They’d found the letter she wrote on the nightstand next to her glass of pink wine, and even though it was another piece of evidence proving I hadn’t pulled the trigger myself, I may as well have. My father never looked at me the same way, though it couldn’t hurt me.
Nothing could.
I was already gone.
It wasn’t until jr. high when he’d realized I was different from other kids. It was around the same time Diane had shown up in his life when she’d pointed out everything that wasn’t “normal” about me. He’d explained what I’d been through, but she’d accepted it all as excuses. She’d make comments here and there when she thought I wasn’t listening, but I’d heard everything, and it had never bothered me because I was already gone. He’d done his fatherly duty and sent me to counseling, a psychiatrist, many doctors, but nothing had ever gotten through to me because I was already gone.
My need to rebel was to get under their skin. I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t sad. I was only tired of my dad and Diane regularly sending me here and there as if it would have made a difference. They’d bounced me around, handing me off so they wouldn’t have to deal with me.
They wanted me gone.
Memories came flooding back times a hundred, but all I felt was the calm of the storm. The rage inside drifted throughout, but it was a different kind of anger. The calm kind, if there was such a thing. Ollie’s voice inside my head reminded me to stay with him, and I did. I wouldn’t allow my havoc to blow out the flame.
Even in his death, I refused to allow my uncle take one more thing away from me.
Chapter Sixteen
“If the universe has forbid us,
let’s give them something to write about.”
—Oliver Masters
LATER THAT EVENING, I was discharged from the hospital. A security guard I’d never seen before escorted me back to Dolor. The old man, with a wrinkled face and large nose, chatted the entire hour-long drive back, and I found myself missing Stanley’s silence. The old man asked a question, then answered it himself, not allowing me a word in edgewise. Not that I would have bothered to speak, but I would have liked to have had the option.
The sun descended in the sky as day turned to night, and by the time we reached the psych ward, starless black devoured the fiery sunset. The small lady sent me through the same routine I went through the first day I’d arrived, first removing my clothes before stepping under the shower. Afterward, I dressed in the gray drawstring pants, a gray shirt, and a gray sweatshirt. I rung out as much water from my hair as I could, and once I reached my room, I curled up over the stiff mattress and closed my eyes before drifting to sleep.
Dr. Conway said she would come to see me at the psych ward upon my return, but she never showed. It was morning when the tiny lady forced me out of my dorm and into the common area among others. I hadn’t seen anyone aside from the doctors since I’d been here, only heard their cries at night.
“Dr. Conway said to get you out of your room and make you sure you eat,” the tiny lady said before she turned and left me at an empty table.
A heavy-set man with a cart appeared. He didn’t ask questions as he set the tray down in front of me before taking off. The cart squeaked until it came to a stop at the next table. Looking down at my food, there was a bowl of what looked to be oatmeal and two slices of burnt bacon.
“It’s porridge,” a voice said. I glanced up as a girl took a seat in front of me. She swept her straight brown behind her and shook her overgrown bangs from her narrow face. “I’m Maddie.”
Crystal blue eyes dressed with the infamous “Looney Bin” bags stared at me for a reply.
“I’m not much in a talking mood.” I sighed.
“Lucky for me, I like to talk …” Maddie trailed off, and I wanted to slam my face into the porridge. How was this for payback. Now I knew how Zeke had felt with me. “ … so, I have been here ever since. You’re American, ya? I’ve been to America once before. To Florida, actually. My mum and dad brought us to Disney World. It wasn’t as I hoped tho—”
I shot my palm into the air, slicing the thick Irish accent. “Please … stop talking.”
Maddie pursed her lips together. “Take the puss off ya face, I’m only codding ya! I wanted to see how long you would go before ya cut me off.”
I glanced over to Detached Tiny Lady who watched me from across the room, probably making sure I ate. Maddie turned her head to see what had caught my eye. “Ya, she’s a brutal one. If ya don’t eat, they’ll hold you down and force feed ya.”
“You’re joking.”
“Ah, I wish.” Maddie leaned back in the chair and fixed her sweatshirt. “You see that girl right over there with the blonde pony?” She nudged her head.
Turning slightly behind me, I saw a girl about the same age as me. Her hair was pulled back so tight, I wondered if she aged ten years once she released her hair tie—instant Facelift.
“Just yesterday they strapped her to her chair and fed her like a chiseler. It was a holy show.” Maddie let out a chuckle, and the thought alone made me bring the spoon to my mouth.
“There ya go. All you need is five bites, and Dr. L will leave ya be.” Maddie smiled, and I flashed her a tight-lipped grin with a mouthful of porridge in return. “Ya play cards?”
I shook my head.
“After you eat, I’ll teach you.”
As I counted down each bite, I wondered if Maddie was a secret informant hired by Dr. L to get the crazies to eat. She seemed annoyingly normal, and I wondered what she had to do to end up here. Every person who passed our table stopped for a quick conversation with Maddie, and she smiled back up at them as I ate.
After my last disgusting bite, I pushed the tray away from me as Maddie pulled a deck of cards from under the table. Had she been holding them this entire time?
“What’s the craic on campus? I haven’t been there since the summer …”
Great, Maddie liked drama. “I’m sure nothing has changed.”
Maddie shuffled the cards flawlessly like a professional. “Liam still a dick-wad?”
I laughed. “Liam is harmless.”
“Sounds like ya know from experience,” she said with amusement in her tone.
Rolling my eyes, I relaxed in the chair. “Liam is predictable. Its people like you who you have to watch out for.”
Maddie slowed her shuffling pace, and there was a small lift in the corner of her mouth. Anyone else would’ve missed the slight curve, but I didn’t, and a part of me knew I was correct about her. She was trouble.
“You and Liam together or something?” she asked.
“Nope.”
“You with anyone on that side?”
“Nope.”
“What group you attached to over there?”
What was this, twenty-one questions? My patience was thin. “What’s it to you? If there’s something you want to ask me, stop beating around the bush and ask me already.”
Maddie slammed the deck of cards on the table and leaned in. Her tone was harsh but controlled. “I’m only trying to get to know ya, pet. Nothing more. Now don’t cause a scene.” She scanned the room before retreating back into her seat and reshuffling the cards. “Me fella is on that side. He’s waiting for me to come back.”
Remembering what Jake, Alicia, and Ollie had told me, I said, “I thought there were no relationships at Dolor.”
“Ours is a secret.”
“It’s not a secret if you’re telling people about it, now is it?”
She chuckled. “Ya have a point there.”
Her mood swings made me dizzy, so I didn’t bother answering any more of her ridiculous questions. After one round of poker, which she won, of course, everyone took off for recreation as I retreated to my room.
Later, I ate lunch in my room to avoid Maddie, and by the time dinner rolled arou
nd, Dr. L dragged me out again to the common area. Maddie eyed me from afar as I tried figuring her out. She was tall, thin, and with a pretty face—I would guess five-foot-eight. She sat poised as her bangs dropped slightly below her eyebrows. Every few minutes, she shook her head to move them from her eyes as she shuffled the deck nervously. Everything about her stance, the way she spoke, and her facial expressions screamed confidence, but irony filled her blue eyes.
“These meds are for you,” Dr. L said, handing me over a small cup containing two pills.
“No, I’m not supposed to be on meds. I’m not taking anything until I talk to Dr. Conway.”
“Alright, so be it. I’ll give you one more day. But if Dr. Conway doesn’t show, you’ll be forced to take your meds. It’s in your paperwork, Mia.”
Even though it was in my paperwork, Dr. Conway had taken me off all medication since my first office visit with her. It had to be in her notes. Where the hell was she? I couldn’t go back to the way I was. “Has anyone tried reaching out to her?”
“I’ll make a phone call.” Dr. L sighed before leaving.
“They’re serious about those meds, ya?” Maddie asked as she pulled out the chair in front of me. “Pretend to take them like I do.”
“How do you pretend?”
“It takes practice, but ya have to hold them in your throat … then when she leaves, cough them back up.” Maddie shrugged. “Or ya can hide them between your gum and upper lip if you can’t.”
“You do that every time?”
“Sure do. I am how God made me. We’re all normal. It’s the pills making you not the full shilling.”
I partly agreed with her, partially disagreed. Sure, God had made us, but was it with a blank slate or with our lives already planned out? Because it was what happened to us that changed us, molding us into who we’d actually become. Nature vs. nurture bullshit. I hadn’t been born emotionally detached. I’d become this way because of what my uncle had put me through. But then I thought about actual psychopaths. The ones raised in decent homes and loving families. Had they been born that way, or had a moment in their life happened to trigger it? Did they ever have the same chance? Were we all born with the same amount of light in our hearts?
“Penny for ya thoughts?” Maddie asked.
“Ha. My thoughts would put you in debt.”
Maddie giggled as her overgrown bangs swayed from side to side. “You’re funny. I like ya, Mia.”
Wonderful. Maddie knew my name.
After dinner and the shower routine, Dr. L led me back to my empty room and closed the door behind her before I curled over the plastic mattress. The room was freezing and I pulled my arms into my sweatshirt, then pulled my knees up inside, hugging myself as I shivered in a ball.
For a split second, I wished I was numb again because having all these feelings without a reason to have them was torment. Easily, I could get by here with my Emotional Detachment Disorder—with my walls. Free of heartache. Free of pain. Free of my past, which I now remembered.
But I had made a promise to Ollie, and I clung to my promise because it was my only attachment left to him.
It was the sound of my name that woke me. My eyes parted to see Ollie kneeling beside my bed with a finger held to his lips.
Great. I had gone mad.
I blinked a few times as his fingers brushed my forehead and ran over the top of my hair.
“Ollie?” Please be real.
A small grin appeared over his face. “Hi, love.”
In an instant, I sprang to my knees and swung my arms around his neck, breathing in his scent. He was real, and he was here. Running my fingers through his brown messy hair, I kissed his neck and cheek and lips. He wrapped his long arms around my waist as he dropped his head into my neck. “But how?”
“I told you I have connections,” he said and pulled away to see me. “You don’t belong here, Mia.” He looked around before his eyes met mine again. “Are you okay? Why were you in the hospital? What happened?”
All the questions seemed irrelevant at this point, and I brought my hand to Ollie’s face. He closed his eyes under my touch. He was so beautiful. My thumb grazed his bottom lip as his jaw relaxed. I had no chemicals in my body, nothing to influence or persuade me to feel for him. I just simply did. Our flame flickered, reminding me it was still there. As long as I had Ollie, it would continue to burn.
Softly, I pressed my lips to his and kneeled over the mattress. Ollie’s mouth was tender, his tongue soothing as he kissed away every doubt I’d had since I’d arrived at the Looney Bin.
“Oh god, I missed you, Mia,” he whispered with his forehead to mine. I slipped my hands under his shirt and over his warm and familiar skin. Ollie captured my lips with his momentarily before hesitantly pulling away again. “I came to make sure you were alright. Please, talk to me, Mia. Tell me what happened.”
Fighting the urge to tell him everything, I chewed on my lip. “I don’t want to waste our time with the hard stuff. I’ll tell you everything later. I need this”—I kissed his lips—”I need you” I kissed his lips again. “The thought of you is the only thing I’ve been holding on to through this.”
Ollie raised his brows at my confession. He’d never heard me say anything like that, because I never had. It was new to the both of us.
A small smile tugged on his lips, and then he gave in, surrendering himself to me. He wanted it, too. He tried to be the gentleman I knew he was, but the need for our physical connection was stronger.
Clothes came off quickly, one by one between breaths and tongues colliding before he melted over me. His warmth enveloped me immediately, and the bitterness from the Looney Bin vanished. It was only us. He moved the hair from my face and found my eyes. “I’m sorry.” He exhaled.
I shook my head and pulled my brows together. “What are you apologizing for?”
He dropped his head for a moment before looking back at me. “You told me not to fall, but I’ve fallen so fucking hard …” He wet his lips and scanned my face before his eyes returned to mine. “I’m so in love with you, Mia.”
Each word hit me like a clash of thunder, and I swallowed the stinging sensation behind my eyes as I looked into his. I’d never seen the look of love before, but it was staring right back at me. It wasn’t so much about how his eyes were transfixed on me, a firm grasp on my heart, his soul anchoring to mine, but how they made me feel.
And suddenly, I wasn’t falling anymore.
I was flying.
Ollie wasn’t expecting anything in return. Instead, he lowered his head, and his kiss was its own testimony. The calm in his lips, the slow caress of his tongue against mine, and the way it was so powerful yet tame transformed a heart of gray back to color. Ollie had that power—together, we had that power.
“I don’t know how much time we have, but I’m going to appreciate every second,” he said after he left my lips and moved to the end of the mattress. He brought my leg over his shoulder, and my bare body shivered without his warmth.
Starting from my knee, he ran a trail of kisses up my leg to my inner thigh as he watched me shudder.
“You’re no one’s property, but I can’t stand the thought of you being with anyone else. Do you understand what I’m saying?” A flash of insecurity set in his eyes. “It’s no one else, only you and I?”
Nodding, I sucked in a breath. “You and I. Always.”
And then his mouth was on my sex as his hands gripped my bottom. I leaned my hips into him, and suddenly, his tongue drove through my entrance, twirling and stroking. I searched for anything to grip, but there was no sheet over the mattress and no pillow to grab as I barely held on. I cried out, and Ollie shot a hand over my mouth to stifle it as he continued to do things, sending me into a whirlwind of ecstasy.
He crawled back up my torso and replaced his hand with his lips as I moved beneath him,
begging to feel him inside me already as my body shook for release. He ran his hand down my center before dipping a finger inside me, and pressed in and out of me unhurriedly.
“Ollie,” I pleaded, every cell walking a tightrope over a sea of pure pleasure.
“Not yet, my love … patience.” He silenced me once more with a kiss. The combination of the kneading of his thumb and the pumping finger was earth-shattering, and when I fell through the cracks, Ollie brought me back every time.
He wrapped his arm under me and lifted me off the mattress to straddle him. Taking the length of him in my hand, I filled myself with his arousal slowly, just how he liked it. His eyes closed as his mouth made a perfect silent O.
Seeing his beautiful features react from the feeling of our connection magnified every other sensation. I dragged my nails through his messy hair as I took him deeper. Hands roamed everywhere, from my breasts, to my hair, and behind my back. A cold sweat built up between us as his teeth scraped along my jawline. He gripped my thighs to steady my shaking legs as the blessings of my name fell from his lips in gasps. I rolled my hips against him while my clit slid across his pelvis, sending me closer and closer to climax.
It only took one more thrust, one more “I love you, Mia,” one more graze of his tongue against mine before I cried out through our kiss. Ollie chased my orgasm with his. His muscles flexed as he gripped my hips, keeping me pinned against him with him deep inside.
Our chests rose and fell in unison as my head dropped into the curve of his neck. He wrapped his long arms around me, pulling me close as our heavy breathing gradually went back to normal. He ran his hand over my hair before lifting my chin to kiss him, and it was in that moment hot water spilled from the corner of my eye, and the taste of salt seeped onto our lips.
Stay With Me (Stay With Me Series Book 1) Page 19