Caving, my traitorous lips crashed with Ollie’s, and the rest of my body betrayed me. My disloyal hand was in his hair as my unfaithful breath became his. Every part of me abandoned me, and I could do nothing about it. I belonged to him.
His lips parted in dire demand and as soon as his warm tongue flicked against mine, a moan freed itself between us. I didn’t know if it had come from him or myself, but I didn’t care. Yesterday’s flames picked up in a frenzy as his warm hands found my bare skin at my sides, warming me in more ways than one.
Ollie pulled away and wet his lips. “I hope … no, I’m praying you’re not toying with me right now,” he said breathlessly. “Mia, tell me you’re not fucking with me.”
Shaking my head, I couldn’t grasp what he was saying. Here I was, telling him exactly what had been on my mind moments ago, more than I had ever admitted to anyone. “I don’t know what you want me to say.” I searched the question written on his face. “Look me in the eyes, and you tell me if I’m playing with you, Ollie.” Honestly, I didn’t know what he’d find. Truth, possibly?
Ollie rested his hand on my face and moved my hair to look into my eyes. I held my breath in anticipation, waiting for what would come of it. There was nothing there. There couldn’t be. But once his green eyes stared into mine, it quenched his doubt.
His lips surrendered once again, and this time there was no holding back from either one of us. He pulled me on top of him, and I removed my sweatshirt between moments without his lips on mine. His taste, his smell, his warmth—it all left me intoxicated.
Ollie’s mouth moved slow over mine, savoring every intricate detail of me. Unhurried, he appreciated us like a work of art. His long fingers gripped my hips, and I raked my fingers through his hair as I sucked gently on his neck and behind his ear.
“Mia, we can’t,” Ollie breathed.
My nose grazed the length of his neck. “We can’t what?”
He flipped me over on my back, so he was now on top of me and settled between my legs. His hard arousal pressed into me as he said, “We can’t go any further.”
“Your body says otherwise …”
He hung his head for a moment, and when his eyes returned to mine, his cheeks flushed as he smiled. “Around you, my body tends to have a mind of its own.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
Ollie deeply inhaled while he stroked my forehead with his thumb. “The problem is, I’m not just a guy, and you’re not just a girl, so the last thing we should do is treat this as such.”
“I’m still not following.” He wasn’t just a guy. He was the guy capable of seeing me in a way no one else had. But I was just a girl, and suddenly I realized I would never be or give him what he needed.
“As much as our bodies would disagree, we’re not ready.” Ollie fell over to the side of me, and a chill replaced his warmth. “I’m not a quick fuck, Mia. Either you’re all in with me, or you’re not, and you’re not ready for that, and you’re not ready for what this school could do to us.”
Rejection.
Looking around the room, I was convinced there was a hidden camera. No one had ever turned me down for sex. What did Ollie mean “all in”? What did he mean “what this school could do to us”? Instead of entertaining him, I found my sweatshirt and pulled it over my head as I gradually came apart at the seams. What in God’s name was he doing to me?
Ollie ran his hand over his face before adjusting himself in his pants. “Talk to me. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I’m fine.” I leaned over him and pressed my lips to his forehead. And suddenly, I understood his mentioning of the stinging electricity behind my eyes. The lightning crashed, but I forced it away.
Around Ollie, I didn’t feel like myself at all. He made me weak, exposed, and defenseless; he was no good for me, and it was all because I had carved him out a damn door. It was dangerous.
And here I was, kissing his forehead like a sucker.
My hands stilled over the doorknob, and before I opened it, I turned one last time to see Ollie with his hands over his face and through his hair, and I shook my head and left.
The mess hall was crowded more than usual that evening, and I assumed it was because it wasn’t only Ollie and I who had skipped lunch. The storm had circled Dolor, and the worst of it had come back around for a second time. Zeke’s knuckles turned white as he gripped the seat and bobbed his head in all directions. I attempted to talk to him through the rain whipping against the window beside us. After offering to switch tables, it seemed to anger him even more as he shook his head violently.
“Zeke, it’s okay. It can’t touch you,” I assured him, but in a flash of lightning, a branch from a nearby tree slammed against the window, causing Zeke to fall out of his chair and scurry against an adjacent wall. He belted an ear-piercing shriek, and I pushed out of my chair and ran around the table to sit by his side.
Pinning his head against my chest, I stroked his curly brown hair as the scream dissolved, but he remained trembling in my arms. I was unsure of what had come over me, or why I felt the need to comfort him, but Zeke reminded me of someone and I had this compulsion to protect him.
I hummed a familiar tune as my fingers ran through his sweaty mop over his head, clutching him tight. Many eyes peered over at us, and the only sound was the bass of the thunder. Jake and Alicia’s jaws went slack mid-chew, Bria raised an annoying black brow, and Ollie dropped his fork as awe stuck his green eyes, but I ignored their judgments and continued to calm the storm inside Zeke, humming a tune as he slowly relaxed in my arms.
The hum and the brush of my hand against his forehead were all too familiar. A door that had been locked for far too long opened, flooding memories of my mother. She used to do this to me.
In the middle of the night, my mother would wake me from a night terror. She held me close against her chest, wiping the sweaty strands sticking to my face as she whispered things like, “This is all my fault, I’m so sorry,” before humming me back into contentment. She smelled like a cigarette soaked in perfume, and I found it comforting because it was the smell of my mother.
As the memory coursed through me, my hand shook, and my hums were no longer soothing but now breaking. And a hot panic consumed me as if I absorbed Zeke’s terror. A fog of fury washed over me, and I pulled away from Zeke. Using the wall behind me for support, I stumbled to my feet. All eyes were fixed on Zeke and me.
I gritted my teeth, my palms sweaty, and I rushed out of the mess hall in a panic over what would come next. The memories of my mother’s smell, her sounds, the touch of her hand only tore open an old wound, ripping it deeper and wider with each long stride to the community bathroom.
I gripped the edge of the sink as my chest heaved, begging for a fix. The girl in the mirror crumbled before my eyes, and I despised her. She was weak and broken. I locked her away with the memories of her mother, and suddenly, there she was, staring back at me with truth in her eyes, and I shook my head, resisting what she had to say.
My throat burned as a scream belted, and my cast crashed between the girl’s eyes, destroying her and sending shards of glass all around me. The basket from the sink flew across the bathroom before slamming against the wall—trial sized bottles spilled down the tile. I gripped my hair when the door to the bathroom flew open.
Ollie paused under the door frame with wide and worried eyes. My cast rested over my lungs as I paced the bathroom, hyperventilating. Ollie took a step forward.
“Get away from me!” I screamed. My voice cracked, but it wasn’t the only thing breaking before him.
“No,” he calmly said and took another step toward me with his palms in the air.
I tore a curtain from its rod and threw it toward him as a threat.
Ollie didn’t flinch.
I only saw red. Even though I never felt before, it was all I was doing now. I felt, and it fuck
ing hurt. I wanted it to go away. The only thing I could do was hurt myself. Take the pain in my chest and lungs and transfer it somewhere else. Focus on a different kind of pain. Throwing my left hand into another mirror, the glass cut me, but I was numb to the physical pain. It didn’t work. Nothing would work. Memories still ransacked me, the night terrors, the …
I couldn’t remember.
I couldn’t go back far enough to remember.
“Mia,” Ollie whispered, reminding me he was still there, watching me self-destruct before his eyes.
“Get away from me, Ollie!”
Ollie stepped over the white curtain and broken glass. “No, Mia.”
I launched at him, and he wrapped his arms around mine and pulled me into a shower stall, pinning me against his chest. During the struggle, he flipped the shower on, and cold water drenched us as I thrashed in his arms. “It hurts,” I cried out, but no tears would fall. He pinned my arms tight against my chest, and his back slammed against the tile before dragging me down to the floor under the biting cold of the shower head. I begged for relief from my past as I withered away in his anchored hold. “Make it stop!”
My screams turned into a chattering of my teeth.
My hot rage was smothered with frostbite, and our bodies shook forcefully under our drenched clothes as Ollie’s tight grip held on for the both of us.
Chapter Twelve
“The inescapable truth is, we are destined for this.
No matter your resistance, our hearts are relentless.
Each time we drift, we’ll only collide once more
Over and over again in inescapable truth:
You and I belong together.”
—Oliver Masters
SOLITARY CONFINEMENT WASN’T as bad as Dean Lynch had threatened it to be. He should have used forty-eight hours of being stuck in a classroom with Dr. Kippler as punishment. I didn’t mind solitude. I preferred it.
All in all, my two days in solitary were more like a vacation. A security guard brought me breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Each time the tall and skinny dark man passed by my door, I attempted conversation, mainly using him as the person on the opposite end of my knock-knock jokes, but he didn’t find it the least bit funny.
Being locked in the room only temporarily repaired the scar that was ripped open, and even though I managed to stitch it back up and subside my anger spells, the ghost of the memory still lingered.
It had been over ten years since I’d thought about my night terrors. I couldn’t remember why I’d had them to begin with, or why my mother had thought it was her fault, but I could no longer care to put the pieces together. The paralysis set back in, the walls rebuilt strong and sturdy, and solitary confinement was just what I needed to feel like my normal self again. Dr. Conway tried to push me to talk about what had happened, but there was nothing to talk about.
Everything had happened so quickly. Ollie had insisted it was him who had destroyed the bathroom as Stanley yanked me from his arms. Other security guards had been called in to control Ollie as threats against him ricocheted off the tiled walls. Bullets had fired from their mouths in all directions as I’d stood with my hands behind my back, shivering against the wall near the door. I couldn’t comprehend their threats, but it was enough to compel a belligerent Ollie to a standstill with defeat in his eyes as Stanley took me away.
Ollie had made multiple attempts to speak to me when I returned to my regular schedule on Wednesday, but I’d brushed him away after thanking him for my vacation over the last two days. If it hadn’t been for the weekend with Ollie, my mind wouldn’t have been so fucked up. I wouldn’t have cared enough to go to Zeke’s side, which resulted in the memory of my mother. A memory I physically and mentally wasn’t prepared to face. I couldn’t blame Zeke for what had happened; he hadn’t known what he was doing, but Ollie sure had.
Ollie had known exactly what he was doing.
But I’d found peace with it all.
I was back to Mia.
Many confused my disorder with depression or anxiety, but it was far different. To be depressed, you had to feel hopeless or sadness. I felt neither and nothing—a black hole. My defenses surrounded me as I continued to fall through the emptiness. Ollie’s door I’d carved had led me to believe there was an escape hatch, and a part of me had drifted to his door and held on by a finger. I’d felt the pain of what holding on did to me. It had started in my heart. The color of red had slowly replaced the black darkness from the inside out. The burning in my chest, the dozen candles flickering, its wax dripping through my veins, and I’d remembered why I’d shut it all out in the first place. It had taken the forty-eight hours to slowly rebuild those walls back up without the damn escape hatch this time before jumping off the ledge.
Now, I was falling once again through the hole surrounded by my new fences in total peace.
I arrived at group therapy early and found my seat. As others trickled through the double doors of the large, useless room, I turned my attention over to my cast, using a Sharpie to scribble music notes across the white bandages of a tune stuck in my head—the things I would do for my headphones this very moment. Music had always been my excuse to avoid conversation, my reason to escape an uncomfortable situation. I would put my headphones over my ears, and everyone seemed to leave me alone. Ta-da. Magic.
Someone cleared their throat.
I glanced up from my cast to find Arty’s wide white eyeballs peering over in my direction. After snapping the Sharpie closed, I twirled it between my fingers. Ollie sat across from me like last time, and he looked different—tired, even. His hair wasn’t in its normal perfected wave, but instead hidden under a gray beanie.
Jake snuck a small wave to feel out my current mood.
I flashed my fake smile.
It was the only one I had left.
“We’re going to do something a little different today,” Arty said, passing sheets of paper and pens around the circle. “I want each of you to write down two truths and one lie. We will take turns going around the room, guessing which one is the lie. And please, let’s keep this PG-thirteen.”
As I stared at the blank paper, I continued to twirl my Sharpie in my good hand—well, better hand. Fresh cuts extended from one end of my knuckles to the other, leaving new scars from my manic episode.
You could tell who was finished by the way they fell back and relaxed in their chairs, small sighs breaking the silence. After five minutes, I still hadn’t written a single letter.
“Okay, time’s up. I’ll start it off,” Arty said and glanced down at his paper. “I’m originally from Egypt, I have six brothers and sisters, and when I was a boy, I wanted to be an astronaut.”
Him having six brothers and sisters was the lie. Many factors from the way his tone changed when he said it, the fact it was the most boring of the three, and the exact number he used put up a big waving-in-the-air flag.
The group called out him being from Egypt was the lie, but I stayed quiet.
“Actually, I have nine brothers and sisters,” Arty said with a smile. “Okay, Isaac, let’s hear yours, and we will continue clockwise.”
Isaac shifted in his seat before he listed off his three sentences, and as the truths and lies continued around the circle, disbelieving remarks followed shortly behind.
Ollie straightened his posture when it was his turn. The battle in his eyes was evident as he looked down at his paper. He crumbled the sheet in his fist and stuffed it into his front pocket before saying, “I have died and come back to life, I’ve given up a life, and I’ve saved a life.”
Silence.
A cough.
Then the comments came.
“Ollie hasn’t given up a life. He wouldn’t even kill the earwig crawling up his arm.” Bria let out a giggle. “Remember, Jake? How he lifted it off with the leaf and brought it over to the tree?” Anot
her laugh.
Ollie’s attention remained on the floor before him. He stuffed his hands deep into his pockets. The fact he used the term “given up” told a silent story of his past only he knew. “He hasn’t saved a life,” I said so low, I was surprised anyone heard me.
“Mia, why do you say that?” Arty asked.
“I just know.”
Arty looked over to Ollie, and Ollie nodded. “She’s right.”
Jake’s two truths and a lie stayed light-hearted, making sure everyone knew he was gay.
When my turn came, I glanced down at my blank paper and leaned back in my chair as my mind spoke for me. “I can play any song on the piano, I don’t eat meat … and …”—both Arty and Ollie are going to hate me—”I had sex with Liam last Friday.”
Gasps and laughs immediately followed, and I lifted my head from my blank paper to Ollie, whose hands were now out of his pockets and over his chin. His elbow bounced over his nervous knee.
“PG-thirteen, Mia,” Arty reminded me, and I shrugged my shoulders.
“There’s no way she slept with Liam. I was with him all day,” a blonde-haired girl from Liam’s table said.
“I’ve seen her eat meat. It’s got to be the piano,” Jake insisted.
“I agree. A girl like her can’t play the piano,” Bria added.
The blonde-haired girl stood and pointed over to the piano in the room, her face red and tears threatening to fall. “Prove it. There’s a piano right there, and I need you to prove to me this isn’t true.”
I had no idea she felt this strongly for Liam. She wasn’t the target of my attack. My whole point was to show Ollie I wasn’t who he thought I was.
“I’m in a cast,” I reminded them with my arm in the air.
“Told you she couldn’t play,” Bria scoffed to blondie.
Instantly, I stood and walked over to the piano before taking a seat. My battered hand lightly ran over the keys, not pressing hard enough to make a sound, but touching enough to familiarize myself with its coolness, its flow, its size. Playing was going to be difficult in a cast. I glanced up to see Blondie’s arms crossed over her chest, Bria with a smirk, and the ounce of hope left in Ollie’s eyes I was about to strip away.
Stay With Me (Stay With Me Series Book 1) Page 14