The increasing tension in Ollie’s green eyes was unmistakable as the music pounded in my ears and through my hips. My eyes closed, and Isaac spun me around from Ollie’s glare and my fingers threaded through his dark hair before he dipped his head down.
Our lips had barely connected when a force pulled me away. I was lifted off the mattress and taken away, but I couldn’t care about anything while floating on cloud nine. My head spun before Ollie’s green eyes came into focus. I cocked my head. “Why did you do that?”
Ollie braced me against the wall and leaned into my ear. “You’re fucked up right now. Isaac’s bad news and I’m saving you from regret.” I leaned over to look behind him and almost fell to the ground when Ollie caught me at the waist. “Mia. Look at me,” he said with two fingers in front of his eyes. Distracted by the beautiful black and white ink running up and down his arms, I traced my fingers over the lines.
He tilted my chin until my eyes met his. His green bore into my brown. “There you are.” He smiled and cupped my cheek, the touch of his thumb caressing my skin making me weak. “You’re back.”
I grabbed the back of his hand, keeping it on my face, afraid if I didn’t, his hands would leave me. “What do you mean?”
“I can see a change in you sometimes. It’s odd and hard to explain, but I know when you’re with me, and I know when you’re not. Not physically, but in here,” Ollie said, bringing his free finger to my temple. “And in here.” He moved his hand over my chest. His hand remained as each breath I took pressed against his palm. “Don’t leave me this time, alright?”
“I want you to kiss me, Ollie.”
What was I saying? Where was my filter?
Kiss me.
Ollie blinked a few times as he tried to push his smile away. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I want to know.” I wasn’t making sense, and I grew frustrated with myself, and with him for not giving me what I wanted. “Kiss me, Ollie … please,” I begged.
No, I am not begging. God, please tell me I didn’t just fucking beg.
Ollie shook his head. “No, you’re not kissing anyone tonight.”
Rejection.
For some reason, it hurt—more than it should have.
“Fine. Offer expired. I’m sure Isaac won’t mind …” I ducked away from him and scanned the room. Isaac was dancing with Bria, and before I could take another step in any direction, Ollie grabbed my arm and pulled me back into his hold.
“Stop walking away from me, Mia.” Pain filled his eyes, and his tongue wet his lips. He cupped my face again, and his forehead pressed to mine—undecided and struggling. “I can’t handle it.”
Then his mouth grabbed mine in desperate need.
Pressed back against the cold cement, our lips molded flawlessly together. He ran his thumb down my chin, and my lips parted for him before our tongues collided. An explosion of feelings went off in my heart as the rest of my skin tingled against his warmth. The taste of Ollie was the perfect mixture of mint and summer. Ice and fire. His lips became softer, as did our momentum. A gentle and slow rhythm of his tongue, of his hands, and his lips over mine could destroy me and put me back together simultaneously.
Ollie pulled away, affirmation flashing in his green eyes. “I am so fucked,” he whispered as his eyes darted back and forth between mine and my mouth.
I bit down on my trembling lip, thinking the same damn thing.
Primal instinct took him over, and he picked me up off the floor and wrapped my legs around his torso. My back slammed against the wall again, and a source of electricity ran through us as I sank into his hold. His warm hands gripped my bottom as we both unraveled, becoming each other’s oxygen. A dozen candles lit somewhere inside me, flickering against the wrath of Ollie Masters.
His fingers laced through mine and he pinned them above my head, the bass of the music persuading our cadence. My body became his, my lips became his, and the only thing keeping me steady was Ollie and everything he was blessing me with. His tongue ran up my neck and behind my ear before he whispered, “I was doomed from day one, Mia,” He dropped his forehead to the wall beside my head as my arms draped over his shoulders. “Fuck. Why did you make me do that?”
“Please,” I begged into his neck, unsure of what I was asking for exactly. Perhaps for Ollie to stop this torture and the way he made me feel, or possibly for him to keep going. He reached for the side of my face, his fingers tracing my swollen lips, and when his lips crashed against mine again, I was gone.
The fire stayed lit through a thunderstorm, and I wanted nothing more than to keep the feeling alive for as long as possible because once the chemicals left my body, I knew what would come next—a shadow of nothingness.
His dimple appeared as a smile stretched across his face. He brought me to solid ground and took my hands in his before pulling me off the wall. “You’re dancing with me now,” he said over the bass to a new song. I gripped his shirt at his sides, and he held my head in his hands as we danced in his dorm room. As far as I knew, it was only him and me. Green eyes filled my vision, as fire and ice spread over my tongue. My fingers moved through his hair, while he held up my weightless body. I only wanted Ollie. I only saw Ollie.
The beat of the song stayed with me as my cheeks went numb from my perpetual smile. The room around us blurred, but he was detailed. I wrapped my arms around him, and his minted breath brushed my neck as he became my ambition. Ollie had me reeling, or maybe it was the ecstasy. Either way, it felt incredible.
We were enveloped in one another—in another dimension, another time. Time itself stood still and sped in synchrony, and I couldn’t get a handle on myself, but I grasped every second of it. I couldn’t stop the pace, but I also couldn’t keep going. I couldn’t understand what was happening at all.
“Ollie …” My legs couldn’t stand any longer as they buckled beneath me. He lowered me onto the mattress as his warm body hovered over mine. Slow hands ran over my bare stomach before gripping my hips as my hopeless being caved beneath him. His tongue traced my jaw before finding its way back to my mouth. My fingers landed on his waistband, and he pulled away.
“Not here,” Ollie said as he shook his head between our kiss. “Not now, not like this.”
Hours passed, and the music in the atmosphere changed along with it. I was back in Ollie’s lap with my head resting into the curve of his neck. Weak and relaxed, the scent of coconut and Ollie bounced off his skin.
Ollie smelled like the ocean and marine breeze—fresh air and freedom.
“What the hell, Mia?” Bria asked as we all sat in a daze.
“It’s Crap-bag now,” Jake hissed, but then giggled at himself.
With no will to answer, I continued to trace Ollie’s tattoos on his arm with my finger. Ollie dropped his head down into my neck. “I just got goosebumps,” he whispered, and kissed my neck as his nose grazed my ear.
The feelings rushing through me intensified with every second near him. I knew who and what I was, but I was also aware of the way he made me feel, and I needed it. I craved it. My empty soul thirsted for something, and he quenched every gap—filled every piece.
“I don’t want this to end,” I whispered, the inevitable lurking behind his light. Ollie dropped his ear closer and ran his fingers through my hair, and I continued to ramble, “It’s going to end. This will all go away when I wake up, but I don’t want it to. I’ve never wanted it not to go away before.” I couldn’t shut up, my filter still nowhere to be found. This stupid ecstasy had me saying things I never thought I would say. My thoughts flowed straight from my subconscious and into the air around me.
Ollie moved his mouth to my ear. “I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.” His voice tickled my neck. His tone tickled my heart. His words tickled my soul. Ollie’s lips brushed over my ear before trailing kisses below and down the tender parts of my ne
ck. His fingers ran up the back of my head. My eyes closed, taking in every sensation, capturing it, and never wanting to forget.
Bria stood from across the room and waved her arms in the air. “Hello?”
“What, mood-killer?” Jake asked, then fell into another fit of giggles. Isaac laughed at Jake’s contagious giggle, and Bria stood humorless.
“Sit down or go back to your dorm,” Isaac said after catching his breath.
“No one is keeping you here,” Ollie added. I picked my heavy head off his neck when he lowered his tone. “It’s almost four in the morning. Everyone should go, anyway.”
“So you can finish yourself off?” Isaac laughed.
“You’re a dirty man,” Ollie said, shaking his head.
I attempted to pull myself up from Ollie’s lap when he reached for my hand.
“One more,” he pleaded, looking up at me with that daydream look in his eyes. He tugged me back down into a pair of soft lips already aching for the taste of mine.
The sun woke me and my eyes blinked opened. The clock above the door said I had missed breakfast, but I couldn’t care. I couldn’t gather a single thought; my head was in a fog. When I tried to lift my arm, I couldn’t. My eyelids grew heavy, and I drifted back to sleep.
There were a few knocks at my door throughout the day, but I couldn’t move my body to answer any of them as I floated in and out of consciousness.
When I woke again, darkness surrounded me, and I didn’t know what time or day it was. I tried to lift my head to look out the window. It was dark, and the moon shed a path of light across my floor, revealing a piece of paper. The note must have been slid under my door. I threw my legs over my bed and walked over to it.
“Making sure you’re alive in there,” it read with an ‘O’ at the bottom.
Ollie.
Memories of moments with him circled as my breathing grew shorter and shorter. A pain ached in my chest, and I reached for the door handle, but it was locked. I couldn’t escape. A scream burned in my throat as I threw my fist at the door. No one was there to stop me as I beat the steel door, screaming until my lungs were completely depleted of oxygen.
My door suddenly buzzed open, and Stanley pulled me from my dorm by my arm and dragged me down the hall. My other hand clawed at his, trying to release myself from his grasp. His grip only tightened, and my head uncontrollably shook as I screamed out, “Let me go!” Stanley ignored me and continued to drag me down the hall. “What did you do to me?” I shouted, my fingers trying to grip the wall as we turned the corner. His silence only made me angrier as I fought against him and punched his shoulder.
“What happened?” the nurse asked as we came through the door. The light in the room was too bright, and I couldn’t see anything. My free arm swung over my eyes to shield them as another scream left me. I felt a pinch in my arm before everything went dark again.
“She’s experiencing an emotional collapse … it should be temporary...”
My lashes parted, and my eyes darted around the room to see Dr. Conway and Lynch speaking at the foot of my bed. It was bright. Too damn bright. I tried to cover my eyes, but my arm was constrained somehow.
“What’s happening?” I asked as I tried to lift my head. My eyes couldn’t adjust fast enough.
“No, darling. Just lie down,” the nurse said before she took my vitals. Dr. Conway pulled a chair beside me and studied my face in silence.
“Answer me,” I demanded.
“I believe you suffered a nervous breakdown, but I don’t know what could have caused it. No one saw you at breakfast, lunch, or dinner on Friday. You were passed out in your room all day. What’s the last thing you remember?”
Ollie immediately came to mind. I remembered his intense green eyes and the way his lips felt against mine. I remembered the mint, coconut, and the … ecstasy.
It was the ecstasy.
“I don’t know,” I lied.
“Something had to have triggered this. Something opened a door, and it was too much for your body to handle all at once.”
The nurse took my temperature and I clenched my eyes shut as I tried to process what Dr. Conway was saying. “This all seems extreme for it to be something as ridiculous as a nervous breakdown.”
“You’ll be okay, this is normal.” Dr. Conway turned to the nurse. “She’s running a small fever, and her body is reacting. Keep her in here for one more day,” Dr. Conway said before I drifted back to sleep.
Chapter Seven
“There’s a fire within her,
golden embers in her eyes.
She makes me burn so deep
That just breathing hurts.”
—Oliver Masters
TIME PASSED QUICKLY as I fell in and out of sleep in the nurse’s station. The last time I’d checked, it was Tuesday, when I was only supposed to be here for one more day. A steady fever idled days after the nurse said it should have been gone, and no one could understand what was wrong with me. Bringing up the ecstasy wasn’t an option. I wasn’t a snitch.
Jake’s bright smile came from behind the white curtain.
“Hey, Mia,” he said, empathy lacing his tone. He stood uncomfortably beside my bed with his arms full of books and snacks. He looked down, and pity struck his blue eyes.
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m not dying, Jake. I only had a fever.”
“A fever? Really, Mia? Everyone’s talking and saying they heard you freak out in the middle of the night.”
I groaned. “Great, so everyone’s talking?”
“It doesn’t matter, as long as you’re okay.” He adjusted the items in his hand before a bag of chips fell out, but he managed to catch it. “I brought your homework assignments and snuck some extra snacks from the vending machine. I didn’t know if you had access to the good stuff in this … sterile environment.” Jake glanced around at the surroundings. “It feels like I walked through heaven’s gates with all the white.”
I squinted up at him. “I know. It’s blinding.”
Jake placed the stack of books on the side table and built a mountain of snacks over the top. He glanced over at me and brought his hand to the back of his head. “So, Ollie’s waiting outside … can he come in?”
The way he said “so” made it seem so casual yet afraid to touch a nerve.
“Why is Ollie here?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Mia. Perhaps he wants to check on you?” He rolled his eyes. “Believe it or not, you do have people who care about you.”
Throwing my head back into the pillow, I faced the ceiling. “Fine, send him on in. Why don’t you bring Bria and Isaac while you’re at it?”
Jake made sense. He had a purpose for being here, bringing over my homework assignments, and, well, because he was Jake. But Ollie had no reason to come unless it was to find out if I had told the nurse anything I shouldn’t have. I raked my fingers through my hair and wiped the corners of my eyes before Ollie stepped in from behind the curtain.
My chest constricted from his presence and his green eyes penetrated my empty soul, knocking on every door, reminding me it was never the ecstasy—or had my fever never left me?
He paused to take in my condition and surroundings.
“You look like shit,” he said through a sarcastic smile and dragged a chair beside my bed.
I exhaled. “Thanks.” At least this wasn’t as awkward as I’d thought it would be. Maybe we could put the whole night behind us. He grinned as he fell back in the chair and crossed his ankle over his other thigh. His black jeans hugged him and his usual white non-Dolor tee fell past his waistband. “What are you doing here, Ollie?”
His arched a brow while his other arm fell across the arm of the chair. “Checking on you, love. What happened? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine and don’t worry. I didn’t say anything about the … you know …
”
A small grin formed. “You think that’s what I’m worried about?”
If I were him, I would have been worried about that. It could have gotten him, and everyone else, sent to solitary confinement in the best case scenario. “I don’t know … what else would you be worried about?”
The expression across his face was nothing like mine. “You, Mia. I’m worried about you,” he said as if I should have known this already. But the only thing I knew was the direction it was going.
“No, don’t do that,” I muttered and waved my hand in the air.
He quickly uncrossed his leg and leaned into his elbows. “Do what, Mia?”
“Don’t take what happened as a sign we are in some relationship now. We were doped up.” I laughed lightly. “It was a mistake.”
He hung his head between his shoulders and slowly shook it from side to side.
Three seconds passed before he glanced back up at me, and something changed in his eyes. Half the hope was sucked out, and the only half remaining was mixed with confusion. “For the record, you were doped up. I wasn’t. I did what I did because I wanted to. Dammit, Mia, what I wanted was to wait until you weren’t fucked up, but you didn’t give me much of a choice.”
“You didn’t … take any?”
“No, I don’t do that shit. I’ll drink now and then, but there’s a line I’m not willing to cross.”
“Now I can see why,” I said as I looked down at myself. From an outsider’s perspective, I was sure I looked pathetic—ridiculous, even. Bria, Isaac, and Jake weren’t here after taking the drug. It was only me in this hospital bed hooked up to a monitor, the one who couldn’t hang, and who everyone else would make jokes about for the rest of the semester—or even worse, the rest of my time here.
Ollie reached for my hand, and I froze as his thumb stroked mine. “I’m sorry … I didn’t mean for this to happen.” He paused and turned his head for a moment as if he was contemplating words he would later regret. “But what happened between us wasn’t a mistake, and you know it. Frankly, I’m confused because you said it yourself. You said you didn’t want the feeling to go away.” He said the words regardless.
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