18. Oliver
18
The birds were chirping. Non-fucking-stop. And the sun, fuck the sun. Let it implode. Or explode. Or whatever needed to happen to end all that damn light pouring down over me.
Tearing my hands through my hair, I stared at the cabin, knowing where I needed to go and what I needed to do.
Unfuck my bad mood and apologize.
Even for me, I was swearing too much. Inside my head or not, I knew that meant I wasn’t quite ready to face Mya. To say the words I wasn’t sure how to articulate. Did I start with a sorry for what she’d witnessed last night, or for the ugliness that had come from my mouth afterward? Or hell, what about an, I’m sorry for leaving without a word back in Singapore? Had I apologized for that yet?
I checked my watch. 0730. She was probably sleeping. And I was still in a shit place in my head, so knocking on her door could wait a bit longer.
Doing my best not to wake her or my old man, I snuck into the cabin through the side door, in need of a caffeine fix.
Damn my dad for already being in the kitchen, sitting at the table drinking coffee, looking entirely too pleased with himself the moment our eyes connected. But at least there was hot water ready and I could make a quick exit.
“What are you so smug about?” I stepped around him to get a cup from the cabinet.
“Months of me trying to help you remove your head from your ass, and who knew all it’d take is a feisty brunette to?—”
“Don’t finish that sentence.” My hands went to the counter by the stove and my muscles locked up. “You don’t want to do this with me, trust me.”
He was shockingly quiet. He always followed up with three hits to my one. It was our thing. We sparred, more often with our words than our fists. And no, I didn’t make it a habit of hitting my father. Well, not on purpose. There were those few times when he’d woken me mid-nightmare, and I’d mistaken him for that Interpol agent. I wouldn’t take responsibility for that. He should have known better after the first time.
“Tell her.” His words came a cup-of-coffee-poured-later.
I’d thought I’d dodged his counter left hook. Nope. He just went there. All the way to the depths of hell with that one. “That’s not my story to tell.”
He pushed away from the table and got to his feet. “I give you permission. She needs to know. It’ll help her understand.”
There was nothing to understand, dammit. Abandoning my coffee, I faced off with my father. He had about an inch on me at six-one, a fact I was pretty sure made him feel better. “The only person who can give me permission is dead.” Did he really need that reminder? “She made us promise to take the story to our graves.”
“And she shouldn’t have been embarrassed, or felt the shame that brought on that promise.” He set his hand on my bare shoulder. At least it was my good arm. “I wish I could’ve helped her understand that, but I was too busy with my guilt and self-loathing to help her get through what happened.”
“And revenge.” An important detail to skip. “You had that on your plate, too.”
He let go of me, tilting his head toward the doorway. “Tell her what happened. It may help her.”
Chills ran up and down my back at his words. “How?” I snapped out. “How could that possibly help her? So she knows she’s not alone? That the world is full of sick fucks?” My hands instinctively curled into fists at my sides, ready to fight every last one of those fucks. Put them in one long line, and I’d handle each and every piece of shit. “She knows, Dad. I think of all people, she knows.”
He shook his head, waving a hand at me. His white flag of surrender. “I’m going to my girlfriend’s place tonight. Taking Scrappy with me,” he said as if just making up his mind about this. “You two need space. A chance to hash things out.”
No, I needed him there as a barrier. I didn’t trust myself to be around Mya and not cave. To not give in and do whatever the hell that woman told me to do.
I may have been as damaged as they come, but at the end of the day, Mya was Mya. Still and forever, so clearly, everything to me. Time hadn’t weakened the hold she had on me. No, it’d made it stronger.
“I’m not taking the truck. Walking to the main road and Cindy’s picking me up. So, maybe you can take Mya out for a drive. Or to the lake for that conversation you need to have.” The traitor left before I could protest, and a new problem wound up in the kitchen doorway not even two minutes later.
Mya folded her arms and leaned into the interior doorframe, her eyes flying up and down my body as if “seeing was believing,” and she was still struggling with the second part.
Me, too, buttercup. Me, too. Because are you really here?
She kept quiet. So I did the same.
With my back to the counter, one ankle crossed over the other, I sipped my coffee, trying to pull off casual. Meanwhile, my heart was two beats away from breaking free from its cage, abandoning its home in my chest, clawing its way back to her.
She was wearing my shirt as her pajamas. Of course you are. Who needed singing birds and the sun shining when there was a vision like her before me? She’d light up any dark room, and I was the antithesis now, only capable of dimming that brightness of hers.
“One of us should speak.” She frowned.
“You just did. Congratulations. Now we’re done.” Time to face the other way. To not remember how those long legs of hers felt wrapped around my hips while we made love. Or over my shoulders when I’d devoured her pussy.
“Are you okay? Last night was . . .”
She had as good of an idea of how to finish that sentence as I had a chance of answering it. “I’m going outside.”
Escape. Run. My new MO in dealing with situations. It suited me just fine.
Only this time, she decided to play with fire and not move out of the way. She blocked my path, keeping her gorgeous self in the doorway.
“Mya,” I warned. An empty threat, because what would I do? I couldn’t lift her up and physically move her. I would’ve done that in the past. Thrown her over my shoulder and slapped her ass while she squealed. Now? Now she couldn’t handle being touched, and it was my fault. I’d let some asshole nearly do the unthinkable to her. I should never have let her be captured.
“We need to talk.” She slowly inhaled through her nose, taking her time to release that deep breath.
I had to use every ounce of restraint not to check out her breasts and confirm whether or not she had on a bra beneath my shirt.
I’d gone months without being able to even get hard, dealing with a limp dick since hell came to earth that day in Thailand. Not that I’d tried getting off, but I didn’t even wake with morning wood. I was broken. Well, I’d thought my cock was broken until little miss before me was standing in my bedroom yesterday while I was in a towel. My dick basically saluted her.
And now, with her looking sexy in my shirt, I was getting stiff again, and in gray athletic shorts, yeah, she’d notice.
After everything she’d been through, the last thing she needed to deal with was my poorly timed arousal.
“Nothing to talk about. I don’t want you here, let alone to speak to you.” My vinegar to her sugar wouldn’t win me any nice-guy awards, but I wasn’t in a contest and shooting for gold. Quite the opposite, I needed to piss her off and push her away.
“Well, we do have a lot to talk about, and whether you want to talk to me or not, it’s going to happen.” She boldly braced against the interior frame and walked her hands up to shoulder height (hers, not mine), then stared at me with as much intensity as she could.
I needed her to take a step back, give me space to take a breath instead of accidentally leaning in to kiss that sexy mouth of hers. “I’m going to work out. You’re welcome to talk as much as you want. I have no plans to say anything.” I lifted my chin as a directive. “Now move.”
She arched her brow, continuing to lock eyes with me. “Make me.” Her skin was bare of makeup since it was the morning, but a natural pink hue made it to her cheeks anyway.
“You know I can’t do that.” I’d like to, though, very much.
Despite our semi-heated exchange, there was one thing I’d suddenly realized—I was no longer in a horrible mood. The anger and tension that’d still been clinging to me post-nightmare was gone. My cure was peering at me with challenging eyes and determination. She also had the nerve to smell like my cologne. That shirt had been washed, so it wasn’t because I’d worn it and . . .
“You put on my cologne?” I folded my arms, confused.
The color in her face deepened. My girl was embarrassed.
Shit, not my girl. Not anymore.
“I sprayed it. I like how it smells.” She shrugged, trying to play it off, but she really was as horrible of an actor as I was.
Our hate-game back in the day had always been pathetically obvious that it was pretend. For me, at least. I only hated how much I’d wanted her and never thought I could have her. But then I did have her, and . . . I lost you.
“I have such a long list of topics to go through that I don’t even know where to start.”
I’d rather talk about my cologne smelling much better on you. “Then don’t start. Great idea.” I winked. Wait, where’d that come from?
She reacted the same. Arms falling to her sides in surprise at my eye twitch. Because yeah, that’s what that had to have been. Not a purposeful flirty tease from me.
“You have my permission to move me, but the only way you’re getting around me is if you put your hands on me.” Her stubbornness knew no bounds. “I need to see if I don’t freak out when you touch me, and your mission is to get by me. Kill two birds with one stone.”
Fucking birds. Now I couldn’t help remember the last time we’d had sex. Valentine’s Day. We’d been arguing a little after I took mostly photos of her instead of those damn racing pigeons, and one thing had led to another.
“Don’t make me do this.” I grimaced. “I don’t want to touch you.”
“You’re so full of shit I can even smell it.”
I cursed under my breath, hating how much I actually loved when she was like this with me. “Fine,” I relented, because I really did need to go to the gym and deal with my tension. A very different kind of tension than I’d been dealing with twenty minutes earlier.
“Ready?” I lifted a brow, still a bit unsure about setting my hands on her. “You know, you could just step aside, right? But you really like to be difficult, don’t you?”
Eyes on mine, she nodded. “Absolutely.”
I lowered my gaze down her body, calculating the most efficient way to remove this sexy obstacle before me.
Hands under her armpits, lifting her straight up, would kill my bad shoulder. But the pain would be worth the efficiency.
Stepping before her, I hesitantly leaned in and did exactly that. What surprised me, and had me going momentarily still, was her reaching out and holding my arms in the process.
Now eye level with me, her tongue skirted the line of her lips as she stared at me. And it felt like we were having some kind of moment.
I swallowed and finally got my ass moving and swapped places with her. Now I was in the doorway, blocking her path. When I set her down, and she released my arms, I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “Are you okay?”
Forced to now look up at me since her feet were back on the floor, she whispered, “I am.” A touch of a smile met her lips, as if she was proud of herself. And at the sight, I nearly lost my balance and stumbled back. The “thank you” that followed her smile sent me one more step away from her.
Run.
Escape.
Get away.
I tried to follow my new protocol. To obey the dark part of my mind demanding I keep my distance from this woman. To protect her from my lost soul. But my bare feet remained in place. I couldn’t turn and leave.
It took her lifting her hand to reach for me, like she was going to touch my chest, to finally get my brain to overpower my heart and remember how to walk again. And I did. All the way to the shed, hoping she wouldn’t follow me, knowing damn well she would.