We survived. Now what?
Two and a half years later.
“Dollface, you ready?”
Oliver’s voice comes up the stairs leading outside, but I don’t answer right away. I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, fingers lightly grazing the soft cotton sheets of the place we’ve called home for the past two and a half years. The studio apartment above Willow Reads. Our first home.
I glance around, taking in the now-empty walls.
The mismatched shelves, the hole in the wall from when we got a little too carried away, otherwise known as Oliver punching a hole through the drywall while he was fucking me.
This place is a capsule of every version of us. Broken, healing, angry, in love.
When I came back from the hospital, I could barely get around. But I wanted to finish school. Needed to. And somehow, with Oliver beside me, with my family behind me, I did. Three months later, I was walking without a brace. Sooner than any specialist predicted. Of course, Oliver made sure of it.
He really did take a physical therapy course, and dragged me through every routine himself. Stretched with me. Carried me when I was too stubborn to admit I was in pain. He never once let me fall behind. Never let me fall, period.
The storm passed, and life…went on.
But this apartment? This little second-floor home above the bookstore? This was where everything really began. It’s where I told him I loved him. Where he told me that I was his entire world.
The canopy around the bed shifts. “Dollface,” Oliver says again.
I turn, and he’s there, parting the sheer fabric with one hand, stepping between my legs, gripping the post just like he’s done a thousand times before.
He looks at me for a moment. Really looks. His eyes aren’t as cold as they used to be. Still sharp, still dark, but softer when they land on me. I fall back against the bed, breath catching as he leans over me. He presses a kiss to my nose, then my cheek, and studies my face.
“What are you feeling?”
I swallow. “I’m sad…but also excited. This was our place. I’m going to miss it.”
He nods, brushing a strand of blonde hair behind my ear. “We made it something sacred, didn’t we?”
“We did.”
There’s a pause, then his lips twitch. “Should we maybe consummate it one more time?”
Before I can reply, I feel him press into me, the heat of his body through my thin panties, the hem of my skirt already bunched high on my thighs. My breath hitches.
His hands slide along my legs. “I want to hear you moan my name in this bed one more time,” he whispers, lips grazing my throat. “I want this place to remember us. Just like this.”
I thread my fingers through his hair, heart already pounding. This is goodbye—and a promise. And no matter what walls we sleep between next…he’ll always be home.
Oliver’s hands slide slowly up my thighs, thumbs dragging against the damp cotton of my panties. His gaze flicks down, eyes darkening as he takes in the state; he’s already pulled me into a needy and breathless mess.
“You wore this for me.” I nod. He presses his body against mine, slowly grinding into me.
“I said,” he whispers at the shell of my ear, “did you wear this little skirt for me, Dollface?”
“Yes,” I breathe, eyes fluttering closed.
His hand comes up and grips my jaw, fingers biting into my cheeks. “Eyes on me.”
When my eyes flick to his, he rewards me with a kiss. The kind that leaves me dizzy and claimed. The kind that reminds me he owns me. His tongue strokes against mine as we devour each other. My hands fist his hair as his snake under us, grabbing my ass in a rough hold.
“I want these walls to echo our name, Lyra. Do you understand me?”
I nod again, but he clicks his tongue in warning. “Use your words.”
“Yes, Oliver,” I relent.
“That’s my good girl.”
“I need to tell you something.” It’s sometime later, after Oliver has thoroughly used my body and wiped me out.
“What?” I blink up at him, still dazed. Oliver just grins. That grin. The one that says he’s about to ruin me in some new, unthinkable way.
“I might’ve switched your birth control pills with placebos a few weeks back,” he says, voice casual like he’s mentioning he forgot to do the laundry, not that he’s potentially gotten me pregnant without asking.
My brain stalls. I just stare at him for a second, trying to figure out if I heard him right, if this is just another one of his dark, possessive games. But then I see it. He’s dead serious.
“Oliver,” I start, eyes going wide. “You didn’t.” Before I can say anything else, he pulls me up, dragging my body flush against his, shifting so I straddle him.
“What the fuck, Oliver?”
“You want a lot of kids.” His hands grip my hips, his voice pure sin. “And I told you I’d give you anything you want.”
His mouth dips down, catching my nipple, sucking gently until it pebbles again under his tongue. My body trembles.
“Let’s start now.”
I laugh. “Are you sure? I haven’t found a job yet, and I don’t even know if I will. Social work is…”
“I don’t care,” he cuts in firmly, lifting his head to meet my eyes. “I’ll support us. All of us. Always. I have more money than we’ll ever need. If you want to do social work or if you decide it’s too draining, it doesn’t matter, as long as you're happy.”
His fingers slide up my belly, resting low beneath my navel, right where the possibility now stirs between us.
The thought of being pregnant with Oliver’s child doesn’t scare me.
Not even a little. Because I know exactly what kind of father Oliver will be.
Protective. Intense. Unrelenting. But soft in the quiet hours.
Loyal to a fault. Gentle, the way he is with me in the shadows between night and morning.
We stay like that for a long moment. His hand rests possessively on my hip. Our legs are tangled, thumb stroking my skin.
When I shift to get up, he murmurs against my throat, “Don’t.”
He reaches beneath the pillow. There’s that feeling again, the one I get right before Oliver does something that shifts the ground under my feet.
“I had this made months ago. I thought about waiting. Making it some big moment. Something you deserve.” He lifts his hand.
In it, a ring sits nestled in black velvet.
It’s bold yet totally me. A gold band, dainty and stunning.
What looks like vines wrap around it, trailing to the center stone, catching the light.
“But that’s not us. You’re mine. You’ve always been mine.” I stare as he slides the ring onto my finger.
My lips part. This is Oliver. This is how he loves. I laugh.
His brow furrows slightly. “That was not the response I planned for.”
“You didn’t even ask me.”
“I don’t need to.” I laugh harder, the sound dissolving into breathless little gasps as he watches me with narrowed eyes and the faintest trace of a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips.
“Psycho,” I whisper.
“You said you liked that about me.” He brushes his nose against mine. “And unless you’re about to rip that ring off your finger, you’re mine. Officially.”
I lift my hand, admiring the diamond now circling my finger. Fuck, he nailed it. “I’m not taking it off.”
He grabs my hips and starts to move inside me again, slow, deep, like he’s branding the moment into my body.
My laughter melts into a moan. He gives me that slow, wicked smile. “You said it yourself, Dollface. I don’t ask. Now let’s get you pregnant while I fuck my fiancée.”
I’ve come a long way. Time helped, and so did the people who kept showing up when I wanted to disappear.
I still have hang-ups, and maybe I always will, but they don’t define me.
I grieved the girl who never believed people could do what they did to me, and then I let her rest. Now I carry both truths at once: what I survived and who I’m becoming.