“Ollie, it’s over!” someone shouted, but Ollie reached one hand behind them and flicked them off without parting from me. A giggle escaped between us.
“You. Me. Tonight. Your room,” he whispered, and took my hand and lifted me off the wall. His words bounced around in my head the whole way back to the circle. He refused to keep his distance after and pulled me over to his spot between his legs. Everyone’s eyes darted around, but neither one of us could care as he kissed my neck and kept me warm inside his arms, where I should have been all along—my safety net.
“Think it’s your birthday, mate?” Jake teased, looking over at Ollie and me.
“Every day is a present,” Ollie replied with a lift in his tone.
Alicia leaned over and whispered in Ollie’s ear, “You’re walking a dangerous line … You need to be careful.”
Ollie nodded and brought his attention back to me and ran his palms up and down my arms.
“What was that all about?” I asked, looking up at him.
Ollie dipped his head down. “We’ll talk about it later, love.” And he kissed my temple.
Out of anyone who could have said something, Alicia was the last person I expected. It took a lot for me to admit to him my feelings for him openly. I had confessed it before to Zeke, but because Zeke didn’t talk, I never really treated him as a real human being—more like a part of my subconscious. I had been afraid until now to openly say it. But after seeing the look in his eyes, the one that said, trust me and I will never let you fall alone, without having to utter a word at all, my words came out effortlessly.
Perhaps he was right, and he would be the one to help me save me from myself.
“Mia?”
“Yeah?” I asked, snapping my head to the source.
“How about a score, yeah?” Alicia asked.
I dropped my head back to look at Ollie. “Eh, I’ll give him a one.”
Everyone laughed, including Ollie as Alicia tallied up the scores before she dug her hand into the beanie. “Okay, my turn.”
Alicia withdrew her action and read it, her eyes darting around the circle. “Mia and Isaac, you’re on here. Stand up,” she said.
Ollie’s fingers tensed against my arms as Isaac and I exchanged glances. We got to our feet and walked outside the circle in front of Alicia. “You’re my life-sized Barbies for the next minute, and you have to do whatever I say,” she whispered to us.
Pursing my lips together, I stood before Isaac, trying refrain from an awkward laugh.
“This one’s mine,” Jake bragged from the circle.
Ollie shook his head. “Yeah, thanks for that, man.”
Alicia started her roleplay game, using Isaac and me as her pawns. “Oh, Ken. Please take your shirt off, I want to feel your body against mine,” Alicia said in the most authentic British versioned Barbie voice, and Isaac obliged. He removed his shirt as everyone in the group let out a laugh, except for Ollie. Ollie wasn’t the least bit amused.
“I want to feel your body,” Alicia hinted again at me.
“Oh, right,” I mumbled and brought my hands to Isaacs abs.
“Yeah, Barbie. That feels nice. Why don’t I help you out of your shirt,” Alicia said in a deep man voice. Isaac took a step toward me and helped me out of my shirt, and it dropped to the floor as we waited for our next instruction.
“Kiss me, Ken. I want to feel your hands on my boobs, and your tongue down my throat,” Alicia said through a laugh, and I looked over at Ollie with wide eyes.
“No, she doesn’t kiss, Alicia. You know that,” Ollie said, drawing the line.
As I remembered the sickness on Ollie’s face when I’d kissed Liam, my legs wobbled. It had been right before Ollie kissed me sober and I punched a wall. “Don’t ever kiss another before my eyes again,” he said in my dorm room before he left.
“She kissed you, didn’t she?” Alicia asked.
Ollie scrambled as his attention went from me and back to Alicia. “Yeah, but that’s different …”
“Different?” Alicia turned to face me. “Mia?”
Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place. I darted my head between both of them as my mind raced, trying to do the right thing for once. I’d hurt Ollie too many times to count, and I couldn’t bear to see the pained look in his eyes again.
Ollie got to me. He got to me in so many ways, on so many levels. Even though Ollie couldn’t accept the way I was, he was the only one who fought for me, which was more than I deserved.
I picked my shirt up off the ground and pulled it over my head before taking off through the woods.
That’s right—I ran.
It was the only option that made the most sense at the time. I darted through the woods, past the green lawn, and back through the double doors of Dolor.
Chapter Fourteen
“This girl is my heaven.
With lips of an angel, the sweet
taste of mercy lingers. She has halos in her
eyes, and my heart beats to the sound of her wings.”
—Oliver Masters
WE WERE HALFWAY through the broken record, and I felt like an idiot. Did they see what Ollie could do to me? Were they pushing our buttons on purpose to see me lash out again? Were my public displays of affection and feelings a joke, when it had been so entirely hard to get to this point? A wall came up as anger brewed, but I fought through it, keeping Ollie’s words rolling as the record got stuck on this specific song.
“Stop!” he called out, but I shook my head as I turned the corner. “Dammit, Mia. Slow down,” he shouted before I reached the bathroom, and I wished it were a private bathroom where I could lock the door behind me.
After turning on the faucet, I splashed cool water over my face, washing away the last ten minutes. When I opened my eyes, Ollie stood beside me, chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath.
“I couldn’t go through with it, Ollie. I couldn’t do it to you …”
Ollie stayed silent as he flipped the water on and washed his hands, studying my face in the reflection of the mirror. Say something. He ripped the paper towel from the roll, taking his time drying his hands as a smile rose, and I shook my head at his audacity. Say something. He crumbled up the paper into a ball before throwing it in the trashcan, and turned toward me.
“Why did you take off running?” Ollie asked as he adjusted his gray joggers around his hips. He pulled down the bottom hem of his white tee and took a few steps to stand behind me so we were both standing in the same mirror.
“I don’t know,” I said, and Ollie wrapped his arms around my waist. My tense body relaxed in his hold as I continued. “It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”
He held my gaze in the mirror, his green eyes glued to my brown ones as if once they separated, he would lose me.
“Would you look at us together.” He nudged his head toward the mirror as he grinned. Two pairs of eyes stared back in the reflection. One pair was mine. The other was his—a vibrant soul, bright enough to compensate for my lack thereof. He was beautiful. I wondered what he saw.
“Right there … you see your eyes?” He asked. “Usually your color is so dark, it’s hard to tell when your pupil ends, and your iris begins. Most of the time, this hollow void dominates you, but look at your eyes now.” I honed in on my eyes in the mirror. They were an amber color I’d never seen before. “The glow … it’s your soul shining through. Your eyes brighten when we’re together, and that is how I know …”
“Know what?”
Ollie smiled and pulled me closer against him. He lowered his head to my ear. “I bring out that light in you. You do feel for me, and I never needed to hear you say it, Mia. All these times I asked you, it was for you to hear it for yourself. It’s only when we’re apart when we’re broken like two jagged pieces—we belong together. I can s
ee it in your eyes, and now you can see it, too. But you always knew, haven’t you? You never needed proof.”
Wordless, I lost myself in this new shade of color he’d shown me. He was able to have this effect on me. There was no logic or science behind it, but the proof was in front of me this whole time. A part of me did always know there was something about him. My enslaved heart knew before my mind could comprehend—the reason I could never shut him out entirely, no matter how hard I tried. It was because he was already a part of me. All along, we’d been connected. My light illuminated in his presence because his soul was the one mine had been promised to.
It was him.
It was Ollie.
“I once asked you to open yourself up to me, to carve me out a door …” his warm breath traced along my neck as he spoke and I had a hard time standing still “… but I need you to let me in entirely. I need all of you, Mia.” I tried to swallow as he pressed against my back. “Why do you continue to pull me in only to push me away?”
My head spun. My ears rang. My Ollie-level raised to complete overdose. He wanted me—all of me. Every broken piece of my body, my heart, and new-found soul, all pierced with glitter made of pain. A hassle to shake away because they were tiny fragments embedded into the deepest parts of me. “Because you scare the hell out of me.”
His gaze left the mirror and peered down at me. “Why?”
“When you’re beside me, you make me feel alive, and when you’re gone, the small fire you built inside me is left burning, reminding me of the way I felt with you. And it’s not good when I feel, Ollie, because when I start to feel, the pain seeps through the cracks, and it hurts.” I drew in a breath. “I can’t stop it; my brain automatically shuts it off, the feelings, the emotions, the pain, you … all of it. It has become a subconscious habit for so many years.”
Ollie’s hands disappeared under my white shirt and grazed my bare skin. “Is our fire burning now?”
I sucked in a breath and nodded. “But what happens when it burns out?”
He pressed his lips together in a grin. “This is us we’re talking about. That will never happen.” He unbuttoned my jeans and lowered my zipper. “I’m not going anywhere, Mia.”
His hand reached over my panties and his long fingers pressed against me. My head rolled back into his chest as my legs went weak. His tongue trailed up my neck as he lightly sucked the sensitive skin, and his skilled fingers kneaded places longing for his touch. “I’ll always fight for you, no matter how many times your habit takes you over, do you hear me?”
My grip around the sink’s edge tightened as I gave up posture. “Yes,” I whimpered.
He parted my legs with his other hand while his erection pressed hard against my backside through his thin joggers. He moved my panties to the side, and his finger stroked up my heat again. Making circles over my knot, he held my gaze in the reflection as the same fever from my sex traveled up my neck. A soft pink glow lit my cheeks as I lost myself in his green eyes. “You are so God damn breathtaking …” he whispered to me.
The fire inside me set ablaze and I bit down on my lip to control it.
“Fuck,” he breathed and withdrew his hand only to pull me into a shower stall and pin me against the tile. His lips found mine and my legs went slack from his torture. “You need to stand on your own, love …” And he dropped to his knees before me, dragged my jeans and panties down to my ankles, and spread my legs. “And this time, stay with me.”
He skimmed a lone finger down my core before dipping inside me, and my breathing shuddered all over again as he pressed his lips to my hips and abdomen. Through each embrace of his supple finger, Ollie lowered his mouth until his lips pressed against my abdomen and my hip. My legs buckled and my arms felt heavy as I tried to keep myself together, and I quivered on the edge of exploding.
“Mia,” he breathed from below, and my eyes blinked open as the rest of me broke apart. “You’re my everything. You’re my heaven.”
“And you’re my hell,” I replied, cupping his face in my palms and pulling him to his feet. My impatient mouth found his before he could stand all the way, but once he did, I kicked off my jeans and panties from one leg and dragged his joggers and boxer briefs down in a need-filled rush of him to be inside me already.
Ollie stripped off his shirt before ripping off mine, then unclasped my bra impatiently. “I need to feel you against me,” he said unapologetically, and picked me up at the backs of my thighs. I wrapped my legs around his hips and our chests crashed together.
He sank inside me, filling me to the brink, and his forehead fell to mine as his eyes screwed shut. Seconds passed for Ollie to regain himself, and for me to overcome the initial shock of him inside me all over again. I held on to the back of his head as he tried to catch his breath. “Fuck, Mia, it’s all too much.”
“Open your eyes,” I begged with his head in my hands. “Look at me.”
Ollie wet his lips and opened his eyes. “Mia, I …” he began to say, but I silenced him with a kiss. My back slammed into the tile, his tongue flicked across mine, and he pumped in and out of me at the most incredible flow, hitting all the right notes, knowing the connection we both needed until we came undone in perfect sync.
I’d never expected to get swept up in his hurricane and have feelings for him—but I did. It had been in the cards all along. Ollie and I were an unforeseen omen. A force of nature.
Stanley pulled me aside as soon as I walked into the mess hall for dinner. He mentioned the dean wanted to see me before he left for the night and insisted I bring my dinner because I wouldn’t be back in time.
The dinner tray shook in my hands as I followed behind Stanley through the corridor, down the stairs, and toward Lynch’s office. The food would be cold by the time I got there, but I didn’t care. This sudden meeting with the dean had my thoughts straying to every possible worst-case scenario. I wouldn’t have the stomach to eat regardless.
“Mia, yes, have a seat,” Lynch said. “Thank you, Stanley.” I turned to see Stanley nod and close the door behind him. Setting my tray down on the desk, I took a seat in the same chair from my first day here. It seemed so long ago, but it had only been a month. The room dimmed as the sun set outside, sending shades of orange and red through the half-opened window.
“You may eat,” Lynch said.
Silence.
“How have you been doing, Miss Jett?”
I grabbed my fork and moved the macaroni around. “Well, I suppose.” I relaxed a little. His voice didn’t indicate trouble. Maybe this was only a talk—a conversation to check to see how I’ve been coping.
“Having some headway with your therapy sessions?”
“Yes, sir,” I lied—well, partly. I’d gained headway with my Ollie therapy.
“I called you in here because … in the first month so far you’ve spent a weekend in the nurse’s station, broken your hand, destroyed a bathroom, and visited solitary confinement. I’m not sure this place is suitable for your havoc, Miss Jett, and I cannot put other’s lives in jeopardy.”
The abandonment was apparent across his face. He was removing me from the program, and the voice in my head said things like, “Good, get me out of here,” and “Finally, please … ship me back to the States,” and “I don’t care.” But the pounding in my ears, the cold sweat building across my skin, and the stinging behind my eyes reminded me of my body’s betrayal. The truth was, I was scared to wake up in a life without Ollie. I was terrified of my mental habit to push his existence, and our moments together, down, and pretend like none of it had ever happened because I knew from experience it was the only way I knew how to cope.
No. I needed to stay with Ollie.
All the air in my lungs had been replaced with water as I slowly drowned inside. A fog blurred my vision, and I shook my head. “What … what are you saying?” My voice ruptured.
Lyn
ch dropped his chin and folded his hands over his desk. “You’re being transferred to Building B, Mia …” He let out an exhale. “You’re being transferred to our psychiatric division.”
An extended moment of silence induced Lynch to shuffle around his desk and type a few strokes across his keyboard. If I opened my mouth, I would regret the things I would say. If I lashed out, he might have me leave the campus entirely. Biting my tongue, I crossed my arms and dug my nails into my elbows to prevent myself from doing something I ordinarily would do. A victim and a monster, fighting a war inside my head.
“Stanley will take you back to your dorm to pack your things. They will be expecting you.” He stood from his chair and leaned over his desk. “Mia, this is your last chance. One screw-up, you’ll be forced to leave permanently.”
Stanley stood outside my dorm room as I shoved my belongings into my suitcase. “You won’t be seeing those items for a long time. They will be processed and placed in the basement,” Stanley mumbled. “They’ll give you new clothes and a toothbrush on the other side.”
The moment I closed and zipped my suitcase, I felt myself slipping. Shaking my head, I focused on Ollie’s green eyes, his words, his smile, anything to keep me from tripping over the edge into darkness. I wanted to throw my suitcase into the wall. I wanted to throw my casted fist into the cement, again. I wanted to escape my body and shake myself because I was slipping. I could never feel it before, but now it was unmistakable. It was happening; one by one, my mind turned out the lights in a home with a dozen rooms, getting darker and darker by the minute.
“Ready?” Stanley asked, and I turned away from my old prison before I made my way to the next.
The dinner rush moved sluggishly down the hall, retreating to their dorms. Standing beside Stanley, I waited as he did a once-over of my room before closing and locking the door. With my suitcase in hand, Stanley and I turned toward the crowd.
Stay With Me (Stay With Me Series Book 1) Page 17