It was almost midnight, but the string lights all around me lit up the sky before the fireworks could. “Mia!” someone shouted. “Can you believe we’re here? We’re in fucking London of all places! New Year’s, baby!” The girl handed me a drink, the liquid splashing over the rim and onto the cobblestone ground beneath me. My freshly manicured nails got my attention. They were pink. “Mia, come on. It’s almost midnight.” The happy girl with big brown eyes and brown hair grabbed my hand as she pulled me down the path. People buzzed all around us. Smiling faces, lights, a Ferris wheel. The crisp winter air took my breath away as we ran through the street. Laughing, music, and conversations blurred together as this happy girl shouted against the wind and noise. “We’re almost there!” We stopped along the edge of the water line as the smells of boat fuel, salty ocean, and fried food filled my nose.
I leaned over the railing and looked down below into the black sea as soon as the fireworks went off overhead. The reflection of the colors bled across the surface of the black ocean, and I lifted my head when the lights sizzled into waterfalls, cascading in the night sky. The fireworks dimmed, leaving a trace of smoke before new colors took their place.
“Beautiful,” a slow, deep voice said beside me. I turned my head to see bright green eyes—eyes more captivating than the fireworks. My entire body turned to face him. He had his arms folded over the railing, hunched over, but his head turned toward me with anawe-struckgrin. He wore a white sweatshirt, black Converse, and his jeans were faded and ripped at the knees, and fit himperfectly.
I found his eyes again. “Yeah, it is,” Iwhispered.
The guy shook his head and chuckled. “No, love. I wasn’t talking about the fireworks.” Heat rose in my cheeks as he turned his whole body to face me and leaned into his side. “Tell me your name.”
“Mia,” I said in reflex, unsure of how the words were able to leave me as I’d forgot everything else I’d ever known.
The guy held out his hand. I reached to shake it, but instead, he grabbed my hand and spun me around before pulling my back against his chest. His hands returned to the railing as he caged me in, but I didn’t mind. He didn’t scare me. I was finally home.
He pressed his head against the side of mine and whispered, “I’m Ollie. You know what tonightis, Mia?”
“New Year’s?” My response was accurate, but I felt foolish forsaying it.
“Tonight is the night we’ll be telling our kids about one day. The night my lifechanged.”
A relieved smile washed over me as another firework blasted from the charter boat off in the distance. My eyes followed the rocket up into the sky, and as soon as the colors burst over us, a gust of wind smacked me in the face. Ollie pulled me closer against him, wrapping his long arms around me to keep me warm. He smelled of nostalgia and marine breeze, with a hint of cologne. I closed my eyes to take in this moment.
“No, Mia. You can open youreyes now.”
“Mia, wake up. Open your eyes.” My eyes sprung open to see the nurse hovering over me with a flashlight pointed directly in my eyes. I squinted against the light when she said, “Oh, good. Now follow my fingers.”
The nurse held a finger between us and moved it from side to side. I did as I was told, still confused to where I was and what was going on.
She dropped her finger and her head all at once. “Do you remember what happened?”
My eyes blinked rapidly. “Ollie,” I said.Oscar. The phone. I stumbled to my feet with the nurse’s assistance.
The nurse looked me up and down. “You’re going to have to come to the station.”
I looked down to see my jeans down to my ankles. Shaking my head, I reached up for the phone and exhaled when I felt it beneath my fingers. “Please, I need to see Dean Lynch. It’s important.”
“You will definitely have to talk with the dean, dear,” she explained as she pulled up my pants, and I clutched the phone in my hand.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“And suddenly, when all is lost,
she becomes an explosionof hope.”
—Oliver Masters
“GOOD NEWS IS, I don’t see any evidence of rape,” the nurse said as she took off her latex gloves and rolled her chair over to a wastebasket to toss them. “But you are suffering from a mild concussion.” The nurse released my feet from the stirrups and set my legs out flat in front of me. She rolled her stool to the side of my bed, and she looked at me with the most delicate eyes a strong woman like her could have. “Mia, who attacked you? Who did this?” She genuinely cared.
The phone clutched in my hand burned a hole. “I need Dean Lynch,” was all I could say. She probably knew Oscar, and they were most likely acquaintances or possibly had lunch together. I couldn’t trust anyone.
My dark, heavy-set angel of a nurse sighed as I pulled the white sheet higher over me.
“Dean Lynch and an officer are already on their way to take a statement.”
I was able to exhale, calmer than I had been since Ollie was arrested. “Thank you for finding me.” I would have looked up to tell her, but the bright lamp above me was blinding.
“I didn’t find you. The janitor found you in his closet and came and got me. I’m only doing my job.” She patted my leg and stood. The way she said“I’m only doing my job”made her either humble or aloof. Nurses shouldn’t say things like that. “Now try to stay awake. I’ll flip on the telly to keep your brain occupied, yeah?”
“Yeah, okay,” I mumbled.
