CHAPTER 25
OPHELIA
The door to his room had barely opened before I was moving…fast, frantic, desperate to get out before he could tell me to.
The ride home had been silent. Not the comfortable kind of quiet, but the kind that hums with everything unsaid, pressing against your chest until it hurts to breathe.
Now, in the dim light of his room, I moved around like a ghost, grabbing my jacket from the chair, my phone from the nightstand, the small bag I’d left by the dresser. My hands shook too much to zip it, the sound of the teeth catching louder than it should’ve.
What had I been thinking, bringing this much to his room after just a week?
I was such a fucking freak.
Don’t cry, Ophelia. Not here. Not in front of him.
My throat burned anyway. I blinked hard, vision blurring as I shoved the rest of my things inside.
“Ophelia.”
He’d said my name quietly, but it was so unexpected that I jumped.
The strap of my bag slipped off my shoulder and hit the floor with a heavy thud. Books and pens scattered across the floor, spinning out in every direction. My journal slid last, flipping open right at his feet.
I froze, my breath catching as the pages fluttered.
He stepped closer, crouching down, his gaze falling to the open book.
“Don’t,” I whispered, my throat tight. “Please don’t read that.” I lunged forward, trying to snatch it out of his hands before he could open it.
Matty caught me easily around the waist, and he held me still with one arm as he picked up the book.
“Give it back!” I gasped, reaching, but he leaned away, holding the journal high in his other hand. “Matty, please—” I twisted in his grip, but he just tightened his hold around my waist, completely unbothered, like restraining me was effortless.
I didn’t have to look to know what he saw…my handwriting crowding the page, his name scrawled again and again, words I’d written when missing him had felt unbearable.
Mrs. Adler. Scrawled in loops, in block letters, in frantic slanted script that dug too deep into the paper. Some words were circled in hearts, some were framed by doodled stars. His number was written beside my name, over and over, as if the act of pairing them might make it true.
My handwriting bled across the page, feverish, uneven, aching. There was no mistaking it, no hiding what it meant.
Heat rushed up my neck, flooding my face. I squeezed my eyes shut, humiliation breaking over me in violent, merciless waves.
It was like I was fourteen all over again.
“I found her notebook,” my mom said, and I could hear the sound of paper being shoved across a table. “Pages and pages of their names together. ‘Ophelia + Nico. Mrs. Nico Alvarez.’ His schedule, his mom’s phone number, even his little sister’s birthday.”
The memory knifed through me, biting as ever. The shame of it. My parents’ disappointed stares. The laughter in the cafeteria when my classmates had heard I had stolen Nico’s hoodie. Nico’s horrified face.
And now Matty was staring at the same kind of pages, only worse…because it was him. How I felt for him was so much more than anything I’d ever felt before.
“Please don’t—” I croaked. I shoved at his shoulder, tears streaming down my face, desperate to wrench the journal away, to erase the pages before he could read all that was there.
Matty continued to hold me firm. His thumb brushed slow circles against my hip, the touch gentle enough to unravel me. With his other hand, he closed the journal in one swift motion and tossed it onto the bed.
He tipped my chin up, fingers warm against my skin as he forced me to meet his eyes.
My sobs only got worse, and apologies tumbled out like a broken thing. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for you to see. I tried to stop. I shouldn’t have written—” The words choked out of me, faster than any control I thought I had.
“Stop,” he cut in firmly. His hand slid under my jaw, tilting my face until I met his gaze. The pressure was intimate, steady. “Stop. Look at me. Why do you think this is a big deal?”
My breathing hitched. He didn’t look angry. Or disgusted. Just calm…and confused. Like he couldn’t understand why I was falling apart.
I opened my mouth to blurt another apology, but he shook his head, cutting me off. His face had folded into something that was almost fierce.
“You don’t ever apologize for wanting me.” His thumb brushed over my cheek again, softer this time, tracing the damp trail of tears on my skin. “Not when I want you just as bad.”
I shook my head, trembling. “Why aren’t you mad? You should be mad. You should think it’s weird,” I insisted.
His jaw flexed, and suddenly he was pulling me tighter against his chest, like he was afraid I’d slip through his arms if he didn’t hold on. His scent wrapped around me, and I breathed him in with desperate gulps.
“Listen to me, Ophelia.” He kept a solid grip on my chin so I still couldn’t look away. “I’m not saying it to make you feel better. I’m saying it because it’s the truth. You writing my name doesn’t make you crazy. It makes you…mine.”
Heat coursed through me, disbelief warring with a sharp, needy thrill.
“You think I don’t notice how careful you are around me?
” His lips ghosted over my temple, the brush of them making my whole body shiver.
“How you shrink back like you’re not allowed to want what you want?
Pretty baby, I want that. I want all of it.
Every thought, every page, every little piece of you you’ve been hiding. ”
My throat closed. “But it’s—too much.”
It was too much.
And there was so much more than a journal. There was so much that I couldn’t tell him.
“Not for me.” He pressed a kiss to my cheek, lingering there, then trailed lower to the edge of my jaw.
Each touch was a reassurance, a seal over the cracks inside me.
“Never for me. You could fill every notebook in your room with ‘Mrs. Adler,’ and I’d still want more.
Because that’s not too much—it’s exactly what I want.
You giving me all of you. No shame. No apologies. ”
I whimpered, my hands clenching in his shirt like I’d drown if I let go.
“That’s my good girl,” he whispered, brushing his lips back up to the corner of my mouth. His breath was hot against my skin, each word trailing goose bumps in its wake. “Always trying so hard to do everything right. Always tearing yourself apart because you think it’s wrong to love me this much.”
His hand splayed across my back, pulling me closer until I could feel the rough pounding of his heart against my chest. “You sat there tonight, defending me like it was as easy as breathing. You were incredible.”
His voice roughened, like the memory had scraped something raw. “I couldn’t even look at you in the restaurant…or in the car after, because I didn’t trust myself not to pull over and strip you bare. I didn’t trust myself not to lose it completely.”
He lowered his head, his mouth brushing the shell of my ear. “It’s not wrong, Ophelia. It’s perfect. You’re perfect.”
My chest ached, but my knees had gone soft, heat pooling inside me insistently.
He felt the shiver ripple through me, and his grin curved into something wicked…and dangerous. “That’s what you like, isn’t it? Me telling you how good you are. My good girl. Mrs. Adler.”
I nodded helplessly, a sob catching in my throat. “I shouldn’t—”
“Shh.” He kissed me then, gentle but sure, cutting the protest off before it could take hold. His tongue brushed mine, coaxing, not demanding, until I melted against him. When he pulled back, his hand framed my face again, his thumb stroking slow circles that made me tremble.
“You don’t need to be smaller for me,” he said firmly. “You don’t need to hide. I want it all, Ophelia. The journals, the daydreams, the obsession…every bit of it. Because it means I’m yours the same way you’re mine.”
I couldn’t breathe. The words, the praise, the touch—they surged through me, drowning out every trace of shame and leaving a hungry ache in their wake.
“I’d never thought anyone like you could exist,” he admitted, softer now, his forehead leaning against mine. “And now that I’ve met you, you’re the only thing that makes sense.”
Tears blurred my vision, but this time they weren’t from shame.
They were from fucking relief.
“Good girl,” Matty murmured, kissing the corner of my mouth again. “Such a good girl for me. Say it back.”
“I’m your good girl,” I whispered.
“That’s right.” His smile was fierce and proud, the sort of look you give someone who’s just won a championship. “And I’m proud of you for saying it.”
The praise landed harder than anything I’d ever heard. My limbs went slack against him, breath stuttering, heart hammering so loud it erased every other noise.
He didn’t rush me. He steadied me. His hands moved with purpose, one palm splayed low on my back, anchoring—the other cupping my cheek while his thumb made slow, patient semicircles like a metronome.
He smoothed a hand down my spine and pressed me closer until the heat of him was a blanket I could breathe into.
“Breathe with me,” he said softly, counting on his fingers. “In—two—three, out—two—three.”
His chest rose against mine, and his rhythm was calm and solid and, impossibly, contagious. My inhales stuttered, then lengthened to match his until the room stopped tilting and my pulse found a steadier line.
His palm moved from my back up to my shoulder and stroked the slope in slow, steady pulls, fingers splayed like he was erasing the tremor from my skin.
When my hands balled in his shirt, he threaded my fingers through his and held them there as if to say I couldn’t get away even if I wanted.
The pressure wasn’t tight enough to hurt…
it was the right kind of insistence that said you’re safe to fall apart here.
“Look at me,” he murmured, his voice brushing against my ear. I blinked up. The intensity in his eyes was strange. It wasn’t hungry or amused…but reverent, like he was cataloguing something precious. “Say my name,” he ordered.