“Turn yourself in?” I sat up, but with the help of the cold concrete wall to support me. “You didn’t do anything! Why do you have to turn yourself in?”
Ollie only shook his head. “Bria was raped. In my room. You guys were drugged, Mia. The only way I’ll be able to find justice in all this is to tell the Dean what happened. The only way to get Oscar away from here, away from you, is to be honest.” He dropped his hand from my head and rubbed my back. “Already thought this through, it’s the best option, so don’t try to change my mind.” He forced a convincing smile, but there was fear behind his exterior. “Now, come on. You have to get in the shower, change these clothes, and brush those teeth.”
Ollie stood to his feet and gathered a pile of things at the end of the bed and stuffed them under his arm. He held out his hands to help me to my feet.
It was dark outside. “What time is it?”
“A tad past six in the morning.”
We walked down the corridor toward the community bathroom. The only security guard on duty would have been Oscar, who wouldn’t dare show his face. It was quiet. Eerily quiet. Even our footsteps made no sound as we walked barefoot. The bathroom was empty. Ollie turned on a shower as I focused on not falling over.
As we waited for the water to heat up, he stood before me, our eyes locked on each other in a comforting silence. He wore his usual black V-neck and those amazing thin joggers I could see the outline of his length through. The bruise over his eye looked like a watercolor tray of greens and purples. His hair was in disarray from the number of times he’d presumably clutched it in the last twenty-nine hours.
“Mia?”
“Yeah?”
“This is all fucked up, isn’t it?” he asked, and I nodded. “Promise me we never tell our children about how we met.”
“Promise,” I said, forcing out a small smile.
He took my hand and led me behind the curtain.
“Can I touch you, Mia?” he asked, his voice coming from his throat, but having an unintentional crack mid-sentence. He cleared his throat. “You need help out of your clothes.”
I nodded and lifted my heavy arms over my head. Ollie peeled off his shirt I wore before withdrawing his own. His eyes stayed on me, watching every expression, studying every detail in my frozen face.
He dropped to his knees before me. His eyes still held my gaze as he tugged off my pajama shorts, my panties coming off along with them. He gripped my hips and pressed his lips to my hipbone before standing to his feet, his eyes never leaving mine.
His joggers and boxers were gone, and he steered me under the water, tilted my head back, and submerged my hair under the stream. “Let me do this for you.” Ollie grabbed the bottle of shampoo and massaged it into my scalp. “You’ll feel better afterward.”
“I don’t want you to turn yourself in.” It was all I could think about. He would be taken away as well. I couldn’t survive here without him. “You promised me—you and me, remember?”
Ollie grinned and rinsed my hair out under the stream, focusing on getting all the soap out. “I am doing this for you and me.”
“Stay with me, Ollie.”
“I am with you … always.”
No. I wanted to cry, but my body was too weak to do anything. Ollie squeezed soap between into his hands, rubbed them together, then ran his palms over my shoulders, down the length of my arms, and over my back. The warm water beating against my skin loosened my aching muscles, and Ollie’s hands over my bare skin erased the painful memories of Oscar away. He dropped to his knees again, running his soapy hands over my legs and between my thighs, and over my bottom. I held on to his shoulders to keep myself steady.
“Do you remember anything?” he asked me as he gripped the backs of my thighs. “They said they didn’t touch you … Did they touch you?” His hands felt amazing as they came around to my front and up the middle of my thighs. My brain couldn’t think about anything else aside from Ollie’s hands over me. “I’ll fucking kill them.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
Ollie drew in a deep breath and got to his feet. He wrapped a towel around me and propped me against the wall as he finished showering himself. Ollie quickly washed his hair, his body, and rinsed off before turning off the water. He dressed me in a big shirt that hit me mid-thigh.
“I’ll go to your room and get you some knickers,” he said and ripped up my old ones before tossing them in the trash.
We brushed our teeth before walking hand in hand down the hall back to his room. The halls were still empty. Dolor was quiet. He closed the door behind us and stripped his bed completely before I lay back down. He kissed the top of my head. “I’ll be right back.”
My mind was murky—unable to develop a single thought aside from everything Ollie had done for me in the last twenty-nine hours with guilt in his eyes. He’d washed me, the worried look in his eyes the entire time, and I wondered if he was scared to touch me. The last thing I ever wanted to lose was his constant need for me, and I felt it slipping away.
Ollie came back with my blanket and a change of clothes. “We’re borrowing this,” he said through a smile and threw the blanket over the bed beside me. When I didn’t smile, his face fell. “What’s on your mind, Mia?”
“You’re so scared to touch me. Like I’m fragile. I don’t like it.” Ollie took a step closer to the bed and ran his hand through his hair as I continued, “I’ll be fine, and I don’t want you to treat me differently.”
“It’s not that …”
