Even When I'm Gone (Stay With Me series Book 2) Read online

  His mouth set in a hard line, and I shook my head, backing my chair from the table and gathered my belongings all at once. His hand caught my wrist, but I snatched it away. “The Ollie I know is certain,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for it to come out that way,” his leg bounced under the table, and he pressed down on his knee before standing. “Mia, let’s go talk.”

  “I have class.” With my books clutched to my chest, it was my turn to walk away from him. The green eyes staring at the back of my head burned a hole, but I kept my feet in front of me. It hurt to be around him, only bringing back the day he slipped away. All I wanted was for my Ollie to be back, and I wondered how long I would have to wait.

  “You alright, Jett?” Ethan asked as I passed him while leaving the mess hall. Without stopping, I nodded and picked up my pace. “Wait up!” Ethan followed after me, and I didn’t stop until his hand rested on my shoulder and spun me around. “Listen, it’s none of my business—

  “You’re right. It’s not,” I snapped.

  “Just listen to me for a second.” His electric blue eyes burned as he peered down at me, and he scratched the back of his head. “You’ve been doing so good. I don’t want to see you fall back into that same place.”

  “Why?” I asked, my voice on the verge of breaking. “Why do you care?”

  “Don’t play coy. It’s no secret we’re close, or at least I thought we were close,” Ethan rolled his head back before returning his eyes to me, “We’re friends, and I’m not going to sit back and watch him bring you down again.” His blue eyes went cold, and there was something he wanted to say, but he bit his tongue, refusing to cross a line.

  “What’s this?” Ollie’s voice came from behind. His arm draped around my shoulder, marking his territory. The tingles shooting up my spine blended between what my heart wanted and what my brain couldn’t understand. It was Ollie, but it wasn’t. Twisted confusion. Total mind-fuck. My head snapped up to see Ollie’s eyes darting back between Ethan and me. “Ah, it makes sense now. You’re screwing another security guard, Mia?” Ollie turned his chilling tone to Ethan. “You banging my girlfriend?”

  Ethan shook his head and took a step back. “You have the wrong idea.”

  “No, I don’t think I do,” Ollie pulled his arm away and shoved me forward with enough force, my books fell to the floor and my face crashed into Ethan’s chest. “Have her, mate. I have no use any longer.”

  I went into shock, and I pressed my face further into Ethan’s chest, gripping his shirt into my fist. Ethan took a step forward, taking me with him and a calculated chuckle came from Ollie while his footsteps faded behind me, adding more distance between us.

  Ethan’s hand pressed against the back of my head. “He’s gone,” he mumbled and tried pulling me away, but I refused. “What a fucking prick.”

  “It’s not him. That’s not Ollie,” I cried, “He’s never done that before … I don’t…”

  Ethan’s grip tightened around me before his chest rose against my cheek then fell as he released a long, exaggerated breath. “Don’t make excuses for him.”

  Chapter Five

  “I’ll wake up when the nightmare is over.”

  —Oliver Masters

  mia.

  IT HAD ONLY been a week since Ollie’s return, and already he’d proven I could hate him. He warned me this would happen, as if his forwardness would have prepared my paper heart. It would have been easier if he just stayed away. Luckily, classes kept me occupied, and Ollie kept to himself.

  Knowing he was within touching distance, talking distance—within distance, period—didn’t help. Three times a day, I’d seen him throughout the week. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I felt his eyes on me as if he were watching me from across the room from his old table with Maddie, Gwen, and Jude. But each time my eyes drifted, all I’d ever catch was the side of his face.

  “So, I’m thinking we should get together in the woods. It will be like old times,” Bria announced as soon as she sat down across from me on Friday morning in the mess hall. “Think of it as a welcome-home-Ollie-get-together.”

  “No, I don’t think that’s such a great idea,” I stated.

  Jude’s mysterious behavior turned Bria utterly smitten with him, and the get-together had nothing to do with Ollie. The smile on her face when she looked at Jude told me so. All Bria wanted was to get Jude in the woods, and though I’m not a cock block, I didn’t know which side of Ollie would show up, or if he would show up at all.

  “We need something to cheer us up,” she whined, turning to see Jude at the same table Ollie sat at.

  My gaze followed hers until my eyes landed upon Ollie once again. He looked the same in his black jeans, faded tattoos, and dirty-brown chaotic hair, though his smile was different and his eyes never found me like they used to. Some moments, I’d swore I’d caught a glimpse of the old him, as if a light bulb went off inside his head. But mainly he paid no attention as if our time together never existed.

  Since he pushed me into Ethan, he hadn’t made an effort to talk to me. Ollie was back to his medicated self, and I’d rather him be gone than see him like this. At least with him gone, I could imagine the old him and the memories we shared.

  “Mia?” My attention moved away from Ollie and back to Bria. She stared at me from across the table with her black brow in the air. Her expression transformed when she noticed mine, and a sigh escaped from her lips. “You don’t have to go.”

  Bria needed this.

  “I’m going,” Tyler piped up from beside me. “I’ve never gone to one of your get-togethers before. Should be interesting.”

  Tyler never witnessed the nightly parties I suffered through. She never met Isaac, never met Stanley, had never known the old Ollie, or the old me for that matter. At this point, I missed the former me. Not caring and no heart. “I’ll go,” I uttered through a sigh, wrapping my rebellious lock of hair around my index finger, pretending all was right in the world I lived in. “Just no games.”

  “No games? Do you know who you’re talking to?” Bria laughed and pushed out her chair as she stood. Her black pixie hair grew into a short bob, and it swayed as she walked over to Ollie’s new table and leaned over, surely informing the four of them of today’s get-together.

  “And she’s back,” I moaned.

  A recent storm brought a tree down at our old spot in the woods. Bria sat beside Jude on the broken tree while the rest of us grouped over the ground. Jake’s hands thread through Tyler’s blonde hair, finishing off a French braid, whilst Ollie sprawled out along the leaves with his hands behind his head, looking up into the sky beside Maddie.

  The late morning August sun filtered through the branches, raising the cold temperature a few notches. Brisk winds blew scarcely, reminding me summer was over and it was only going to get colder from this point forward. Between the constant rain and location of Guildford, it rarely reached temperatures over seventy degrees, even through the summer. A commotion from Ethan and Jerry breaking up a fight during a ritual poker game took place a couple of yards away, filling our background noise.

  “Ya finally gonna tell us your story?” Maddie asked Jude, breaking the silence. I wondered if the other’s felt the disconnection in the air, or if it was just me.

  Jude brought one leg up on the tree, his knee poking through the hole in his black jeans. “Nope.”

  “Probably an addict,” Ollie muttered with his eyes glued to the sky, speaking the first words since we’d come out here. His statement only confirmed my Ollie was gone. “Pill poppin’ addict,” he followed slowly, popping the P’s and tugging my heartstrings.

  “No, I know an addict when I see one,” Bria said beside Jude. “You don’t have to say anything.” She flashed him a small smile, and Jude gave her a sideways glance before looking back out in front of him. Jude was a walking co
ntradiction. The fact I couldn’t quite figure him out yet annoyed me. Was he into Bria? Was he not into Bria?

  Ollie lifted himself on his elbows. “Alright, this is boring. I have better things to do than sit around and watch the fruit loop braid hair.”

  “Hey,” Jake whined. “What’s your deal?”

  Ollie shook his head. “How about a game, yeah? Power? Strip or Dare?”

  “You don’t like games,” I reminded him, ripping a leaf in half.

  Ollie’s gaze fell over me, his green eyes dim and narrow. His head tilted to the side. “You don’t get to talk to me,” he said with a finger lifted in my direction.

  Pretending his words didn’t hit me like a tornado, I trained my eyes and fingers back on the leaf, ripping into smaller pieces. No matter how many seconds passed, I was still wrapped up in the cyclone of his sentence. Spinning and spinning and …

  “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.

  “Ethan,” I whispered, and opened my eyes. His mouth parted slightly, then closed. The lump in his throat bobbed. Blue eyes glowed against the moon’s light, and the red in his hair flared. “Why don’t you smile?”

  Pulling away from me, Ethan removed the towel and rested his elbows over his knees. “I don’t have a reason to smile, Jett,” he scratched his stubble, looking back at me, “Not yet, anyway.”

  “Why do you refuse to call me by my first name?”

  Ethan wrapped the towel tight a
round his hand, thinking about his next words or avoiding them altogether. “What’s with all the questions?” He finally asked. “Go back to sleep.”

  “Answer me.”

  “No.”

  “Lay with me.”

  “No.”

  “Just until I fall asleep?” My voice cracked in a plea, but I knew if I continued to push, he would cave. Somewhere inside, deep down inside, Ethan needed me this last year as much as I needed him. For different reasons, I was sure, but I never had to push too far for him to give up on his morals.

  Ethan groaned, but the sound of his keys coming off his belt had my hopes take off like a rocket. Next went the taser, then the radio, laying each item over my desk carefully. He lifted the sheet draped over me. His eyes flitted up my bare legs, panties, and tank top. I inched back to give him more room, and he shook his disapproving head before climbing in.

  “Turn around,” he ordered, his faint breath falling from his lips as he held up his head in the palm of his hand. Ethan bent his knee, planting his left foot over the mattress and twirled his finger.

  “No.” I grabbed his hand and placed it at my side. Ethan froze for a moment and chewed his bottom lip. “I want to remember what it feels like to be close to someone,” I finally added. “Someone who makes me feel safe.”

  Ethan dropped the arm holding up his head and sank beside me. His fingers moved over the exposed skin at my side while his other arm snaked beneath me, pulling me closer against him. “What are you going to do about Masters?”

  My chin tilted to meet his gaze. “You know?”

  I didn’t care if Bria, Tyler, Jake, or anyone else knew about what happened earlier in the day, but Ethan was different. I cared what Ethan thought about it. Every decision I made, for almost a year, depended on his approval. What would Ethan do? Would Ethan be proud of me? How would Ethan see me? It was strange, the way I starved for his approval like a father figure, looked up to him as a brother, wanted to be looked at by him as a lover, and wanted to feel close to him like a security blanket. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted from him, only the mere fact I was attached to Ethan.