The line clicks off.
For a moment, I say nothing, my entire body thrumming with unspoken frustration.
The last thing I wanted today is for Olivia to be pulled away from me for hours to be in my mother’s company, answering god-knows-what kind of questions about our relationship.
Olivia sets the phone back on the nightstand and turns to me. Sensing the brimming tension beneath my skin, she leans in and presses a soft kiss to my jaw. “You should go,” she coaxes. “It’s just for a few hours.”
I hate that she’s right. I hate even more that I can’t refuse her when she’s looking at me like that—gentle, understanding, but firm.
Before I can argue, she’s already slipping from my grasp, stretching as she slides out of bed. My eyes follow her as she pads toward the bathroom, her bare skin illuminated by the morning light.
She disappears into the shower, leaving me with nothing but the gnawing frustration of knowing the day is out of my control.
I exhale sharply, raking a hand through my hair.
The hours can’t pass fast enough.
Time is slippingthrough my fingers like sand. No matter how tightly I hold on, the morning continues its cruel march forward, bringing Olivia closer to the moment she’ll walk out that door.
The car my mother sent will be downstairs any moment.
I watch as Olivia reaches for her coat, the simple act filling me with an unease I can’t rationalize. I tell myself she’s coming back. She promised. And yet, an insistent voice in the back of my mind whispers:What if she doesn’t?
What if she spends the afternoon with my mother and sees me for what I really am?A mess.A man barely keeping himself together, suffocating under his own desperation.
What if she realizes she deserves someone whole, someone less…broken?
She turns toward me, distractedly fixing the buttons of her coat, and before I can stop myself, I step into her space. My fingers wrap around her wrist, my thumb pressing over the delicate flutter of her pulse.
“You’ll come back here tonight?” My voice is calm, but there are jagged edges beneath it.
Olivia blinks up at me, her expression softening as if she can sense the weight behind the question. She doesn’t tease or make light of my need.
“Of course, my love. Where else would I go?”
Where else, indeed?
She moves to step away, and instinct overrides everything else. I pull her against me, crushing her to my chest.
She doesn’t resist. She never does. She just lets me take.
My arms lock around her, my face burying into the crook of her neck as I inhale the scent of her.Lilies.
My hold is too tight, too desperate, but she doesn’t pull away.
“Don’t make me wait for you too long.” The words slip from me before I can stop them.
She could remind me that she isn’t actually leaving, that she’s just going to lunch with my mother. She could scold me for being unreasonable. But she doesn’t.
Instead, she slides her hands up my back, pressing herself against me as tightly as I’m holding her.
“I won’t,” she assures me.
I force myself to pull back, just enough to look at her, my fingers brushing against the softness of her cheek.
“Stay in touch with me.”
Her head tilts, studying me with that quiet understanding that both soothes and disturbs me. I know she can see it—the fear clawing at me, the deep-rooted dread that if I let her go now, she won’t return in the same way.
