Chapter 31
Chapter thirty-one
Olive
Everything was going so well.
We made it back to his hotel room in just under five minutes—couldn’t quite manage it in three—and I had his shirt peeled off before the door even had a chance to click shut behind us.
My hands roamed every inch of his immaculate, God-tier torso, while his lips and tongue explored every part of me, leaving my knees buckling under the weight of it all.
But out of nowhere, Elvis’s stupid words started ringing in my head like a never-ending fucking alarm I can’t figure out how to shut off.
In sickness and health.
Sickness and health.
They tried to creep in when he first said them, but I shoved them back.
Now they’re here in full force, echoing louder than I can handle, and I can’t outrun them.
Why couldn’t my brain save this little meltdown for later?
In sickness and in health.
I need to come clean.
It feels wrong to start this new, forced chapter with a lie.
I mean, I’m not technically lying. Just…withholding the truth.
Because the reality of my situation is different from most: I’m trying to navigate life with a brand-new diagnosis—a debilitating chronic illness—while marrying a man I probably won’t even speak to a year from now.
A man who unknowingly has helped me through so much of it already, without even the slightest hint as to what I’m dealing with behind closed doors.
And, unfortunately, I owe him an apology for how I snapped this morning, no matter how justified it felt at the time.
I yelled at him and stormed out of his hotel room.
Over a fucking alarm.
An alarm.
When I got back to my room, Lizzie and Jenna were still asleep.
I went down a rabbit hole, researching what would happen if I accidentally skipped a dose of my medication entirely or took it later than scheduled.
The answer? Nothing.
Nothing would happen.
I overreacted because I panicked, and he didn’t deserve to be on the other end of my wrath. He was right, I am fucking exhausted. My sleep-in this morning was completely necessary, and I felt better for it.
All thanks to him.
My eyes rake over him as he sits at the edge of the bed in just his boxer briefs, me still fully clothed in my wedding dress.
"Are you okay?" he asks, his deep blue eyes staring up at me like he’s trying to predict my next move, but is struggling.
I pulled back the second things started feeling too real. Too intimate.
But now, all I can do is stare at the room with petals and candles scattered. A scene set by someone who clearly gives a damn about me.
"Yes. No. I think so?" I groan with a slight shake of my head. "God, I don’t know. I need to tell you something, I just don’t know where to start," I say, and his face pales.
"You’re not, you know," he says, circling a hand in front of his stomach like he’s miming a baby bump.
I blink at him.
"Pregnant," he clarifies. "I mean…I assume. Right?"
I stare for another second. "Oh my God, no, Avery."
"Then what is it?" He runs his hands up and down his thighs, settling them in his lap. He never takes his eyes off me.
Even when I force myself to stare anywhere but him, I still feel him watching.
"A few months ago, I thought I was dying." The words come out unfiltered and totally raw, but to my surprise, my voice remains completely steady.
He doesn’t leap off the bed or panic or ask me to explain.
Instead, his eyebrows pinch together as he waits for me to continue. So, I do.
I tell him how everything started six months ago, when the changes in my body began, subtle at first.
I brushed them off. Convinced myself it was nothing.
Until it wasn’t.
I tell him how the slightest change to my routine could send me into a spiral, migraines that knocked me out for days, even when I had no choice but to keep going.
Some mornings, I’d wake up without feeling in parts of my body. I'd be numb for hours, like I wasn’t even in my own body.
I tell him about all the tests that the hospital ran on me. How the scans, blood work, and lumbar punctures all led to the same result.
An incurable illness that wouldn’t be the cause of my life coming to an end, but could very well make me wish it were.
And then I tell him my diagnosis, and something that I can’t quite decipher flashes across his face, but he doesn’t say anything.
For a long, agonizing thirty seconds, the room is completely silent, and that’s when I open my mouth to change the subject, but he speaks. Almost like he knew if he didn’t take his chance, it would never come back.
"Multiple Sclerosis?" he asks to make sure he heard me right.
My single nod is weak.
"And your doctors, are they sure? Because from what I know about MS, it can take months to diagnose, and even then, sometimes they get it wrong."
"They’re sure." I nod again, sharper this time. Part of me wants to ask how he even knows that much about it, but the other part of me is just glad he hasn’t run for the hills.
I tell him that nobody knows, and when he asks if my sisters do, I shake my head.
"I don’t want them to treat me differently," I admit, my head hung so he can’t see the embarrassment obvious on my face.
"They would coddle me. Treat me like I’m breakable.
Want me to end the tour and come back home so they could watch my every move.
" I stiffen. "I’m just not ready for any of that yet. "
"The medication I saw in your bathroom…"
"It was so new to me then. I’m not used to cleaning it all up, and wasn’t expecting you to knock." I sit beside him on the bed, crossing my legs, facing him.
"And your alarm?" he asks, turning toward me.
He threads his fingers through mine, resting our hands in my lap.
I nod. "I’m sorry about that. I hadn’t ever missed a dose before, and I freaked out not knowing what would happen." A weak smile is all I can give him. I hope it’s enough.
"If nobody knows about it, how come you’re telling me?" he asks.
I sit with the question longer than I probably should.
Do I trust him?
I want to say yes, but truthfully, I don’t know him well enough to have a confident answer.
"Because I really want to believe that I can trust you." I shove at his shoulder playfully, and his laughter vibrates under my palm.
"You can." It’s two simple words that mean nothing to him, but to me? They mean more than I expected them to. "This changes nothing, Olive. No matter what, I’ve got you."
And when I realize he’s still sitting in front of me in nothing but his underwear, it hits me—why we came here.
Where we just came from.
And that there are people waiting for us.
Though with him staring at me the way he is, I don’t think I ever truly forgot.
I just pushed it aside for long enough to let go of some of the weight I’ve been carrying, and hoped he wouldn’t look at me any differently.
But now it feels like he’s carrying some of it around with him, too.
I hope he doesn’t feel anchored down by it. It’s not his burden to carry.
"Now that you know my deepest, darkest secret, can we go back to doing what we were about to do before my brain decided to malfunction and ruin everything?"
"Only if you’re sure," he says, his voice low and gravelly. I nod like it’s my last day on this earth, and he’s the only one I want.
"I’m pretty sure this is something a husband and wife do on the day of their wedding," I whisper, nibbling my bottom lip, gesturing to the rose petals that surround us.
"We may not be a real married couple behind closed doors, but you sure know how to fuck me like you want me.
Maybe later, you can fuck me like you hate me.
Or if you feel like being a gentleman, you can fuck me while telling me how pretty I looked today. "
"Yes fucking please," he groans as I straddle his waist, rocking my hips back and forth, grinding against him. "Keep talking to me like that, Olive, and you’ll get what you want. I don’t need to fuck you to tell you how pretty I think you are. You’re the most incredible woman I’ve ever laid eyes on.
" He kisses my lips softly, then pulls away.
"You want me to fuck you like I like you? "
He nips at my bottom lip, his hands grazing my cheeks. "I can do that."
A kiss on my collarbone. "You want me to fuck you like I hate you?"
Three kisses dot my jaw. "Done."
His palm rests around the base of my neck, the coolness of my necklace pressing firmly against my skin. His other hand bunches my hair at the back of my head. "But do you know what comes after a hate fuck?"
"Make up sex?"
"Make up sex, Songbird. Arguably the best type of sex there is. So as long as we get to that part after I fuck you every other way, I’ll do whatever you want me to do. We have so much time to do all of that." He nips at my lip.
I look up at him, his eyes feel like they’re controlling my every move. "Do I need to do something to make you hate me first?"
"I don’t think I could ever hate you. But none of that is what I want to do to you right now, Olive." He licks his lips, his big hands reaching out to pull me closer.
"What do you want to do?" I whisper, trying to ease the shakiness in my voice.
I watch as his throat bobs. "How about we just…see what happens."
I glide my fingers up his forearms, across his collarbone, and down his rippled stomach, his soft skin setting my hands on fire.
We’ve done this before, he and I, but this feels so different. Like there’s been a part of me missing this whole time, and I’ve finally found her. Found her in him when I wasn’t even looking.
I dip my head, my lips finding his. It feels like the pull they talk about in movies, where you just feel so drawn to somebody, and cannot explain the reasoning behind it.
He loops his arm around my waist, pulling me closer to him, his skin pressed against my dress. We’re chest to chest, his warmth off him radiating.
"This dress isn’t one of a kind," I whisper, desperately wanting him to rip it off me like he wanted to do the first night we were in a similar position, but he doesn’t.
He leans back, searching me in a way he never has before.
"Take it off me," I beg, giving him the push he needs.
It’s mid-afternoon, but the room is darkened, barely lit up by the light peeking through the gaps in the blackout blinds.
He grips my chin with his fingers, pulling my face closer to his, and kisses me deeply.
I want to melt into him, tell him he can have me in ways that nobody else ever has, but I don’t.
Because no matter how intimate this moment feels, the truth is, he and I barely know each other.
No amount of weddings and fake vows will change that.
His hands trace my skin, finding the thin straps at my shoulders, sliding them down my arms as I climb off his lap. The zip on my dress is tugged down, and before I know it, I’m standing in a puddle of silk around my feet.
My hand trembles when I reach for him. I hate that I’m showing him a part of me that’s vulnerable. Real. Raw in a way that scares the shit out of me.
I know we don’t have a lot of time. I know that he and I have people waiting for us—people who will notice our absence if we take too long. But I cannot find it in me to care about anybody else right now.
I need him to kiss me in the places that hurt, need him to fuck me like I'm unbreakable.
And when he takes his time doing both of those things, I feel a deep rooted part of me start to heal.
I let the feeling wash over me.
Because all I see is him.
All I want is Avery Jones.