Tilting my head, I laid it across my folded arms to face him. Blood seeped down his busted eyebrow, but I didn’t say anything. He’d probably deserved it, and I wondered how bad Ethan looked.
Ollie put his thumb between his teeth and clenched his eyes, his brows knitted together in determination. I lifted my head as my breath held in my chest. “What are you doing?” It finally dawned on me, and I tried pushing his arm away, but Ollie leaned away, shielding himself with his other arm.
When he pulled his thumb away, blood pumped from the broken skin. My eyes bulged from their sockets, darting back and forth. Ollie straightened his posture and shook his head. “The most dangerous man is a man in love,” he faced me, eyes wild and calm concurrently, “because I’d tear off my own flesh before someone hurts you … and if I’d do that to myself, imagine what I’d do to someone else.”
I stared at him, his adoring green eyes staring back at me. Ollie’s arm hung over his knee, his palm face-up as blood dripped over the marble. “Don’t ever do that again,” I fumed, and grabbed his thumb and wrapped it into the sleeve of my hoodie. “You’re insane.”
He smiled. “I’m in love,” he corrected, and his head fell back against the wall. “Are you still mad at me?”
An incredulous smile rose to my lips, and I wiped my eyes with the back of my free hand. “Yeah. I’m still mad at you.”
Together, we climbed back to our feet. Ollie grabbed my hand in his and sucked off his bleeding thumb. “Hey, Mia?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t ever try what I just did. It fucking hurts.”
“Good.” I laughed and shoved my shoulder into his arm.
My gaze burned holes into the side of Jude’s face before it traced over his temple, his prominent nose, and long hair. Before, I had been a scared little bitch. But that was before.
My fear had since turned to anger.
Ollie’s fingers dug into my thigh, attempting to absorb the rage rolling through me. “Baby, eat,” he said.
Ollie never called me that. He was desperate.
A security guard from confinement, who I nicknamed Yeti, stood in Ethan’s usual place. Typically, we don’t see guards from other areas very often. Not nearly long enough to know their names, and many of them refuse to offer giving it, but Yeti wasn’t much older than me with blonde wavy hair and crystal blue eyes. No facial hair, average height. The kind of guy who probably had girls following him around in high school, or whatever they called it here, and didn’t have a dream to follow after that. Yeti rocked a dad bod, I was still unsure if he had the kid to match, working for a dangerous school on minimum wage. The Yeti nickname came from the silver Yeti cup he carried around, probably laced in liquor from the way he swayed against the wall.
Yeti would be the perfect victim, so easy for me to get access to his set of keys.
“I need to get into Lynch’s office,” I rasped out, a plan formulating in my head. “I need access to files to learn my enemy.” Ollie drummed his forefinger and thumb against my thigh before pulling his hand away and scratching over his chest. My comment made him nervous, but I was going to do this with or without him. “I need to get my hands on a set of guard’s keys.”
Ollie’s palm ran down his face, looking over every inch of the mess hall before turning his piercing emerald gems to me. I’d just threatened his plan of laying low and walking out of here together. One idea, and I’d threatened our future.
It’s not my fault, Ollie. I’m just playing the same game.
“Got it all figured out, yeah?” Ollie asked.
I set my lips in a hard line.
“Dammit, Mia,”—Ollie slammed his fist into the table, making both Zeke and I jump— “Four bloody months. Until then, the only thing you’re doing is eating, sleeping, and enjoying every fucking night with me.” Easy for him to say. He wasn’t the one trapped in a dark enclosed room for over an hour. And even so, he was quick to take it out on the wrong person. “You have to trust me on this.”
I lifted my chin and hit my gaze back on Jude. That’s what it feels like. The words from the note repeated over and over, and I wondered what he meant by that.
Ollie’s hand grabbed my face, turning my attention to him. “Promise me … you’re going to let me take care of it.” His eyes prayed, and his jaws clenched. “Say it, Mia. Promise me.”
“I promise.” I bit the inside of my cheek to feel the sting of my lie. Looking into his eyes doing it felt like a blade to the throat. Ollie’s lips landed on my forehead, and my eyes closed.
He held his lips there for a moment before pulling away. “Don’t ever fucking lie to me again.” Ollie pushed his chair out, and like the very gentleman he was and couldn’t defy, he pushed his chair back in. “I need to take a walk.” And he took off to the food line.
Ollie wouldn’t leave this room, or any room I was in.
Zeke pounded his fist against the table, grabbing my attention from Ollie’s back.
Mia and Ollie. Forever, Zeke signed adamantly. Not Pam and Jim. Not Ross and Rachel. Not Romeo and Juliet. Mia and Ollie. Go after him.
“No, he needs space,” I reassured, too lazy to use sign language at the moment. “Just a misunderstanding.”
He needs you, Zeke added.
“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 dark with 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.