Ethan with her mascara-clumped lashes and pursing her pink lips. It was no shock to anyone Ethan had the body of a god and the chiseled features of one of Picasso’s portraits. But only I knew what he felt like curled up in his arms in the middle of the night as he whispered the terrors away.
“Jett, let’s go,” Ethan called, ignoring the way Chandler made a fool of herself as she propped her elbow over the table and leaned forward to display the dip of her shirt. I smiled to myself as I collected my things and waved a hand at Tyler.
We walked one room over, and Ethan hurriedly closed the door and turned to me. His mask vanished and was back to the Ethan I’d known very well. “I need you,” he quietly said. “One night. I need one night. I’m not doing so well. I’m so sorry for leaving you alone. I should’ve never done that. But, please, Jett. Tell Masters you’re sleeping in your room tonight. Tell him whatever you need to, but I’m telling you, I fucking need you so bad right now. I’m going to bloody break. I can’t handle it,” Ethan continued to ramble.
“Okay,” I nodded and grabbed his hand. Ethan never admitted to needing me before. I’d always assumed he needed me, but it had been the first time I’d heard him say those words. Whatever had him so worked up, I needed to be there for him.
Ethan let out a breath. “What are you going to tell Masters?”
“The truth. You’re my family, and my family needs me right now. But I also need you to do something for me.”
“What?”
“I need to break into Lynch’s office.”
“What the fuck for?”
“Files. I need to look at the student files. Ollie can’t know.”
Ethan let out a disbelieving laugh. “Let me get this straight, you’ll be honest about lying next to me at night, but lie about breaking into Lynch’s office? Have you told him I’ve touched all over you? Does Masters understand you’re mine as much as his?”
“That’s the difference between you and Ollie. To Ollie, I’m no one’s property.”
Ethan scratched his cheek. “I didn’t mean it like that, and you know it,” a moment of silence drifted between the two of us, then Ethan’s rare smile slowly appeared, “So, we have a deal then?”
“This isn’t a deal. There are no deals between us. I need to know you’ll be the
re when I need you, and you know I’ll always help you,” I explained.
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
And just like that, we were back to our old selves.
“See you tonight?” Ethan asked, his rare smile relaxed.
“Yeah,” I wrapped my arms around his waist, “I’ll see you tonight.”
He kissed my forehead before we exited, and like clockwork, Ollie waited outside the classroom, only this time, Maddie stood in front of him in a heated conversation. His eyes found mine, and he straightened his back when he noticed Ethan behind me.
“Come on, love,” Ollie muttered, swinging an arm over my shoulder.
Maddie threw her arms in the air, bothered in the way he was leaving things. “That’s it, ya?”
Absentmindedly, Ollie continued his stride with me at his side. “What was that about?” I asked him.
“A bloke we used to know, the summer before you arrived, hung himself in the Looney Bin. I hadn’t seen him since that summer, but Maddie grew close to him during her visit in psych. She was just trying to talk to me, saying he wouldn’t do something like that.” His words were too casual. When Ollie talked about death, he spoke using his heart. These words weren’t coming from the Ollie I knew.
“Ollie,” I paused, moving my hand over his chest, “You can talk to me about it … If something is bothering you.”
“The only thing that bothers me is the way people talk about suicide and how it affected them. Are we so self-centered, that even in death, we selfishly cry for our losses, not once taking a second to think how much torture and pain the soul went through before deciding to end their life? It’s sickening … the silent cry for help no one responds to when the person needed it most. There’s never an action, only a reaction on this bloody earth. The moment someone speaks up about their internal pain, they’re shoved onto meds, counseling, and hospitals,” Ollie tapped his head vigorously, “because we don’t fit into their box and we’re fucking weak and lazy, yeah? How about alone and misunderstood!”
Even When I'm Gone (Stay With Me series Book 2) Page 29