He must’ve leftandcome back when I was unconscious.
As I sit up on the hard-ass floor, rubbing my eyes, my shoulder hitching right where it meets my neck, I become convinced I’ve been transported to another dimension.
Because he’s holding out my phone to me.
My real phone.
“What’s this?” I ask, my voice groggy with sleep and heavy with suspicion.
“Peace offering.”
“Why?”
“I don’t like being an ass.”
I stare at him.
He stares back.
It’s like a challenge.Will you accept this as an apology, or are you going to make me say more? And are you willing to take the risk that I tell you to fuck off when you demand more?
I take the phone, still squinting at him.
I power it up, and he only flinches the tiniest bit.
“Margot can’t track me on this,” I tell him.
He flinches harder.
Like he’s not comfortable with me knowing what he was thinking.
Or maybe like he’s not comfortable with the mention of my sister.
The woman he was engaged to a few years ago.
The woman he hurt when he broke up with her.
The woman I feel like I’m betraying every time I look at Oliver’s ass.
And that’s when it hits me.
I leap to my feet, almost tripping over the quilt, but saving myself as I ignore Oliver lunging for me. “Oh my god, you’re leaving me here.”
His eyes flare wide, his hands inches from my hips. “No.”
“Then what’s all of this? Donuts? Coffee?Myphone? You are. You’re leaving me here.”
“I—no.”
I glare at him.
“I want—I’m sorry.” He says the words as if he’s never tasted anything worse in his life, which should be utterly hilarious.
Oliver wasn’t a complete pushover when he was dating Margot—only mostly a pushover—but I remember her telling him once at some family dinner that he’d have to apologize less whenever he took over for his father after he apologized for someone else bumping the table wrong.
At the time, we all assumed he’d have a couple decades to break the habit.
Clearly, four years wasplentyof time.
