The Winter Before

by Karen Crompton

  Olivia looked across at Isaac, who was standing in the middle of the living room, staring blankly at the floor.

  Trying to decipher his expression was near impossible, but she could have sworn she’d seen a flash of disappointment in his eyes when he’d glanced at her out on the porch.

  Olivia ran her fingers through her hair, moving across the room until she was standing directly in front of him. “Hey.What’s wrong?”

  “You wanted him here.” Isaac spoke self-consciously. His fingers reached for his neck, but then he dropped his hand to his side, a conscious choice not to give in to his basic instincts. “I should probably just go—”

  “No. Don’t go,” Olivia said.

  Isaac blew out a breath, and Olivia felt like she might crumble at the sound of his hollowness. The emptiness wrapped itself around her and she felt suffocated by the void he’d just created between them.

  Isaac shoved his hands into his pockets, his shoulders curling in on himself, like parenthesis, like he was trying to make himself smaller, and Olivia hated that she’d made him feel that way. She owed him some kind of an explanation.

  “It wasn’t like that, Isaac. I promise. I want Kyle Mason here even less than you do. He was giving me a hard time at the bakery a few weeks back, and I was being sarcastic. The idiot took me literally.”

  “You used to go out with him?”

  Olivia closed her eyes briefly, pain coursing through her. She shook her head and yanked on Isaac’s sleeves until his hands fell free from his pockets. She wanted his full attention and she’d missed his touch.

  “Yes. I did, once. I have history with him. But it’s a history I’d rather forget.”

  Isaac didn’t like the feeling of dread that loomed over him, or the tightness in his chest. And he definitely didn’t like the way Olivia had just deliberately hidden her eyes from him. She had beautiful eyes. They told him so much. He never wanted her to feel ashamed, or hide her eyes from him again and he realized he was making this harder for her.

  “Olivia.”

  One word. Her name. Falling softly from Isaac’s lips. And that’s all it took for her walls to start to crumble.

  Her heart constricted and she fell into Isaac, letting everything else slide away. Their bodies bumped gently, and Isaac’s breathing stalled. Olivia’s warm body curved perfectly against his rock-hard chest, and blood thrummed erratically when she stretched up onto her toes and just like that, her mouth was on his, as if she was desperate for something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

  He knew she was just buying time. He knew she was stalling. But maybe she needed that kiss right there in that moment, and if that’s what Olivia needed, then that’s what Isaac was willing to give her.

  The sweet taste of her mouth went straight to places he didn’t want to think about. But in that moment those places were all he could think about, and he knew Olivia was thinking about them too, with the way her hips gradually rocked forward, seeking him out.

  “Olivia…”

  Isaac said her name again with a shallow breath that tumbled softly from his lips—lips that despised him in that moment for denying them the one thing they wanted most of all—and Olivia panted, trying to catch her breath and her thoughts.

  “Talk to me.”

  She nodded, looking up into dark eyes that hung above her, but she didn’t seem to know how to go on. Isaac wanted her story. And she wanted to be the one to tell him. She desperately wanted to tell him everything. She wanted Isaac to know the truth. And she wanted him to hear it from her.

  But she wasn’t sure where to begin.

  Isaac filled his lungs as if he was afraid the world was going to run out of oxygen. He stepped back, giving them both a little space while gazing down at the girl who could tear his entire world apart if he let her.

  “Tell me what happened?”

  Olivia’s eyes looked panicked for a whisper, just a crack in time that couldn’t be mended. But it only lasted a moment and then it was gone again.

  Linking their fingers tightly, she walked Isaac toward the couch. They sat, and then she sank into her story with a breath that came from somewhere deep down inside.

  “I was stupid to ever get involved with Kyle Mason in the first place,” she mused, thinking back on all the wasted opportunities she’d spent chasing after a boy who never treated her right. “He’s charming when he wants to be, and I fell for it.”

  “Were you in love with him?”

  Olivia shook her head instantly, her belly churning at the thought. “No, I wasn’t in love with him. Infatuated, maybe? He’s attractive in his own rugged, bad-boy kind of way. I was gullible enough to be lured in by a black leather jacket and a handsome face.”

  Isaac held his breath. He wasn’t sure what to make of that. He glanced down at their linked fingers, the fine bones of Olivia’s knuckles and the perfectly smooth skin that covered those bones. He’d spent his entire life surrounded by people who only saw beauty in the superficial, and he didn’t think Olivia was like everyone else.

  “I was only sixteen.” Olivia smiled faintly, reading Isaac’s bothered expression. “I regret it, but he had a hold on me. He knew it. And he used that to his advantage.”

  Olivia looked up, touched eyes with Isaac and in his silence, in his rapt attention, he told her he understood. He gestured for her to continue.

  “Kyle made me feel like I was the center of his world, but it turned out I was anything but. We’d only been dating exclusively for a few months when Kyle asked me to go with him to the prom. He asked me down at the lake where all the cool kids hung out. The water was frozen, and it was very romantic, or at least it was what I thought romance was supposed to look like.” Olivia shook her head, and rolled her eyes. “So much so, that I completely overlooked the way he blatantly checked out Rachael Watson’s thighs when she flitted past in her cheerleader’s outfit. Or the way he literally purred when Jane Chang’s skirt blew up in the wind.”

  “Charming.”

  “Yeah,” Olivia scoffed.

  Isaac stared at her, hearing the undercurrent of fear in Olivia’s trembling voice. “What happened?” he asked. His words weren’t judgmental. Not spoken with force, or contempt. He was simply encouraging her to tell him more. “What did he do?”

  Olivia hesitated, her anxiety kicking up a notch from the memory of that horrible evening. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly.

  “Like I said, we went to the prom together. Kyle had already turned seventeen by then, and he got his driver’s license the week before. He borrowed his father’s Lexus for the night, and we drove around town after the dance, not wanting to go home straight away. It wasn’t late, and we still had a few hours before my curfew. So, Kyle suggested we go for a drive up to Earl’s Point… the lookout?”

  Isaac nodded. “I know where it is.”

  “When we got there, it was really dark, and there was no one around for miles. Kyle begged me to get into the back seat with him. He told me I owed him a few kisses at least—for the tux he’d rented and for the corsage he’d bought me. So I did. And one thing led to another. We fooled around for a while, just kissing and stuff, and then he unzipped my dress, yanking it down roughly. It was strapless, and I wasn’t wearing a bra. My… my breasts were completely exposed to him, and I didn’t like the way it made me feel.”

  Olivia remembered the stench of alcohol and weed on Kyle’s breath. He’d smoked pot before they’d even left the house, and his eyes had been red and glassy the entire night.

  “Then his hands were suddenly everywhere. On my boobs, under my dress, on my legs, between my legs, in my hair. I begged him to stop. But he just wouldn’t stop, and I knew where it was headed and what was going to happen if I didn’t get out of that car.

  “Just when I thought I was going to be raped, headlights bounced around the corner, sliding across the back seat just long enough for me to wave and scream out, hoping to hell that whoever was driving the car could see
me.”

  Isaac sat motionless, like an iceberg in the ocean.

  “But then the car pulled in a little farther along the grass beside the Lexus, and Kyle grinned when he recognized who it was. It was Riley and another friend of theirs from school. They jumped out and started walking toward us, and Kyle suddenly leaned down and bit my bottom lip so hard that it started bleeding. I wanted to cry out from the pain, but before I knew what was happening, he had his hand over my mouth and had pulled a lever that made the center console of the back seat fall forward. I tried to fight him off, I honestly did. But he overpowered me, he was out of control. It was suddenly like he’d lost his mind, and then he shoved me into the trunk before anyone even knew I was there. He told me if I made a sound, a single peep, then all three of them would take turns with me, and if that’s what I wanted just make a noise and he’d make sure he went first, so that way he didn’t get anyone else’s sloppy seconds.”

  Olivia went quiet as she recalled the memory with such clarity. The helplessness had felt overwhelming at the time, and it still felt that way. She wiped tears from her eyes, her hands shaking as she looked up into Isaac’s face.

  “It was dark in the trunk. It was so, so dark.”

  Isaac clamped his eyes shut for a split second, realization striking a heavy blow to the side of his head, and then he blinked and reached for Olivia, pulling her into him, pulling her in so close to his chest that she could feel his heart pounding wildly beneath her cheek.

  She kept talking, kept telling Isaac her story, although her head was dizzy and her guts were churning over.

  “They smoked pot and drank beer for a while on the grass between the two cars, told bullshit stories about who they’d made out with, or who they’d touched up in the janitor’s closet. After about an hour, they all climbed into Riley’s car, and… and then they just left.”

  “They left?” Isaac wasn’t expecting that. Things could have been so much worse; he didn’t want to take that away from the horror of the story. But he felt his entire body slump forward with relief as if he’d just been granted a reprieve. “Where did they go? Did they come back?”

  “No. They all just left.” Olivia spoke into Isaac’s chest, his gray jacket soft and warm against the side of her face. “I don’t think Riley and Clay even knew I was there. Kyle probably forgot I was there too by the time he was completely stoned, or three parts drunk. Whichever came first. But I was there, locked in the trunk of Sheriff Mason’s car and I spent the rest of the evening trapped in the dark, completely terrified, not knowing if they were coming back to finish off what Kyle had started.

  “When the sun came up, just enough to let tiny slithers of light seep through the darkness, around the cracks in the brake lights and the rear indicators, I found a wheel jack buried under a blanket and I jimmied the lock. The trunk popped open and I crawled out. I cut my knee on a rock. It hurt. Then I ran all the way home, wearing the most ridiculous silver stilettos on my feet, and a taffeta dress that I threw in the trash the same day.”

  Olivia leaned back a fraction so that she was looking up at Isaac’s face, so that their eyes touched and she felt the connection between them deep down in her core.

  “I told my parents. They reported it immediately. But you can guess how far that went. Sheriff Mason told my father that Kyle and I had been fooling around at the lookout. When I got cold feet, Kyle told him we got into an argument, and he called his friends to come and pick him up. He said he gave me the keys to the Lexus so that I could get home safely. Apparently, I chose to walk home instead. And that was the end of that. Sheriff Mason warned my father if he continued to push the issue that he would be charged with defamation as well as a whole list of other things I can’t really remember right now.”

  “He’ll never hurt you again,” Isaac said in a low voice. “It’s not dark anymore. He’ll never hurt you again.”

  He kissed her forehead, then her cheek, and then her lips. And Olivia smiled and nodded as she welcomed his touch, soft and warm and gentle.

  But she wasn’t entirely sure she believed him.

  Days passed, and Isaac was done with pretending.

  He’d tried to stay away. He’d fought with everything he had inside him. He’d fought like the prizefighter he was not, but staying away had left him feeling like he had in fact gone ten rounds inside the ring—bruised, battered, and begging for the bell.

  So, he stopped trying, and he didn’t even care if showing up on Olivia’s doorstep was wrong, or too forward of him. Putting it simply, he liked the way she looked at him, and he really liked the way it felt to kiss her.

  He’d tried to hide his feelings, to hide behind them, but it was completely pointless. He couldn’t ignore the way his body reacted to hers, or the way his heart always beat a little faster whenever she was around. He couldn’t deny it a moment longer, nor did he want to.

  It was selfish, he knew that. But he wanted Olivia in ways he’d never wanted anyone else before. She made him say things he would never normally say, think things he’d never normally think, do things that were so far out of his comfort zone he didn’t always know which way was up.

  Olivia Parker was the best part of his day.

  She had become his new favorite smell, his favorite taste, his favorite sight and sound, and the thought of her made his muscles tingle and his chest ache.

  Isaac startled when she spoke.

  “There, done.”

  Olivia sat back on her haunches, breathing heavily. Her forehead was sweaty, and her hair was speckled with clumps of wet glue and soggy wallpaper.

  He placed his scraper on the floor beside him, his own hands sticky and sore from hours of peeling back wallpaper that was as old as the timber floor they were both sitting on.

  He looked around the kitchen, pleased that they had actually got to the end. There was so much more to do, of course, but for now they were done and if he played his cards right, he might be invited back again tomorrow to work on the rest of the house.

  “It looks so much bigger like this,” he said, eyeing the empty space and the bare walls around them.

  “Yeah, it does.”

  “You’ll need some new trim for the broken baseboards over there. And the windows will need reframing, there’s not much we can do with the rotten wood, it can’t be fixed. You can’t just patch it and repaint and hope for the best. It’ll look terrible.”

  “I guess that makes sense.”

  “And the glass in the mudroom door will need replacing too. I can ask around and see if I can pick up an offcut next time I’m in Williamstown.”

  “How much is all that going to cost me?”

  “Probably won’t get much change from three hundred dollars. But it’s not a huge job. I can get some new timber for you from the store, and I can install it. That’ll save you a heap in labor costs.”

  “You know how to do that?”

  Isaac smiled, a beautiful smile that was both shy and earth-shattering at the same time. “Yes. I’m very good with my hands. Or so I’ve been told.”

  “Oh, really? And who exactly, has told you that?” Olivia pouted, faking innocence and something else. There was a dirty undercurrent to her tone. “You got something you wanna tell me, Mr. Stone?”

  Isaac suddenly looked uncomfortable. “No. I was only joking. I don’t have a damn clue what I’m doing.”

  Olivia burst out laughing, throwing her messy hair back over her shoulder. “Yes, Isaac. You do,” she said, turning her eyes back on him. She wanted to crawl across the floor and take a bite out of his well-developed right bicep just to show him what he did to her. “And I must say, you’re getting better at it every day.”

  “Not really, but I’m having fun learning. I like you showing me things. And I know I want to break all my rules when I’m around you.”

  Olivia’s heart ached and she reveled in Isaac’s words.

  She came toward him, one knee, one hand at a time and when their jeans touched, Olivia’s fingers
toyed with the bottom of Isaac’s thin shirt, playing with the hem, unbuttoning the bottom two buttons with shaky fingers and firm resolve. “Maybe it’s time for your next lesson.”

  “What?”

  Olivia slowly licked her bottom lip, ever the temptress. “You heard me. I want it off. I want to see you. I want to see all of you.”

  “Oh no, no, no… trust me, Liv. You don’t want to see what’s under this shirt.”

  “Oh, but I do.”

  It was warm inside the house, locked away as they were from the biting cold outside, and Olivia was done with renovations for the day.

  She had a better idea.

  They’d shared kisses, lots of kisses.

  But Olivia had not seen Isaac’s bare chest up close—the scars across his face were one thing, he couldn’t hide them as well as he wanted to, they were on show whether he liked it or not—but the scars that ran across his shoulder, down his chest, his ribs and sides were something else altogether.

  “Please?” Olivia whispered the soft plea, and just like that, Isaac caved.

  He sighed, took a moment, and then sat back and lifted his arms. Olivia took what she wanted, and she didn’t waste time. She dragged the shirt off over his head and stared in wonder at his strong, muscled, statue-like chest.

  Isaac rubbed his hands over his hair and looked back at her a little self-consciously, dropping his hands back to his thighs.

  But he didn’t stop her, and he watched as Olivia’s eyes wandered, blatantly admiring his well-toned physique, and then, as if she was exploring a brand new world, her fingers slid over his stomach, tracing each of the sculpted bumps of his torso, her fingernails dragging across his sensitive skin to the point he thought he might just lose his mind completely.

  He swallowed as she moved her hands up toward his chest. The feeling was foreign to him, but it wasn’t unwelcome.