Chapter Twenty-Eight
“There’s a villain in all of us.
Some are just better at deceiving.”
—Oliver Masters
THEY FOUND OSCAR. I wished I was more relieved than I was. Dean Lynch showed up to my dorm before breakfast one morning to tell me the news, and relief hadn’t quite washed over me yet. It wouldn’t until I saw Ollie again, and it had been another tormenting week since I’d left him in solitary confinement. I wondered what was taking him so long. Had he changed his mind on taking the medication?
I went through the same routine, waking up as soon as the automatic doors unlocked, took a shower, brushed my teeth, read in my dorm for another hour until breakfast. I’d hated to read before, but getting lost in a novel was the only way to get by. It wasn’t the same as when Ollie read to me, but I still found comfort in it—even if it was a little. I held on to the small part of happiness until I could wrap my arms around it.
Holding on to the possibility of a future with Ollie did not succumb with each passing day. I only held on stronger, fought harder. The vision of seeing his eyes light up when he met new people, seeing him cry with them through their pain, being a part of his growth, success, and his poetry … I wanted to be a part of it all. And now I had found my purpose; I also wanted to be there for girls across the world who were scared and alone. Learning to become empathetic was a whole new thing for me, and Ethan, the police officer, had introduced me to a side of myself I hadn’t known I was capable of, never fathoming how much it would touch me.
Today, I wore Ollie’s hoodie over my Dolor shirt. The temperature on campus only turned colder. His scent of freedom left unscathed as I pulled it over my head. It was the first time I smiled as the drifting scent in the air hugged me.
There was a gloominess in the mess hall without Ollie’s presence.
“Care if I sit with you and Zeke today?” Jake asked as he stood beside me in the lunch line. His smile was gone, too, but I doubted it was because of Ollie’s absence. “Alicia and I are in a tiff.”
This thing between Jake and Alicia seemed to be happening at least once a month. “Maybe you two are on the same cycle.”
Jake tilted his head, and his forehead wrinkled as we moved along the buffet line. “Bloody hell, maybe you’re right. What’s it called? Sympathy period?” Normally, he would have giggled, but he didn’t. It was because of Ollie. He was gone, and he’d taken his bright light over everyone with him.
I shrugged. “Don’t forget to acknowledge Zeke.”
“Yeah, yeah … I know the rules,” Jake muttered.
As we left the lunch line of the breakfast buffet, my legs came to a standstill, and I suddenly forgot how to breathe. My heart beat in my eardrums, and the quickening of my pulse traveled down to the tips of my fingers.
Ollie stood in the entryway of the mess hall under the curved arch. My eyes scanned the outline of his silhouette of his side profile. His hands were stuffed deep in his pockets. He wore the same white tee, black jeans, and Converse. His hair was perfectly styled into his backward wave. Paralysis prevented me from dropping my tray right where I was standing, and run toward him. I couldn’t move.
Frozen.
“What’s wrong?” Jake asked, but I couldn’t respond.
I waited for Ollie to find me as he talked to another student—one I didn’t know the name of. Why wasn’t he looking for me?
Find me, Ollie. Lift your head and find me.
“Ollie’s back!” Jake called out.
Ollie turned his head at the sound of his name, and our eyes met. It was no longer the same eyes I had looked into so many times before. Now, only an emptiness resided where a wistful vulnerability used to collide with wonder. I had never seen his shade of green so dim, and it caused my stomach to fall into the same somber eclipse, spiraling faster and faster with no end, no walls—only darkness.
He didn’t even smile as I stood frozen—wasted. I waited for that smile. It seemed like forever as I anticipated in misery, but his lips never twitched. His Mia-smile was gone. I had been waiting for two weeks to see his smile. I had closed my eyes, dreaming of that smile. And now it was all a memory.
He’d warned me this would happen.
And then he averted his gaze. The walls in the room slowly caved in around me, suffocating me. The oxygen in my lungs, the blood in my veins, the flesh from my bones—all of it crumbled, breaking into small pieces yet still holding on by a thread. The thread being my heart. It still pumped on auto-pilot as if it couldn’t associate with the rest of my body. Thumping sounded in my ears, and I wished it would stop, but my heart was not ready to let go. It continued with the same steady pump, refusing to give up what was right in front of me. I was drifting, barely existing because he was gone—and that meant I was gone. We were gone. But my heart was still going, and now I hated it.
I hated my heart.
Maybe my heart believed his eyes would return to mine. Maybe my heart believed the light would shine in his eyes again. And I waited. Like I had a choice. Two seconds passed … then three, waiting as my body weakened from his disconnection, and my heart continued to pump. Four …
And then his back was to me. Whatever we’d had no longer existed, but I remembered everything clearly, and it wasn’t fair. He was detached, and it wasn’t fair. Why hadn’t he taken me with him? “Are you going to forget me or take me with you, love?” he had asked me once before. “Take you with me,” I had said, but I forgot to ask him the same question in return.
I should have asked him.
Could I ever learn to accept the hollow in his eyes over the wonder and vulnerability? Surely, anything he had to offer would be better than nothing. If only he would turn back around. Had he even noticed me? “Promise me you’ll bring me back,” he’d said to me, but I was frozen. “You have to remind me. You have to find a way.”
And then he took a step in the opposite direction. He was gone, left in obscurity, but my heart still maintained a steady beat, pumping along to a rhythm of crimson hope. “Stay with me,” he would say over and over. Who would have thought he would have been the one to take a step into oblivion? Inside, I screamed. Inside, I crumbled. Could he hear me?
Why couldn’t you stay with me, Ollie?
Even though he was only twenty feet away, I missed him, and it hurt so bad. It was quite possible he would wake up and turn back around, or I would wake up. Either way, it was a nightmare.
Each step drew more distance and less of a chance of him coming back. The darkness wasn’t better. I saw and felt his light with my own eyes and my own heart. I knew what was on the other side. He was the light. And now he was in the dark. And now I was left in the memory of it, and it wasn’t fair to be standing here alone.
The only warmth left was the water gathering in the corner of my eye, and no matter how hot it felt as it ran down my skin, I still shivered in his cold.
Dropping my tray onto Jake’s, I ran after him. My feet moved despite my inability to feel my legs. I breathed too hard, or not at all. I wasn’t quite sure, and I didn’t care. Words stuck in my throat as I tried calling out his name. His back was to me, and his shoulders were recognizable, and his stride was familiar, but he’d looked at me only moments ago like I was a stranger.
I grabbed him by the arm and turned him around, forcing him to look at me, forcing him to see me. He seemed confused as he looked down at me, and then he smiled, but it wasn’t the same smile I had grown to love. This smile was different. It was fraudulent. He ran his hands through his hair as I waited, dangling over the edge of a cliff.
“I don’t know what to say,” he said, looking past me and not at me, and there was something he was trying to hide.
“Say anything.” I grasped for hope, but he stood before me, unreachable. I grabbed his hand, but it was cold, and he pulled away before stuffing his hands into his pockets.
/> “You fucked my brother. I should have never allowed it to go on as long as it did.”
His words sliced through me. They cut me up, stuffed me into a blender, and he pressed the “on” button.
“Allowed what to go on?” Don’t say it, Ollie. Don’t you dare say it.
He took in a deep breath and looked at the ground as he exhaled. It was the most extended breath he had ever taken. “You and I.”
You and I.
Those were bullets. Three of them. One to the stomach, one to the heart, and one to the head. Before, when he’d said those words, it was all that mattered. A promise. Now it sounded like a past time, a regret. Another tear fell down my cheek, and I was trying to be strong for him when strong was all he was now. He still wouldn’t look at me, and my hands trembled at my sides.
“Ollie, it’s the medication. You don’t mean it. You promised me,” I held up the ring for him to see. “You fucking promised me, remember?
Ollie removed a hand from his pocket, but only to lower mine with his cold and bitter touch. “Don’t curse, darling. It’s a turnoff.”
My eyes went wide as I searched his face, but he looked at everything else but me. He exhaled, and I could tell he was about to pull away, so I stepped in front of him. “Tell me what to do, Ollie. How am I supposed to remind you?”
“You can’t. It’s over. You have to let me go.”
I shook my head as I felt the color drain from my face. Everything told me I should walk away, but I couldn’t. All I wanted was to stay with him. I brought my hand to his face, and he froze under my touch.
“Please look at me,” I begged, and his eyes slowly lifted to mine. The hollow he had described to me so many times was there, but he was still there also, lost in his newfound darkness. He laid his palm over my hand, but he didn’t pull away. It was all I needed to keep going.
Lifting myself on my toes, I kissed him lightly. I’d never been so scared.
He opened his eyes.
“Mia …” He gasped as if it were his last breath, then kissed me back with his hands on my face, our lips holding on desperately, yet dangerously. But as quickly as it had started, it was gone.
Ollie pulled away and dropped his forehead to mine. He wet his lips as he slowly shook his head back and forth. He was slipping away before my eyes, and I didn’t know what else to do. “It’s your turn to stay with me,” I whispered.
Ollie pulled away from my hold and took a step back. The hands that once couldn’t stay off me were now in his pockets. The lips that once always wanted to be on mine, weren’t, and the eyes that used to always see me, couldn’t.
“I’m such an idiot.” He pushed out a harsh laugh that quickly dissolved. Looking me up and down, he took another step back. “Stay away from me, Mia.”
Then he left me alone in the hallway.
And those words knocked me to my knees. Each step Ollie took away from me propelled another blow to my soul, impelling more tears from my eyes, provoking every outcry, and only intensifying the pain in my chest.
He never told me to close my eyes,
but I closed my eyes anyway.
Epilogue
“This was love at first sight,
Love everlasting: a feeling
Unknown, unhoped for,
Unexpected – in so far as it
Could be a matter of conscious awareness; it
Took entire possession of him, and he understood
With joyous amazement,
That this was for life.”
-Thomas Mann
Six Months Ago
ollie
SINCE FIVE IN the morning, I’d been awake. Everyone had left around four, and I’d had too much to drink. It was a rare occurrence, me drinking, but Oscar always gifted me with bottles. Half of me wanted to believe he felt terrible for pinning the crime on me, so he dropped the bottles off once a week in my dorm; the other half of me was certain it was all a ploy, another way to control and manipulate me. Either way, fuck you, Oscar.
She couldn’t have been real, though—the girl from the mess hall. It happened instantly, my heart and soul coming to an automatic agreement, promising their all to her, and frankly, I have too much.
Too much heart and too much soul.
But last night, Jake and Alicia confirmed her existence. They said her name was Mia. How could a three-letter word sound better than poetry? Mia.
She’d sat at the table against the window, couldn’t have been more than thirty feet away, but my body had liquefied and turned into lava, wanting to flow in her direction. Everything had stopped. Though, she couldn’t have been real. No one could’ve physically affected me the way she did. It had to have been a dream—a mirage—a reflection of what I’d been waiting for. She wasn’t real, I’d kept reminding myself.
But she was. Her name was Mia, and she was fucking real.
They had invited her, but she hadn’t shown up last night.
I couldn’t get her out of my head.
The doors automatically unlocked and I grabbed my plain white shirt (the collar on the Dolor shirt was constricting), my black jeans, and fresh pants before heading out, slinging them over my shoulder. The morning was my favorite time of day. I’d always been a morning person. The smell was different in the morning. The air felt different in the morning. I breathed differently in the morning—a new day. I always felt the need to beat the rising of the sun. A sunrise was different from a sunset. When the sun rose, it spoke of new beginnings. When the sun set, there were no words to follow.
My head pounded—bloody hangover. Walking into the bathroom, I rubbed my fingers over my eyes. Another shower stall was already turned on. The water beat against the tile. Steam built across my skin. Something slowly changed inside me. I felt it before I saw it.
Her presence, it was overwhelming.
My hands dropped to my side.
Mia.
I only saw her, and she saw me.
Her eyes on me kept me steady. Her eyes on me allowed me to exist. Her eyes on me made me important. She made me feel like I was something to be in awe of. Something to be worthy of.
A somebody. Her somebody.
A rush of emotions washed over me as I stopped in my tracks. My feet were useless and unable to move. I felt lost, utterly lost, and I suddenly didn’t know where I was or how I had ended up here. I felt found, discovered by her, and I never wanted her eyes to leave mine. I felt scared, fucking petrified, if we lost this eye contact, she would disappear. I felt peace, undeniably calm in her existence. I felt resurrected, awakened, and I didn’t know how I had lived this long without this privilege of being in her presence.
The pounding of my heart was the only sound as everything else went silent. It beat so loud. Could she hear my heart beating? It was speaking. It told me I had found her.
There.
She.
Is.
There was the girl I had been waiting my whole life for.
I was so weak, it was embarrassing. Staying on my feet became a struggle, when all my body wanted to do was fall to my knees.
Dammit, Mia, I already fell for you.
And suddenly, everyone was wrong. Except for Thomas Mann. Thank you, Mr. Mann, for you gifted me words for everything this moment had brought me. Will Mia be okay with naming our first son after you? Little Thomas Mann Masters.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t force away the stupid smile on my face. I was smiling, and it was the first bit of movement my muscles were able to overcome since the shock.
If I didn’t speak now, I would scare her away, but I had forgotten how to speak. It was right there, just one word. Bloody hell. It came up from my chest. The word pumped from my own heart. The heart she now owned.
“Hi,” I breathed. Oh, good, I was breathing. I wasn’t fucking dead. I was alive, a
nd she had become my heaven on earth.
She smiled, and I fell all over again. Her top lip thinned out when she smiled, but the bottom lip kept its perfect shape. I loved her smile. I wanted to kiss her smile. I wanted to wake up to her smile every blessed morning.
Morning.
I knew I liked the mornings for a reason.
This was the beginning of a brand new day for her, but for me, this was the beginning of our lives together. She just didn’t know it yet.
“Hi,” she said, and the one syllable engulfed me entirely. I swam in it. I drowned in it. I wanted to say something more, but my heart was still recovering. Though, I doubted it would ever recover. Nothing about me would ever be the same after her.
I was certain of it.
We stood staring at each other, and I was not sure how long it had been. I took all of her in. Her eyes, though we were five feet away, were golden brown. Yesterday, they had been dark brown. Today, they were like coffee with two—no, three—tablespoons of creamer. Did she like coffee? She was American, so of course she did.
God bless America.
Her hair was wavy, but straight at the ends. Her hair was brown but lighter near the ends. It was like God couldn’t decide. I didn’t blame him for it. Despite his indecisiveness, she was a masterpiece.
But it was not the almond shape of her eyes, or the style of her hair, or even the way her lips moved when she uttered the simplest word causing my heart to stop. No, it was how I was finally home. It was not love at first sight, Mr. Mann. She had always been a part of me. My soul already knew hers, and it was now, in this fucking moment, when we were finally reunited. And there she stood, the girl I belonged to. I was no longer homesick. I was complete.
She turned away, and my heart suddenly crippled. It crippled because her eyes weren’t on me. I needed her to see me. I didn’t exist without her eyes on me.
I took steps toward her, and I never wanted to take another step unless it was in her direction. We were so close; I was careful not to touch her. God, did I want to touch her. I leaned over to grab a towel, making sure to keep a distance, but the distance was the last thing we needed. My skin was inches from hers, yet the beauty radiating from her soul penetrated everything. Me. My body. My heart. Everything. Her warmth was ecstasy, and I wanted to fall asleep in it every damn night.
Stay With Me (Stay With Me Series Book 1) Page 34