“He has me, Zeke. Forever. He’s not angry with me. He’s angry at a faceless douchebag, and he wants to fix this problem but doesn’t even know where to begin. Ollie’s stuck between morals and destruction. Calm and a storm. Love and hate. He’s stuck in the middle—everything he’s so certain about being questioned.” My eyes dragged until they hit faded tattoos and messy brown hair. The man my soul was promised to posted up on a wall, staring at me from across the room with his hand gripping the back of his neck and his leg propped. “In his beautiful mind, Ollie is carrying the burden of a thousand lost souls yet has the heart of a thousand angels. That’s exactly why I can’t let him do this for me. I lied because I can take this person down without so much as a scratch at my conscious. Ollie walked away because he knows it too.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Sometimes all we need
is someone who will
sit in the darkwith us.”
—Oliver Masters
mia.
MS. CHANDLER SAT WITH her cell phone in front of her face, popping gum in her mouth and smiling at whoever she was probably sexting. I’d finished my lesson approximately twenty minutes ago and had another twenty minutes to sit here and listen to her soft giggle and pop of the gum.
“Did you hear what happened in the Looney Bin last night?” Tyler whispered. “Another suicide. Told you … contagious. Spreads like wildfire.”
It didn’t make sense. That made three suicides in one school year. Highly unlikely. “How did you hear about this?”
Tyler shrugged. She’d changed so much since the year started. From the looks of it, twenty or so pounds fell off her. Her blonde hair, which was usually down and hiding her face, was up in a high ponytail. She lost two buttons on her Dolor shirt, showing cleavage. She was confident. Good for her, but at what cost?
Pop.
Tyler groaned. “If I hear that one more time, I’m going to scream … ” Her eyes seared into Ms. Chandler as she continued to whine, and my brain went to a place where math, statistics, and suicide lived. Suicide shouldn’t be associated with math, but unfortunately, we lived in a world where everything’s measured in numbers.
In my world, both Ethan and Ollie seemed emotionally and physically affected by it.
I’d only seen Ethan in passing once since the beating, and it was all I needed to confirm Ollie had released wrath on his face. After the beating, they’d both shook hands and went their separate ways. Ethan’s healing cheekbone looked like a July sunset in Pennsylvania. His lip had a cut, and his eye was still swollen, even after a week. When I’d thought he’d be mad at me, he wasn’t.
I’d learned you didn’t have to be feared to be respected. No one feared Ollie, yet everyone respected him.“If people fear you, you will be ten feet tall amongst enemies. If people love you, you will be a hundred feet tall among loyal defenders,”Ollie had once said. People give you respect if you give them something in return—a choice, an answer, a lesson … And the day Ollie’s fist blasted into Ethan’s skull, Ollie had given everyone a lesson on what happens when you turn your back on the people with whom your loyalty lies.
A spanking had been what it was.
Ethan walked into the classroom, and his eyes hit mine before steering toward Ms. Chandler at the front of the class.
“Officer Scott, what a surprise,” she cooed, fucking Ethan with her mascara-clumped lashes and pursing her pink lips. It was no shock to anyone Ethan had the body of a god and the chiseled features of one of Picasso’s portraits. But only I knew what he felt like curled up in his arms in the middle of the night as he whispered the terrors away.
“Jett, let’s go,” Ethan called, ignoring the way Chandler made a fool of herself as she propped her elbow over the table and leaned forward to display the dip of her shirt. I smiled to myself as I collected my things and waved a hand at Tyler.
We walked one room over, and Ethan hurriedly closed the door and turned to me. His mask vanished and was back to the Ethan I’d known very well. “I need you,” he quietly said. “One night. I need one night. I’m not doing so well. I’m so sorry for leaving you alone. I should’ve never done that. But, please, Jett. Tell Masters you’re sleeping in your room tonight. Tell him whatever you need to, but I’m telling you, I fucking need you so bad right now. I’m going to bloody break. I can’t handle it,” Ethan continued to ramble.
“Okay,” I nodded and grabbed his hand. Ethan never admitted to needing me before. I’d always assumed he needed me, but it had been the first time I’d heard him say those words. Whatever had him so worked up, I needed to be there for him.
Ethan let out a breath. “What are you going to tell Masters?”
“The truth. You’re my family, and my family needs me right now. But I also need you to do something for me.”
“What?”
“I need to break into Lynch’s office.”
“What the fuck for?”
“Files. I need to look at the student files. Ollie can’t know.”
Ethan let out a disbelieving laugh. “Let me get this straight, you’ll be honest about lying next to me at night, but lie about breaking into Lynch’s office? Have you told him I’ve touched all over you? Does Masters understand you’re mine as much as his?”
“That’s the difference between you and Ollie. To Ollie, I’m no one’s property.”
