“Bloody hell,” Jake blurted, finishing off the braid. He jumped up to his feet and stood in the middle of us all. “You guys have fun, I’m leaving.”
Jake took off, and I wished I had the nerve to follow him, but Ollie’s wayward presence and tone kept me glued to the ground with my fingers tearing the leaf until there were no more pieces remaining. The small bits glittered my combat boots.
“What do you want to do?” Maddie asked Ollie in her sweet sing-song Irish accent, and my eyes rolled to the back of my head.
Maddie and I managed to steer clear of one another all summer, but since Ollie’s return, she hadn’t left his side, clinging to him like a damn groupie.
“How about a welcome home present, Mia.” Ollie’s lips curved into a smile as he swayed his hips back and forth.
I raised a brow, and he wiggled his in return. “Fuck off,” I mumbled and dusted the remaining pieces of the leaf away from my boots. His intentions were unclear, and my heart and ego couldn’t handle any more blows.
Ollie’s smug smile grew. “Love to.” I flipped him the bird, and in seconds, Ollie jumped to his feet and walked toward me. My insides buckled, not listening to my brain. My hand dropped, and so did Ollie—right in front of me. “I’ll take that as a yeah.”
“What are you doing?” My eyes darted around, and everyone else’s attention trained on us, waiting to see what would come next.
“I miss you,” he whispered with a jaded voice, but his words sliced into me, cutting me open and tearing at an already present wound he put there. His hand wrapped around my thigh as he crawled between my legs, and my limbs failed me. I couldn’t find the will to push him away. The bulge in his pants pressed between my thighs as he lowered me onto my back. Leaves crunched beneath us. “You see what you’re doing to me?”
“Get off me,” I warned, but my desperate hands had a mind of their own as they gripped his sides, resisting my words.
“You don’t mean that Mia, do you?” His eyes flickered a darkness I’d never seen in him before, and his fingers reached for the skin under my shirt. Flashes of his brother entered my mind, triggering bad memories of last year, and I crawled backward out of his hold. Ollie’s fingers gripped me tighter and pulled me back under him. “Where are you going?”
My hand instinctively slapped across his cheek, and his face whipped to the side. His, once smug, smile disappeared and he dropped his head as he stayed idled on all fours. I stumbled to my feet and looked down at him, trying to catch my breath. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Ollie rolled over to sit on his ass and dropped his arms over his bent knees with his back facing me. “Alright, I get it. You’re only into men in uniform.” A low, incredulous laugh came from him, and I forced down the tears building up behind my eyes. Shaking my head, I took a seat with Bria and Jude on the tree branch.
Bria shot me a confused look. “You’re going to let him treat you like that?”
“He’s not himself right now.” The more those words came from me, the more it sounded like utter bullshit. Ethan had been right. I continued making excuses for him, seeming more like a broken record.
Ollie whistled Maddie over, and she crawled into his lap, side-eyeing me. “She’s stupid for denying you,” she sang as she ran her fingers through his hair.
“What in the actual fuck is happening?” Jude whispered. I ignored him as my body recovered from being close to Ollie’s all while Maddie continued to brush her fingers over the mark I left on his face.
Ollie wrapped Maddie’s legs around his waist. Bria and Tyler’s eyes darted to me, waiting for a reaction, but all I could do was stare. How could he have been so indulged in the two of us when he first got here, and be a completely different person now?
“Ollie, what are you doing?” I asked, worry laced in my tone while the rest of my body tensed under prying eyes and un-prying bodies.
The woods turned quiet. The only movement was Ollie’s hand appearing behind Maddie’s head before her tongue darted inside his mouth. My jaw clenched as Ollie lowered himself until his back hit the ground with her on top of him. My knees wobbled as I stood back to my feet. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Bria’s eyes grew wide, waiting for a reaction out of me, but I couldn’t give one. All I could do was turn and walk away.
“Oh, come on, Mia,” Ollie’s voice boomed from behind me, “What did you expect?”
My walk turned into a run back to the main building and straight into my room.
Unable to keep still, I pulled out the desk chair and withdrew the journal Dr. Conway gifted me and wrote, driving the pencil into the paper as if it were Ollie’s heart. The truth was, Ollie was my hell, but it wasn’t until now that I truly understood the meaning behind my own words. He was both the hero and villain in our love story, saving me only to ruin me. But I’d been there before. I understood low points. I understood mixed emotions and the inability to feel. I’d understood it all, but it wasn’t until now, on the receiving end, to understand the shit I’d put him through. It was my turn to help him, but would helping him lead to my own undoing?
A knock at the door grabbed my attention. “Mia, it’s Tyler.”
The breath I let out mixed with both relief and disappointment. A part of me still expected Ollie to follow. After opening the door, I let it hang there and returned to my desk chair. Tyler closed the door behind her and glanced over at me, feeling out my mood before taking a seat at the edge of my bed. “I don’t know what that was all about, but it didn’t last long.”
“I don’t care to know, Ty,” I rushed out, wiping my palms down my face. “It’s not him. He’s not the same.” Broken. Record. The automatic words became more natural to say, like “hello.”
Tyler’s doe-brown eyes scanned over me before she brought her hands into her lap and fidgeted with her fingers. “Listen,” she hesitated, “even he knows it wasn’t him. As soon as you left, something clicked. I may not know him like the rest of you, but it’s so obvious the bloke is a mess right now.”
“Good, he deserves it.”
The night terrors came back full force, but it wasn’t my cries that woke me. “Ollie … ” I heard myself say, but the moment Ollie’s name slipped from my mouth, the day before dawned on me and the ache returned.
“Ethan,” a muffled voice said before my mattress dipped from Ethan sitting beside me. “I thought with Ollie back this would be over.” The cold towel pressed to my forehead and instantly eased almost every worry—almost.
