No. I would neverhurt you.
My head shook the nonsense away, and my eyes jerked in Scott’s direction as he looked at Mia who stood between us. The piece of rubbish had the nerve to look at her while I was in the same fucking room.
I swooped up her towel, wrapped it around her, and pulled her into me. She didn’t resist. Scott took a step toward me, and I held up a palm in his direction to stop him.
Mia shook in my grasp, and I couldn’t tell if it was because she was cold or scared of me. I lowered my head into the crook of her neck. “Tell me I didn’t do this,” I whispered out of earshot. My entire being hung on her answer.
“It wasn’t you,” she cried softly into my chest. “You weren’t yourself.”
Her words devoured me, shredded me to nothing. Absolute nothing. Chest pains so intense blurred my vision, and I held on to her tighter, digging my head into her neck. She was the only thing that mattered. She had always been the only thing that mattered.
A fierce sting fought its way through, and I pinched the bridge of my nose to control it. “I’m done saying I’m sorry. I’m going to make this right,” I quickly promised before I turned into a wreck in the bathroom. The words couldn’t come out fast enough in the little time we had. “I’ll show you. Please, wait for me. Just stay with me, Mia.”
“Even when you’re gone?”
I placed my hands over her face and pulled her away so I could see her as my eyes watered.Fuck, I was about to break. She still had belief—belief in the two of us. Somehow, she understood me. My lips met her forehead, and I breathed in the scent of her and buried it into my memory. “Especially when I’m gone.”
Releasing her, I pushed my legs through my sweats, grabbed my things, and walked away from her. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Emotions shredded me like a wild beast, ripping me apart. And it fucking hurt. I stopped in front of Scott and clenched my fist from putting it through his skull. “Don’t ever fucking look at her again,” my sick pride warned him.
Chapter Thirteen
“My first mistake was bringing
flowers to agun show.”
—Oliver Masters
mia.
“I CAN’T BELIEVE IT’S already the beginning of October,” Dr. Conway rejoiced with a smile on her face. “Halloween is right around the corner, my favorite holiday. Me and Mark sit at the end of our driveway and hand out candy every year. Seeing the little kids … ” she continued to gush as my thoughts transported back to the bathroom where something had changed within Ollie.
Ollie was fighting. I’d heard it in his voice. I’d seen it in his eyes. I’d felt it radiating from him, and the way he held onto me. One look at me, and he’d broken free from his somberness, ready to whisk me away and pull me from this nightmare. My heart jumped at the thought of him coming back to me. Our love was something to fight for, and Ollie still fought with everything he had.
Words had been exchanged between Ollie and Ethan before Ollie dipped out of the bathroom days before. Words that had been conveniently soaked up by the distance. But whatever Ollie had said caused Ethan’s demeanor to change when he appeared in my dorm room later that night.
Ethan had stripped down to his boxers and climbed in next to me. I hadn’t even had a night terror, but still, he’d fused to me without so much as an explanation.
Ollie had gotten to him.
The same way Ollie always got to me.
We’d fallen asleep, and when I’d woken a few hours later, Ethan’s hand had traveled down to my inner thighs, softly gripping as he mumbled in his sleep. His hard erection had pressed into the space between my legs. I had every reason to wake him up and pull away, starting with the most important reason—Ollie—but I couldn’t.
I desired to be needed and wanted by Ethan in an unhealthy way that never made sense to me. So, I’d fallen back to sleep, allowing his hands to roam and length to stay as he repeated words in my ear I couldn’t piece together.
Each night after that had been the same routine—Ethan and I not on speaking terms, but his hands on claiming terms. I’d fallen asleep in his warmth, pretending it was Ollie. It always had been easier to pretend, and Ethan continued to touch me in his sleep like he had something to prove.
“Every year we dress as Morticia and Gomez Addams from the Addams family. The newer generation of kids don’t get it, but it’s a hoot with the parents,” Dr. Conway rambled on as my attention steered back to the boring conversation.
“Nice,” I faked an interested voice, pretending I had been listening.
Dr. Conway shot me an all-knowing look and removed her pad of paper from her desk. Crossing her legs, she returned to her title as a doctor from a friend. “How are you coping with the visit from your father?”
“You mean the man who never was my father and lied to me for twenty years? I’m doing fabulous.”
Her face fell. “A million questions must be running through your head.”
“Not about him … ”—I turned my attention outside the window and followed the rain from the sky to the ground— “Honestly, I have so much going on right now, I haven’t even had a second to stop and think how it affects me.”
