Chapter 26
CHAPTER 26
BETH
I run my brush through my hair as I sit on the edge of the bed. I know from past experience that if I don't get every knot out, it will turn into a mat by the morning. It's almost time to dye it again, too.
I started dying my hair red after my dad passed away. I just couldn't stand looking at myself if nothing on me changed. Instead of getting face tattoos, I dyed my hair and my mother has consistently complained about how much she misses my natural hair.
I'm sure she'd appreciate the red hair if she knew tattoos were the alternative.
I plan to get them someday, but not yet. I don't want to get tattoos that don't have meaning. I want them to fill me with positive emotions when I look at them, more than the scars they'll cover up.
I whistle to myself as I keep raking the brush through my hair until it doesn’t snag anymore. I place the brush on the bathroom counter before I walk out into the bedroom, only wearing my pajamas–a ratty old t-shirt and black silk shorts. I grab my phone off the bed and check for any texts or missed calls, but find only Judy’s messages about the cute puppies at the shelter she volunteers at.
Nothing from Nigel.
I shouldn’t be surprised. I haven’t heard from him since he left.
I try not to imagine what he’s doing or rather who. I would have to be an idiot to think he wasn’t up to something nefarious. Why else would none of his friends know where he is or when he’ll be back?
I’m not an idiot. Clearly, my so-called boyfriend is off getting his dick wet with someone else. The novelty of me must’ve worn off.
Maybe that’s why I don’t feel bad about doing the same thing with his best friend in the kitchen.
Payback is a bitch.
A soft whistle disrupts my revelry and my head snaps around. I deny the sensation of my stomach slamming into my heart with every beat just because it’s him standing in the doorway, leaning against the door frame. His arms are crossed over his chest as his eyebrows nearly dip to the bridge of his nose.
The man is so freakishly large that he has to lean to the side to fit in the cramped space yet doesn’t look out of place at all.
How long has Ollie been standing there?
He’s such a creeper.
I tilt my head, waiting for him to speak. It’s unfair that I’m always the one having to start our conversations. Why can’t he for once?
I toss down my phone before turning to face him.
He motions his head out of the door before putting his finger to his lips, the universal signal for me to stay silent.
Fine. If he wants me to not speak, I can do that.
After all, these walls are thin.
I grab my flip flops and opt to leave my phone behind. I probably won’t need it wherever he’s taking me.
He offers me his hand and I stare down at it for a moment before I bite the bullet and place my hand in his.
Whatever he wants us to do, I doubt we’re supposed to be doing it. Isn’t that part of the appeal, though?
The house is silent as Ollie pulls me behind him and down the stairs. I don’t know why a part of me expected him to take me to his room, but I did. I shouldn’t be surprised though. No one ever goes in there except for him. Oisin said Ollie likes his privacy and not even the women he fucks goes into his private space. Not even Nigel has been in there and he’s Ollie’s best friend.
There’s liking one’s privacy and then there’s Oliver freaking Doyle.
Maybe he has a pile of rotting corpses in there or a torture chamber. Yeah, that seems right up his alley.
Instead of leading me down the hall, he directs me to the side door through the kitchen and we step out onto the driveway.
His car is the first one. I don’t know how he expects to use it. He can’t exactly back out of the driveway with the others blocking him in. The yard is in front of his car, but he wouldn’t drive that way, would he?
“Get in the fucking car, princess, or I’ll bend you over the hood and let the entire neighborhood hear you scream for my cock. You’ll have an audience in five seconds flat,” he warns, his voice low in my ear.
A shudder races through my body from the threat. I swear, he goes from ice cold to a blazing inferno in half a second. I’m not exactly against the back and forth. It keeps things interesting.
I walk around the car and over to the front passenger door to the gorgeous slate gray Mustang that he somehow fits in. I suspect he did some customizations to this car so his long legs could fit inside.
That seems like the most plausible option.
He unlocks the door and we both climb in. Ollie puts the key in the ignition, turns on the car, and throws it in drive. My eyes widen as he presses on the gas, drives the car through the yard, and around the house.
The entire car shakes as he jumps the curb onto the street. I immediately grab onto the handle above my head, a little horrified by his driving.
“Where are we going?” I ask, my nails digging into the handle.
“Somewhere we can get some privacy,” he mutters, his voice low and level. He sounds so unaffected, it’s astonishing.
“We can go to my house,” I offer. Where else did he think we could go? It’s the middle of the night. Most businesses are closed and this town is a lot stricter about fake I.D.’s than Hempstead. I can’t get into any bars. Sure, there’s Denny’s, but the closest one is on the other side of town along with McDonald’s and other twenty-four hour establishments. “My house is next to Judy’s, if you know where that is.”
For the first time since he fucked me in the kitchen, I catch the hint of an emotion on his face.
Confusion.
“Why would I know where she lives?”
Ohhh.
He’s never been to her house.
I’m pretty sure only Ronan and Nigel have been to Judy’s house.
“I’ll give you directions,” I add while trying to stop myself from laughing at the look of confusion still on his face.
I doubt anyone has ever described him as adorable, but in his own twisted way, he kind of is.
* * *
Oliver pulls into my driveway and as soon as he puts the car in park, I announce, “I’ll open the garage.”
He looks at me taken aback. “Why?”
“Um, Judy will recognize your car if she sees it.” I love Judy, but I also don’t know if I could trust her not to blab to Ronan about seeing me and Ollie sneak off to my house.
I get out of the car and walk over to the garage door.
When my mom went to rehab, she disabled the mechanics from the garage door so I could get in if I needed something. She locked up the rest of the house, but really, what person would think it’s disabled?
I grab the handle on the door and pull it until it’s high enough that I can push it up. I stand on my tip-toes until the garage door is in place. I walk in and move off to the side. My mom’s car is in the spot on the other side of the garage, but something looks…off about it.
Wait. Is the windshield gone?
I tilt my head as I look at the car. I walk along the wall as Ollie carefully drives into the garage.
I wasn’t losing my mind. The windshield is gone and so is the driver’s side window.
“What the hell?” I mutter under my breath and start over to my mom’s car to investigate, but before I can reach the front of the car, the beast of a man lifts me up like I don’t weigh more than a paperclip and puts me over his shoulder. “Hey! Put me down!”
“No, we’re going inside and if you try to make me put you down, I will fuck your ass against the wall until I make it bleed again. You got me, princess?”
I groan under my breath. “Fucking heathen.”
Then, his hand comes down hard across my ass and I gasp against his back. Why does he do that when he has seen proof that the rougher he is with me, the wetter I get? I swear, this man could stab me and there’s a high probability that I would orgasm on the spot.
I need to find the top therapist in the country to deal with whatever he woke up in my twisted brain.
“Are you going to keep being a brat?” he snaps as he opens the door leading from the garage into the house.
Then, I decide to be even more of a brat. “I dunno…” I trail off before smirking to myself. “Will it get me fucked or will it make you torment me for hours on end?” Honestly, I’m up for either option.
The beast grumbles under his breath something about how he should’ve killed me when he had the chance and I glare down at his fine as fuck ass as he carries me through the kitchen.
“Careful, crazy man. All I have to do is say no and you won’t get to fuck me.” He walks through the living room, flips the switch on the wall to bathe the room in light, and drops me on the oversized ottoman before glaring down at me.
“I could always kill you. Then, it wouldn’t matter.”
Calm down hormones.
A death threat shouldn’t be hot.
Not at all.
However, my pussy prepares for him with each syllable he speaks.
“You really are certifiable, aren’t you?” I tilt my head at him as I push myself onto my hands. He’s one peculiar creature. He doesn’t talk a lot, but he also doesn’t seem to expect anyone to read his thoughts. It’s almost like he expects everyone to ignore his existence.
“And I have the documentation to prove it, princess.”
I can’t tell if he’s making a joke or being serious. I don’t think anyone else can either. It’s a bit of a guessing game with him.
I roll my eyes before laying back down, staring up at the colorful and elaborate fan my mom transported from my childhood home. It’s always brought me comfort. I honestly don’t know why. Maybe it’s the colors or the detailed leaf shaped blades. Maybe it’s all of the above.
Maybe I’m just weird.
I feel a shift on the ottoman as Ollie’s shadow moves. When I look down, I see he has laid down, much like me, except he is mirroring my position.
“Why aren’t you staying here?” he asks suddenly, his first time starting a conversation between us. My heart stops for a moment before my brain starts to work again. I turn my head and stare at his silhouette.
There’s just something about this psychopath that pulls me in and I can’t help watching him no matter what he is doing. Is that why he is always staring at me?
“Nigel wouldn’t let me,” I admit before forcing my gaze back to the colorful fan. “He said he didn’t feel comfortable with me staying here by myself. I tried to fight it, but like everything else with Nigel, I don’t have much of a choice.”
I have the sudden urge to smack myself for the absolute word vomit. He doesn’t want to hear me talk that way about his best friend. It’s the truth though. I care deeply for Nigel, but everything with him is forceful. I don’t get a choice about much. The only choice I’m warranted is whether or not we have sex. He pushes everything else on me. He has full control over every other aspect of my life, but honestly, I don’t know if he even realizes it.
I don’t know if Nigel knows how controlling, demanding, and toxic he can be or if it’s something he just does. Am I the only one he has ever dated that he treats like this?
Is it really because he loves me and wants to keep me safe? I wonder all the time if that’s what he thinks it is.
“Has he done…what he did that night…to you since?” Ollie asks, but his voice is soft this time and his words sound nervous. I didn’t get to tell him what Nigel did to me, but now that I know what kind of punishment their code invokes on others, I would never tell him.
I don’t want Nigel to die.
“No. He…he promised he wouldn’t and he’s kept that promise so far.”
How long will he keep it up though?
As the daughter of a psychiatrist, I know the cycles. There’s love-bombing, abuse, apologies, gifts to make up for the abuse, and then right back to the start. However, there’s been none of that since that fateful night…except the controlling behavior.
“Good,” he mutters, a dark edge to his voice.
His response confuses me. There’s something hidden in his voice, but I don’t push it. If he wanted to tell me, he would’ve done so.
Sitting in relative silence, I come to the realization why he doesn’t talk much. Everyone is always so loud at the house on Mason Road. There’s always laughter, yelling, and conversations happening. Yet, it’s so quiet I can actually hear myself instead of every thought being interrupted.
It’s relaxing.
Maybe that’s why Ollie doesn’t talk unless he has something real to add to the discussion instead of just noise. It’s easier to process one’s thoughts when there is no noise. Plus, it’s easier to pay attention when I’m not talking.
I don’t feel the need to fill the silence when it’s just the two of us. We can just say nothing at all and maybe that’s a part of his appeal.
“Why aren’t you talking?” he grumbles as if I’ve somehow annoyed him.
My eyes widen before I turn my head to look at his upside down face. “What?”
“You’re always talking. Why did you stop?” he demands, his eyes narrowing.
“I’m not always talking,” I deflect. “Another thing, have you ever heard of a comfortable silence ? And you broke it. Thanks a lot for that, Ollie.” I sass him so hard that instead of getting pissed off, I watch a smile pull up his permanently frowning lips and then the man chuckles.
“You seem really messed up about that,” he assesses as he sits up and I follow suit.
“Don’t you hate it when someone disrupts the silence? It’s very off-putting.”
He makes a snorting sound before rolling his eyes. “Isn’t that ironic?”
I point my finger at him in a warning manner. “Just because I talk a lot doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the silence.”
Ollie arches a brow at me. “I thought you didn’t talk a lot?”
Goddamn him.
Clearly, he didn’t want to be alone to fuck me or he’d already be doing it. I’m not disappointed though. I like seeing him laugh and smile, no matter how out of place it looks on his face.
“Some silences are awkward, okay, and it’s really weird if only one person is talking. That’s not a conversation. It’s a monologue.”
He nods, but it’s like he’s just humoring me.
I glare at him. “Fuck you.”
He scrunches up his lips in thought before saying, “I already did that.”
“Smartass,” I quip.
“Brat.”
“Asshole.”
“Masochist,” he adds.
I grin. “Sadist.”
He tilts his head again before saying, “Do you actually have a death wish?” I guess he’s done with that game.
I mimic his movements. “Are you hiding dead bodies in your room?”
His eyes widen. “ What? ”
“I thought we were playing Twenty Questions,” I joke. Seriously, if he gets to ask me a random question, why can’t I do the same?
“Hmm.” He rub his chin before muttering, “I’ll make you a deal. If you can beat me, I’ll answer your question, but every time I beat you, you have to answer one of mine.”
Beat him? “Beat you at what?” I swear, if he’s about to challenge me to an arm wrestle with his overpowering strength, I might just scream at him. That wouldn’t be fair at all. It’s not my fault he’s more jacked than Mike Tyson.
He looks around as if he’s taking inventory of everything before he stands up. He walks over to the TV stand before he grabs the massive vase that belonged to my grandmother. It may be big but the opening is tapered to about an inch in diameter.
I swear, if he tries to stick that somewhere it doesn’t belong, my deceased grandmother might just smite me.
“What are you doing with that?” I ask curiously.
He grabs my arm and pulls me off the ottoman before standing the vase on the surface.
What the hell is he doing?
He takes a few steps back before he reaches into his pocket and pulls out the elusive silver coin he rolled over his fingers during that trip to kidnap Tanner Vaughn.
He rolls it over his knuckles before he throws it, tossing it into the narrow opening of the vase, almost as if the move took zero concentration.
Ollie walks back over to the vase and dumps out the coin onto the ottoman before taking it back in his hand. He puts the vase back in its spot before he turns to me.
“You score, you ask me a question. I score, I ask you a question. Deal?”
Okay. This is a much fairer game to play than arm wrestling. It’s a little quirky, but I’m not opposed to it.
I take the coin from his hand before I toss it toward the vase. Luck must be on my side because it lands directly in the pot.
“Well?” I press as I turn to him, a victorious grin playing on my lips.
He rolls his eyes. “No. I do not have dead bodies in my bedroom. You would smell them if I did.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “Then, why are you so damn secretive about your room?” I ask but he shakes his head.
“One score permits one question, princess.”
He retrieves the coin as I groan in frustration. Clearly, we both have a lot of questions about each other or he probably wouldn’t have even thought up this little coin toss. I understand the different ways he is mysterious to me, but I’m a pretty open book. I can’t be that way to him, could I?
Ollie sets back up the vase and takes up the space I had before he tosses the coin directly into the vase.
“Answer anytime,” he mutters.
I scoff. “No.”
His eyes widen. “No?”
“No, I don’t have a death wish. Why would you think that?” His thought process is quite strange.
I’ve never been suicidal or had any reason to want to discover what happens when we die.
“Toss again and find out.”
Ass.
I grab the coin and throw it for the vase, but I miss this time and curse under my breath.
He moves behind me before whispering in my ear, “Better luck next time.” His voice races a chill through my entire body.
At this point, he’s just teasing me. He has to know that he pulls these reactions from me and how to do it. He’s doing all of this on purpose.
“At least you’re not rubbing in my face that I lost,” I mutter as I turn to him, but he just stares down at me with that blank look in his eyes.
“You didn’t lose. You just didn’t win your prize. Those are two completely different things.” Then, he walks over to the vase to retrieve the coin.
He’s more mature than I gave him credit for.
* * *
Ollie pushed the sofas together because with his size, there was no other place we could lay down unless we did so on the full-sized shag rug. There’s not enough cushion there though. This is a much more comfortable option. This way we’re close without being on top of each other and can still talk.
I thought he wanted us to get privacy for sex, but that wasn’t his intention with this at all. In some strange way, this feels a bit like a date, the two of us just taking the time to get to know each other.
“Are you really a psychopath?” I ask, not so sure if I really believe that anymore. He has psychotic tendencies, sure, but being a psychopath is determined by a list of factors. There are twenty different qualifications for a psychopath.
Superficial charm
A mean streak
Pathological lying
A lack of accountability
A need for power, control, and dominance
Sadism
Thrill-seeking behavior due to boredom
A skewed code of ethics
No fear of consequences
A detached and cold demeanor
Childhood behavior issues
Short, broken relationships
Exploitation of others
Calculated decision-making
No conscience
Strange thought process
Poor attention span
Violent tendencies
Hostile by nature
Gaslighting
I’ve only seen evidence of a few of those. Ollie is charming, a sadist and seems very detached from a lot of things. The things I witnessed him do to Tanner Vaughn were proof of his violent tendencies and hostility. However, he has shown me empathy and he has been friends with Nigel most of his life. He’s also honest, even to a fault.
“That’s what they say,” he mutters, his expression unchanged.
“Clever way of avoiding the question. Do we need to go back to the coin toss?” I tease him, but he just glares at me.
“Did you forget who you’re talking to?”
So hormonal.
I roll my eyes. “You’re not going to hurt me, except in the ways I like. You proved that.” That doesn’t mean the threat doesn’t send a slightly fearful shiver through my body. He could hurt me, but I don’t think he will.
“Don’t test me, princess.”
“Nah. I think I should because I haven’t seen very much psychopathy coming from you. And, trust me. I know what I’m talking about. My dad was a criminal psychiatrist. He dealt with psychopaths all the time. I think you just use that term to scare people because you’re antisocial. You don’t like people and you like that most of the people in this town are scared of what you might do.”
For the first time since I’ve known him, he looks choked up by my assessment. “How do you figure?”
I shrug. “There are a lot of things needed to be considered a psychopath. Sure, you have some, but you’re also a contradiction for some of them. For one, you’re not a pathological liar or if you are, I haven’t caught you in a lie yet. You have a decent attention span, but do get bored easily. So, either you’re not a psychopath, more of a sociopath with psychotic tendencies, or you are a psychopath and I’m just your comfort person. Which is it?”
I’m fully aware that there are certain people that psychopaths attach themselves to and it’s not necessarily a positive relationship, but it is different from their relationship with others.
That is the big question though. Do I matter to him, even if just on a possessive level?
He doesn’t answer the question. Instead, he runs his fingers along my jaw, leading them into hair, before he steals a powerful kiss, one I feel in every corner of my soul–one that feels like my soul left my body. He releases the kiss for only a breath to say, “What the fuck do you think?” Then, he takes my lips again.
My head spins as I meet every kiss he gives with the same passion, the same obsession and demands for more.
I’m in so much trouble when it comes to this psycho.
* * *
Ollie’s arms tighten around me as I slowly open my eyes. My vision is blurry, but there’s no ignoring his hold on me. My heart melts when I feel his body pressing against my spine. If I was capable of doing it, I might cry from the flood of emotion racing through my body.
We weren’t touching each other at all when I passed out. Ollie was on one couch and I was on the other, but he clearly came over to me.
Sex wasn’t a part of any of it. I’m still fully dressed and so is he.
I must be losing my mind because I know exactly what is happening to me where Oliver Doyle is concerned. I’m falling for this crazy man and…it doesn’t scare me at all. I’m not running from it, but the big question is why?
Maybe it’s because he’s just as closed off as I have been. This wasn’t forced in any way, so unlike with Nigel. Ollie and I have had a natural progression.
He groans in my ear before he presses his nose into the skin of my neck and I moan from the sensation along with his fingers snaking under my top.
“Good morning,” I whimper as his palm cups my breast and the rough pad of his thumb runs over my nipple.
He lets out a loud growl in my ear as he grinds his cock against my ass. “Take off your shorts,” he demands. “The noises you’re making are enough to tell me you want my cock as bad as I need your pussy.”
That sounds like a fantastic way to start the day. Without any further instruction needed, I push down my shorts and let him do what he wants with me.