Stay With Me (Stay With Me Series Book 1)

by Nicole Fiorina

  “Oh, good. Have you found comfort in something?”

  “You can say that.” Ollie’s eyes fell back on me as his bouncing knee suddenly calmed.

  “Very well. Hopefully, this one will stick this time.”

  “I’m certain of it,” Ollie said slowly, as if each word was meant for me.

  At dinner, I ran my fork through my corn, dividing it up into two sections. The number of corn was uneven, so I popped one in my mouth.

  “We need to talk,” Ollie stated flatly as he approached my table. Maybe if I pretended he wasn’t standing beside me, peering down with a hand to the back of his head, he would go away.

  Steering my attention back to my tray, I stabbed another kernel with my fork. Ollie rolled his head back and drew in a deep breath before walking behind me, lifting my books off the chair beside me, and taking a seat. He set the books on the table.

  My eyes were on the corn; his eyes were on me. I knew because they were heavy and light all at once. When I still didn’t acknowledge him, he turned my knees until they settled between his and my whole body moved along until I faced him. “Stop acting like a child, Mia.”

  I dropped my fork over my tray. “I’m not. I just don’t want to talk.”

  “Is that the reason why you’re here? Because you’re emotionally detached?” he asked, and when I didn’t answer him, he continued, “I don’t believe that. You may have everyone else fooled, but I don’t believe it for one second.” I turned my head away, but Ollie wrapped his fingers around my chin and forced me to face him.

  As soon as my eyes met his, something occurred to him.

  “You’re scared …” He shook his head and softened his voice. “What are you scared of? What happened to you?”

  I wish I knew. “Nothing happened to me. This is how I am.” I jerked my face from his hold, and he ran his hand up his forehead and through the front of his wave.

  “No. Since you’ve been here, you haven’t defended anyone, but the moment I can’t help myself, you come to my rescue. And your eyes, Mia.” He grabbed my hand brought it close to him over his lap. “They light up when you see me, and every chance you had to kiss someone else, you refused or made up poor excuses. But you kiss me, and you fucking love it. Admit it, Mia, you do have feelings, and it scares the hell out of you.”

  Damn right I had feelings. I felt cornered—forced to confront the same harsh questions I’d been struggling to find the answers to. There was no study or Wiki Forum to give me explanations as to why an emotionally detached girl of ten years could start experiencing moments of weakness. And even if it was somewhere in the cyber world, even if someone had been through this before, I had no access to find out.

  Somehow, he was the only one to get under my skin, and I needed to prove him wrong. I needed to prove to myself this was all in my damn head. My gaze darted around the mess hall until they landed on Liam, and I suddenly knew what I needed to do.

  “Where are you going?” Ollie asked as I stood from the chair.

  He made every cell erupt inside me, and there was only one way to stop it.

  My feet marched to Liam, who stood in front of his usual table, and before he could get a word out, I reached around his neck and pressed my lips against his. Ollie and Liam despised one another, and out of everyone in this mess hall, Liam was the answer to get Ollie off my back.

  Liam’s hand found my waist as he pinned me against him and massaged his tongue against mine. The fire was gone, and the mess hall went up in a roar.

  When I pulled away from Liam, I turned back to my table.

  Ollie was gone.

  Finally.

  “What in the bloody hell was that for?” Liam asked with a lopsided grin, and the girls surrounding his table narrowed their eyes at me. Liam didn’t deserve an explanation, so I turned and walked away. The only person who deserved any amount of words was Ollie, and I had just proved he didn’t mean shit to me.

  Jake, Alicia, and Isaac stared at me with disapproving looks as I exited the mess hall. I’d tried to warn them about me. They’d all found out the truth during group therapy, but no one had believed me. This was Ollie’s fault, not mine. I’d told him my rules. He’d known what he was getting himself into. He should have known better.

  As soon as I opened the door to my dorm room, I paused under the door frame. Ollie sat over the edge of my bed with his elbows over his knees. His head hung between his shoulders, and I could tell his hair had been gripped numerous times on the way from the mess hall to here.

  After closing the door behind me, I took a few steps toward the desk and leaned into it. “I warned you.”

  Ollie lifted his head. “What the fuck was that back there? Was that your way of proving something to yourself?” His voice was thick but without malice, and there was a mixture of pain and sickness in his eyes.

  “No, that was my way of proving something to you.”

  Ollie stood from the mattress and walked toward me. “You want to prove something to me, yeah?” He brought his palm to my cheek, and my head involuntarily sunk into his hold. “Prove this alone doesn’t mean more to you than your ego.”

  His thumb stroked my cheek, and I closed my eyes against his warmth. “Nothing,” I cracked in a lie.

  “What about this?” Ollie lifted my chin and grazed his lips across mine, and I remembered the taste of him. I sucked in a breath. “We’re both sober right now, and nothing is stopping you from pulling away from me, but you can’t.” His long fingers reached behind my neck as the mint rolled off his tongue. “Mia, I’m going to kiss you now, and when I’m done, I promise I’ll leave, but—”

  And I shut him up with my mouth against his.

  As soon as our lips met, we caught fire, and a sort of frenzy took us over. His tongue danced along my lips before slipping inside, injecting me with life. I was sober, but he became my drug and dose of medicine wrapped up in one tall and beautiful, tattooed pill. His other hand found my face as he pushed his torso against me, and the desk slammed against the wall. Each swipe of his tongue was more sensual, every catch of the lips was more determined, and every touch of his fingers satisfied every need I hurt for.

  He became my oxygen, stealing my breath only to return it. My lifeline. And just when I thought the pieces of me were finally coming back together, he pulled away to leave me breathless. Ollie pressed his forehead to mine, struggling with his promise to leave on his ruined lips. The tempo in his breathing steadied, and I shut my eyes as he kissed my forehead.

  “Don’t ever kiss another before my eyes again,” he stated before his hands left me.

  The sound of the door closing caused me to flinch, and when I opened my eyes again, he was gone.

  Chapter Nine

  “To everyone, she’s seen as nothing.

  With everything I have, she is

  quite the someone.”

  —Oliver Masters

  IT WAS HARDER to breathe at Dolor. Everywhere I turned, I was being forced to talk about shit—feelings and emotions. People talked about me as if I weren’t standing right there. They told me what was wrong with me, who I was, my symptoms, my disorders, what went through my mind as if they knew me. I wanted to scream nothing was wrong with me. They’d poked and poked and poked, and when I’d thought they couldn’t poke any longer, Ollie had shown up and kissed me like that.

  Pacing my dorm room, my lips beat like a drum to its own pulse in his absence. At one point within the last five minutes, I’d believed he was the actual devil. Surrounded by indestructible walls, only Satan could punch through and lure me in the way Ollie did.

  Frustrated with my irrational thinking, I shook my head. Ollie clouded my judgment, and I couldn’t think straight. A slow rising pressure built, and with each step I felt myself gradually losing it. He’d kissed me, and before leaving, he’d somehow managed to pick up my scattered pieces, stuff
them in his pocket, and take them with him.

  Before Ollie, I didn’t have pieces. He’d built them, broken them, and stolen them.

  Pulling on my hair, nothing took away the suffering brewing inside my chest. And when the pulling didn’t work, I threw my fist into the concrete wall.

  Instant regret.

  “Mother fucker!” I cursed at the top of my lungs as my body crumbled to the ground. My chest burned, unable to find a single breath afterward. Thoughts even stopped as I curled into a fetal position with my fist clutched to my chest. My door swung open and a cool rush of air brushed past my already frozen body. Voices echoed throughout my room, but I couldn’t focus long enough to understand what they said. Low moans came from somewhere. Was it me? Was I moaning?

  My heart was in my fist as it pounded at an irregular pace.

  My vision was stunned. I could no longer blink.

  “Alicia, go get the nurse!” someone shouted. “Oh my god … Alicia!”

  My eyes fixed on the gray cement wall I had punched moments before, and I couldn’t find the will to move them in either direction. Voices came in and out of focus like a long-distance call.

  “Don’t move her. She’s in shock. Everyone back up.” It was my dark angel in all white—the nurse.

  When I came to, a thin gray sheet lay over me. A cast covered my hand, and Dr. Conway sat in my desk chair, reading over papers in her lap. Her high and thick black hair framed her ivory skin. She belonged in the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding. I wanted to smile at the thought of her spraying my fist with Windex, but I couldn’t.

  She brought her long red nails to her lips as a wide yawn broke out.

  “What happened?” I asked, and she looked up from her paper.

  She removed the stack of papers from her lap and placed them over my desk before crossing her legs. “You broke your hand.” A light sigh blew from her dark red lips. “And tell me, Mia, what on earth did the wall ever do to you?”

  I rolled my eyes at her attempt at humor.

  “You can’t resort to violence. If you have one more incident, we will have to remove all your furniture from your room, and if you harm yourself again, we’ll have to place you in solitary confinement. Now, why did you punch the wall?” She raised a brow.

  Her eyes were tired, and I could tell she had been waiting a while for me to wake.

  I drew in a deep breath. “A guy kissed me,” I said through an exhale.

  Dr. Conway pressed her lips together.

  “It’s not funny.”

  She threw her hand in the air. “Hey, I didn’t say anything.”

  “You didn’t have to.”

  She turned her head to see out the window in order to hide the smile I caught regardless. She so badly wanted to laugh, and it took her a moment to reel herself back into the conversation as a psychologist. “I’m not concerned about the broken hand or the fact you punched a wall. I’m more concerned about the state of shock you went into afterward. Can I ask you something personal?”

  “No.” It was an automatic response, a response much easier to say than “yes.” Others would disagree. Others would find “yes” was much easier because you wouldn’t have to disappoint anyone. I didn’t envy those types of people.

  Dr. Conway glanced up at the clock above my door. “It’s almost nine. I have to head home.” She picked up her stack of papers from the desk and gathered to her feet. “In the meantime, I want you to think back at what’s inducing this anger. What’s the common denominator sending you into a rage both times? There you will have your answer.”

  Dr. Conway dropped her chin and left. She left me alone with a million more thoughts and unanswered questions I didn’t have before my fist met the wall.

  I thought Fridays would be my favorite, considering there were no classes, but they grew to be my least. During breakfast, I wrote lyrics to songs I couldn’t listen to over my cast in a sharpie next to my tray of uneaten food. Since I’d arrived, I’d lost five pounds—like I needed to lose any more weight.

  From the table in front of me, Screaming Kid stared at his tray, waiting for something magical to happen, as if it were a cocoon on the verge of becoming a butterfly.

  Most didn’t know this, but a butterfly spent the majority of their life in the caterpillar and cocoon stages. The caterpillar stage was the most dangerous and life-threatening. Then, if they could make it past the caterpillar stage, they had to hide in a defenseless cocoon for up to two weeks to only turn into something beautiful for a short amount of time.

  What stage was I in? Was I the damned caterpillar or was I hiding in a cocoon? Would I ever turn into a butterfly, or would the storm take me away before I learned the truth?

  Ollie was already a butterfly—beautiful and strong.

  While I was damned, he was divine.

  Zeke must have felt the weight of my stare and glanced up to see me. The longer we looked at each other, the more I noticed the deep agony embedded in his sad brown eyes. He’d never spoken a word. The only sound coming from him were shrieks.

  And even in silence, his eyes were screaming.

  I stood, walked over, and took a seat across from him. “What’s your name?”

  His facial expression froze as he stared back at me.

  “I think your name is Zeke, and since you probably won’t tell me otherwise, it’s what I’ll call you.” Better than Screaming Kid. Leaning back in the chair, I dropped my right-handed cast over the table. Zeke’s attention went to my cast. “I punched a wall. It was stupid. And yes, I regret it.”

  Zeke snapped his eyes back to mine, and his brown curly hair bounced off his forehead.

  “Truth is, up until I arrived here, I hadn’t been able to feel anything … but you want to know a secret?” I leaned in and pointed my eyes in Ollie’s direction. “That stupid guy over there kissed me—three times now, and it does something to me I can’t explain. So, I took it out on the wall.” I fell back against the chair as Zeke looked over to Ollie and back at me. “Damn, it feels good to get that off my chest.”

  The corner of his lip turned up slightly. He’d understood every word.

  “You’re a good listener, unlike everyone else here. We should do this more often.”

  A shadow cast over us. My attention followed the source to see Liam hovering over our table. “What are you doing?” he asked, darting his glare between Zeke and me.

  “What does it look like? I’m talking to my new friend Zeke here.” I shot a smile over to Zeke, and he flinched under Liam’s shadow.

  Liam chuckled as he pulled his blond hair back into a bun. “Whatever floats your boat, Jett. Let’s get out of here. I know a place.”

  Liam stuffed his hands into his pocket and arched an impatient brow.

  Past Liam, Ollie watched us from his table in the middle of the mess hall. Reminders of last night sent heat through my bloodstream and across the surface of my skin. Don’t ever kiss another before my eyes again, he had said to me moments before I’d broken my hand. Ollie didn’t know I don’t like to be manipulated, and the way his eyes were controlling me made me only want to defy him.

  “Yeah, okay.” I stood and turned back to Zeke. “Dinner, same place?” Zeke didn’t move. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  Liam and I walked out of the mess hall and down the corridor side by side. The unknown of what I was walking toward kept my feet in front of me, but the memory of Ollie’s eyes on me consumed my thoughts. Ollie’s gaze wanted to pull me away from Liam, but curiosity kept me moving forward. A constant push and pull.

  “Where are we going?” I asked as we turned a corner.

  Two girls passed by us, both shooting daggers in our direction as they whispered between one another.

  “Hey, Liam,” one practically sang.

  Liam only gave them a small nod before he leaned his head into my hair. �
��Can’t ruin the surprise. You know, I’ve been thinking about your bold move to kiss me yesterday. Most girls aren’t as aggressive.”

  Liam and Ollie were the same height, but the way Ollie leaned into me affected me differently.

  A short laugh pressed out from my lips. “Don’t flatter yourself. I used you, and I’m not sorry about it.”

  Liam looked down at me with hooded blue eyes. “Me neither.” He had a one-tracked mind and wanted to pick up where we’d left off the day before.

  We turned another corner, and after walking clear across Dolor, we approached a large black door with “dark room” etched into the plaque beside the door on the wall.

  “What is this place?” I asked Liam as he opened the door.

  He placed his hand on the small of my back as he guided me in before him. “It’s a dark room for photography. No one comes in here anymore.”

  Trays lay evenly across a table in the back as old photos hung from the scalloped string from the ceiling. Machines, looking like they belonged in a science lab, took up most of the space, and I turned to Liam to see a dicey smile. His hungry eyes glowed in the dark red lighting of the small and stifling room.

  “I enjoyed our kiss yesterday.” Liam took a step forward. He gripped my waist as he leaned down.

  “No.” I held up a hand to his face. “If we’re doing what I think we’re doing, then no kissing.”

  Liam nodded excitedly as his eyes went wild. “Deal.”

  His cold hands dipped beneath my shirt, and my muscles stiffened at the touch. What was wrong with me? I’d done this so many times before. “Arms up,” he demanded, and I silently obliged. He lifted my shirt over my head, and there were no words or will inside me to stop him as he pulled his bottom lip between his teeth.

  Stupor robbing me of my intelligence, I reached behind my back and unlatched my bra. Liam’s eyes went weak at the sight of my breasts before he cupped them in his hands. Guys like Liam needed this. You would think they were confident, secure, but they were anything but. Guys like Liam had the endless need to feel they were wanted and accepted.