Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
FREYA
“Oh, thank God,” I whisper under my breath as I take in the two beds. When I called the hotel and they told me that there was only one room left, I’d had visions of Oscar and I awkwardly squashed into one bed, a pillow shoved between us.
Luci, of course, had been thrilled. I texted her on the drive over and got back a flurry of all-caps messages about romance book tropes and Oscar and I waking up spooning. I love her, but sometimes she needs to come back to reality.
Oscar sits down on the bed closest to the door and falls backward with a groan. “Jesus Christ.” He tosses an arm over his eyes. “Remind me never to let you rope me into one of these again.”
I know he’s joking, but a rock sinks in my gut at his words nonetheless. “I did try to let you off the hook.” I try to keep my voice light, but Oscar sits up, his brow knotted in a frown.
“You know I didn’t mean that.” He stares me down. “You’re not making me be here.”
I give him a weak smile. “I’ll make sure to tell your mom I gave you a five-star rating.”
He doesn’t say anything. The silence feels thick, like a glass pane between us. He stands and moves into my space, looking down at me.
“Freya,” he rasps. “I was kidding. Do I look like a man who’s here for any reason other than that I want to be?”
If he says more, I don’t hear it over the sound of my pulse hammering in my ears.
I’m frozen, locked to the spot by the force of his gaze.
When he gives me a gentle smile and turns to the bathroom, I want to feel relieved, but tears prick at the corners of my eyes.
I’m so confused, so overwhelmed, and none of it is made any easier by the fact I need sleep more than I’ve ever needed anything.
My feet carry me to the armchair in the corner and I sit down hard.
I wrap my arms tight around my middle and bend forward until I can rest my forehead on my knees.
I count to five, trying to regulate my breathing.
I’m wrung out from the convention, from Oscar acting in a way I—once again—can’t understand, and my nerves are fried.
I just need to curl up in my own bed and sleep for at least eight days.
Instead I’m stuck looking at an ugly hotel carpet, with the very man who’s causing this headache.
“You good?” Oscar’s voice has my head snapping up. He’s leaning against the doorframe, drying his hands on a white towel.
Heat rises to my cheeks and I squeeze my eyes shut, nodding through my embarrassment. I really do not need him seeing me having a breakdown. My breakdowns are supposed to be for my eyes only.
“I’m fine.” I manage to look at him, and a smile curls at the corner of his mouth. “Totally fine, all good.”
“Sure.” He smirks. “I’m gonna head out, try and find some dinner.”
“I can go if you want,” I say through a yawn.
“Don’t even try.” He chuckles, already walking away.
When the door clicks shut behind him, I let out a long groan.
I am in way over my head.
A quick shower and twenty-five minutes of idle scrolling later, the sound of the key card bleeps from the door. Oscar comes in carrying what looks like a week’s worth of grocery bags. “I think I got everything,” he says as he deposits his haul.
“For the apocalypse?” I stare at the bags. It looks like things kind of got out of hand when he was shopping.
He doesn’t answer me, instead he starts pulling stuff out of the bags.
“So, we got toothbrushes, pj’s, there’s a pizza on the way, and I got some of those instant oatmeal pots for breakfast. Hope that’s okay.
” He finishes one bag and moves on to the next.
“Plus some snacks, and some water bottles. I never want to drink the tap water at hotels, you know?”
“Oscar, this is too much,” I say weakly.
“It’s just the stuff we need.” He raises an eyebrow, like he’s daring me to challenge him.
“I’ll pay you back.”
“Just let me be nice without it turning into a whole thing, okay?”
“A whole thing?” I scoff.
“Yeah, the needless back and forth we’re about to have.”
“I don’t know that it’s needless,” I grumble.
“It’s needless so long as I know I’m gonna win.”
“One of these days I’ll wear you down.”
“Sure you are.”
I try to stare him down, but he just finds my glare amusing.
“I’m going to go get changed,” I say, needing space more than anything.
Oscar holds out a bundle of fabric for me to take as I head into the bathroom.
I lock the door behind me and lean against it.
“Get your shit together,” I whisper at my reflection.
I just need to get through this one night, then I’ll be home.
This would be so much easier if he would stop doing all these things for me.
I feel like the scales are weighted so heavily in his favor, and I have no idea when he’s gonna call it all in.
The low rumble of Oscar’s voice seeps under the door as I get changed. Is he on the phone?
I creep closer, hovering my ear over the wood, but I can’t make out any of the words.
Should I wait in here until he’s done? I look around as if an answer’s going to materialize out of the toilet and catch sight of myself in the mirror.
The pajamas are soft green flannel pants and a baggy white t-shirt.
As I put them on I catch the faint scent of his truck, barely there.
I finally shake myself loose and turn the handle, my dress balled up under my arm.
“Are you sure?” Oscar’s tone is hushed, like he doesn’t want me to hear.
I’m about to turn around and head back into the bathroom but he catches my eye, nodding in reassurance.
“I can come back tonight… no, no it’s fine…
okay, just keep me updated, yeah? And call if you feel worse… I know, I know… sure, love you, bye.”
He hangs up with a sigh.
“Is everything okay?” I ask tentatively, my panic on the backburner in the face of Oscar’s distress.
He scrubs a hand over his face. “Yeah, just checking in with Mom.”
“Is she alright?”
“She’s fine, just a headache.”
I frown. “It sounded bad.”
“No.” He gives a humorless chuckle. “I just worry about her.”
He’d sounded more than worried. He’d been braced, like he was ready to leap out the window and sprint back to Cedar Creek on foot. Only now is he relaxing, shuffling farther back onto the mattress where he settles, phone still clutched in his fist.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask.
“I just worry when I’m not around.”
I wonder why. Valerie’s always seemed so robust to me, so unshakeable, but maybe there’s more going on there. Does Oscar take care of her? Does she need that?
“I can hear the wheels turning from over here,” he says sardonically.
“I don’t want to pry.” I chew on the edge of my lip.
Oscar lets out a long breath that seems to deflate him. He slumps back against the headboard and stares at the ceiling. “Pry away.”
I perch on the mattress. The gap between our beds is small enough that my knees are almost touching his comforter. “It sounds a bit like you’re hoping I will.”
He shrugs, caught.
I cross both my legs under myself. “Does your mom need checking in on?”
“Probably not.” He pauses and inhales deeply, like a wind-up toy the second before you let it go. “She’s probably planning on flushing my phone down the toilet.”
“So, why do it?”
“For me, mostly.” The words come out hoarse.
“We don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to.”
“It’s not a big deal, I just get a bit anxious about her ever since my dad…” he trails off.
“Oh.” Of course losing his father would make him worry about his mom. I can’t imagine what that did to him, but it makes sense that he’d hold the people he cares about tighter.
“It’s all good.” He sits up in a sudden burst of movement that almost gives me whiplash, swinging his legs off the bed and striding for the bathroom. “I’m gonna shower. The pizza’s paid for and I tipped online, in case it shows up.”
I open my mouth to speak but he’s gone before I can get a word in.
Later, when the only light in the room comes in from the streetlight outside, ineffectively blocked by cheap blackout curtains, I lie in the dark and listen to Oscar breathing.
We didn’t talk much after his shower, just enough to get through dinner before we both turned in, and I’m worried that I’ve broken something that never really existed.
I’ve gotten good at being alone, at ignoring the tight feeling that clicks into place any time I let my thoughts linger on it.
I’ve almost convinced myself that it’s better this way, even on nights like this when I’m lying alone, imagining what it would be like if there were another body in this bed, someone pressed against me.
Imagining the cold feeling of emptiness that surrounds me being chased away by the touch of someone warm.
Not just someone, a voice says, him.
I roll to the side, curling in around myself and forcing my eyes shut. What if our beds were pressed together, or there had never been two to begin with? Maybe in his sleep he’d turn over and hold me, wrap one of those arms around my middle and tug me against his chest like I’m something precious.
The empty feeling inside me opens up, and at this point I don’t know how it hasn’t swallowed me whole, how there’s any of me left.
And it’s exactly why I shouldn’t want this. Not when I’ve proven that I don’t know a bad thing if it’s staring me in the face, not when I’ve learned I can’t trust myself to choose the right person.
He’s safe, he’s Oscar.
I bring my knees up to my chest, fighting to stop the tears from leaking out. My breath comes shaky as I sink into the paralyzing terror saddled to the thought.
I want him.