Chapter 77
CHAPTER 77
BETH
I t takes three and a half days to make it from Grove Hill to the edge of Montana. We took breaks for meals and sleep, but considering Ollie doesn’t want me to drive, we couldn’t cut the trip any shorter.
“We could’ve taken the bus or a plane,” I mutter as I hug my blanket around my body.
“Yeah, then the Grays would’ve known where you were going and could check in on you. I doubt a hospital would’ve sent you commercially anyway.”
He has a point, but I hate how long this is taking. “Long drives don’t agree with pregnant women. I might go into early labor,” I tease, and he grips my leg tighter, his silent warning to stop being such a brat. I really like bratting him, though. It’s fun getting under his skin since he doesn’t let much affect him. I do, though, and that gives me butterflies.
“The only way I’m stopping is for food, sleep, or gas. Unless you ride my cock the whole fucking time.”
I pout. “You know I’m still too bruised for sex.”
He shrugs. “Sucks to be you, crazy girl. I guess we’re not stopping.”
“Asshole,” I grumble before nudging his leg with my barefoot, but instead of letting it go, he grabs my ankle and yanks it across his lap. I yelp with surprise as I’m pulled into the flat position and my legs across his lap. Then, Ollie proceeds to run the rough pads of his thumb down the center of my foot in a circular motion. A soft moan falls from my lips as he massages the muscles, and my eyes drift closed.
He’s so good to me, even when I don’t feel like I deserve it. He’s driving and massaging my foot as he does it.
“Brat.”
I snicker before smirking at him. “I’m a brat, and you’re an asshole. Sounds like a perfect fit to me.”
The corner of his mouth lifts so slightly I almost miss it, and my heart jumps along with the act. It’s moments like these where I can truly appreciate Ollie for being the support I need. He doesn’t know everything that’s happened, but he knows enough to know that I’ve gone through a shit-ton of trauma since the accident. Our time in Montana is going to be hard on both of us. He’s never been outside of Texas, and leaving Grove Hill is something he never intended to do. He’ll miss his friends and his mom. No one knows what’s happening or why he left. All they know is that his departure matches up with mine, and I’d like to keep it that way.
No one needs to know Rian survived the beating Nolan gave me. Only me, Oliver, my doctor, and Judy know the truth, and it will stay that way until my deal is done and Rian is completely in the clear.
After that, Judy will give Rian back to me and Ollie, and I can tell everyone the truth. I know I could spend the rest of my life with Ollie and be happy. The same goes for Martin. There’s a huge difference between happy and fulfilled. I used to be fulfilled with Oliver, but that was before Martin won half of my heart. The only way I’ll truly be content is if I have both of them.
Ollie keeps rubbing my foot, and I close my eyes, slowly fading into a sea of contentment and dreams of what might come after my sentence is over.
* * *
“We’re here, babe,” Oliver announces as the car pulls to a stop. I open my eyes and slowly sit up, yawning. My gaze snaps around, widening the further I look at our surroundings.
“Are you sure?”
“This is the address Gunderson gave me,” he adds.
We’re in the middle of nowhere, with mountains and forest all around, with only two cabins placed far apart and a weeded path connecting them. The cabins look like they’ve been unkempt for decades, and a sense of nostalgia settles over me.
It’s not the area itself but the desolation of it. It reminds me of a time when I played Marco Polo in the fog.
Pushing open the door, I step out of the car, setting my blanket on the front seat.
I’m not sure which cabin Vera lives in, but I don’t have to wonder for long. The front door to the cabin closest to us swings open, and a middle-aged woman with salt and pepper hair, scars down her face, and a cane steps out onto the small porch outside the cabin. I don’t have a moment to process her appearance fully before she lifts up a shotgun and rests it on her shoulder, a silent threat. In a flash, Ollie is by my side, ready to jump in front of a bullet to protect me. My fingers dig into his shirt as my other hand falls to my stomach.
Shadows fall across the woman’s face as she takes a single step forward, her toes touching the edge of the porch.
“You must be Beth,” she says, her voice gravelly, a thick Russian accent coming off her tongue.
“You must be Vera,” I respond quickly before putting on my brave face and stepping out from behind Ollie.
“Dá,” she mutters before placing the shotgun in the hard plastic lawn chair beside her. “My name is Vera Gusev. You two are late. I was expecting you three days ago.”
Well, that was anticlimactic.
“Three days ago? We left three days ago,” Oliver grumbles with confusion on his face.
“My late husband would’ve made the trip by chopper in a few hours. The behemoth must drive like Miss Daisy.” She waves the thought off.
Is she really insulting Ollie for not driving like a maniac?
“I’m not a behemoth,” he growls as we walk toward Vera, being cautious. We don’t know her, and she doesn’t know us.
She shrugs. “I was given no name for you. She told me Beth was coming with the behemoth, and I’m assuming that’s you, young man. She used much more colorful language to reference you, but no name.”
I almost laugh at the ridiculousness. Judy has a sense of humor that can’t be topped. Behemoth is an excellent word to use to describe Ollie. It can reference either size or power, and Ollie has both. He’s tall and bulky, and the amount of willpower he has is something to be admired.
“Oliver,” I mutter. “His name is Oliver, not Behemoth.”
Vera shrugs as if it's no consequence to her, completely uninterested. “The other cabin is yours. It’s been unused for a while, but it should be enough for what you require. I have conditions which we will discuss over dinner. You have an hour until it’s ready. I expect you to be washed and present.” Then, she turns and walks back into the house, not even registering that she left her shotgun on the porch.
She’s a strange one.
“I don’t like her already,” Ollie grumbles as he throws his arm around my shoulder.
I snicker before smirking at his grumpy ass.
“You don’t like anyone . The list of people you like is shorter than the number of months I’ve been knocked up, and people call me antisocial,” I tease.
He grabs my ass possessively, and the shiver that runs through my body is drenched with desire, coating all the way down to my toes.
“I like you. That should count for something,” he whispers in my ear as we start toward our cabin.
I can’t help laughing at the ridiculousness. “Need I remind you of the time when you threatened to either kill me or make me bleed from all three holes?”
“And you didn’t even flinch, my good fucking crazy girl.” He has no remorse whatsoever, and something about his unapologetic nature is such a huge turn-on.
“That’s not the point, Ollie. There was a time when you hated me,” I detail. Still, he quickly spins me around and presses my back against the side of the cabin, hovering over me with his dark, rake energy that drives me crazy, a single blonde curl falling in his face, away from the sea of blackness.
“I never fucking hated you, baby, and you know deep down that you didn’t hate me either. You may have annoyed me a bit, but I have wanted you since the moment you ran into me at that party.” His thumb runs across my bottom lip as he stares at the strip of pale pink skin, looking positively starved. “I wanted to take you straight to bed that night, but…fucking Gunderson.”
I can’t help laughing. “Judy cockblocked you big time. She even advised me to stay as far away from you as possible.”
His face twists with amusement. “And you didn’t listen. Naughty girl.” He grabs my ass again before placing a soft kiss on my temple.
“I never listen. I’m a brat, remember?” I tease before running my fingers over that one blonde curl like I always do. What some would consider an imperfection is what makes Ollie so special. Sometimes, he calls my strip of silver hair a battle scar . It’s proof that I made it through the heartbreak of losing my dad. His birth defect, as he calls it, is symbolic of him. He’s an anomaly.
Oliver Doyle is a psychopath. He has very few people in this world that he cares about, but the ones he does, he would die for. He would kill for us, but he would also restrain his psychotic tendencies for what we need, including me.
He is a psycho with a heart of gold.
Pressing his fingers under my chin, he tilts my head up, holding my gaze with such affection my heart screeches to a halt. “I like you being a brat, crazy girl. It means I get to punish you, and it makes me so fucking hard just thinking of the ways I could .”
And just like that, the muscle in my chest remembers how it works and slams repeatedly against my ribs, and my panties are completely destroyed.
He knows just what to say to get me going, but the bad part is we can’t do anything about it with my body still covered in sore muscles.
I love painful sex, but this baby probably wouldn’t like that.
“You can’t punish me right now, though,” I point out breathlessly.
His eyes darken exponentially. “I don’t want to punish you right now, crazy girl. I want my tongue–” My whole body quakes from the things that one body part can do to me, no matter what part of me it touches. “—wrapped around your clit.”
Now, that is something I can handle, depending on the position my body is in. I still have sore muscles in my legs and stomach.
“Not out here. Vera might see you.”
“I’m not unfamiliar with being watched.”
Neither am I, but I don’t want to push her buttons. I don’t know Vera, and the last thing we need is to be kicked off the property because we can’t control ourselves.
“Let’s go inside,” I whisper, even as a moan slips past my lips.
He doesn’t argue. Oliver gives me a quick peck on the lips before taking my hand. I turn the knob and push the door open, stepping inside.
I nearly jump back in shock from the state of the cabin. The air is stuffy, everything is covered in dust, and the amount of old spider webs is insane. Thank God I don’t have arachnophobia, or this would be a complete nightmare.
“How fucking long has it been since someone lived in this hell hole?” Ollie grumbles, and I hurry across the entryway to the closest window, throwing it open.
“Probably not in the last couple of years, at least,” I say with a roll of my shoulders, trying to stretch a tight muscle in my back.
We have a lot of work to do for us to be able to function in this space, which I bet will mostly fall on me since a good deal of it is cleaning.
“I’ll see if I can find a broom,” I say. Before I can take a step, Oliver slips off his jacket, lays it on the seat of the old recliner next to me, and literally pushes me into the chair. I groan as I connect with the surprisingly comfortable surface. “What the hell!”
His eyes narrow. “Stay right there, crazy girl. I’ll deal with this.” Then, he takes an elastic from around his wrist and ties up his shaggy curls. Man-buns have never been so hot.
First, Oliver throws open all the windows before turning on the A/C. He changes the filter, which is so disgusting that I nearly puke from the sight of it alone, not to mention the gross smell coming off of it. After finishing with that, he finds the broom and gets rid of all the spider webs.
I argue multiple times that I should be helping, but he always comes back with the “injured pregnant woman” line. That shuts me right the fuck up. I can’t complain too much, though. The sight of Ollie doing something so domestic is awe-inspiring.
I could get used to this.