Round Thirty-Two
OLLIE
“I feel bad.” Rose lays over my chest hours later, her toes playing with mine, her finger drawing a sweet pattern against my biceps, and, every now and then, I’m treated to the slurping sound of a sleepy woman trying not to drool onto my chest. Languid, she exhales a soft sigh.
“There hasn’t been a moment since we met where I wasn’t messing with your sleep.
Now it’s…” She pauses to read the clock.
“Way past your bedtime, and you have to get up for work again soon.”
“I’m not thinking about work. And I’m sure as shit not thinking about pushing you off me just so I can climb out of your bed and into mine.
” I couldn’t sleep even if I tried, and if she asked me to walk away, I’m not sure I could do it.
But I press my nose to the top of her hair and inhale. “Are you okay?”
She nods, her soft cheek brushing my pec. “I’m good.”
“Did I hurt you?”
She shakes her head. “I liked everything we did. But you really should sleep.”
“You should stop telling me what to do.” Grinning, I place my fingers beneath her chin and tilt her back until I’m treated to her beautiful kaleidoscope eyes, even in the dark. “You’d tell me if that wasn’t cool, right? If you change your mind tomorrow and decide you don’t want this…”
“I would tell you.” She stretches her neck and lays a kiss on my lips. “But I’m not freaking out. I’m only thinking about how little sleep you live on, and how it’s usually my fault.”
“And I’m thinking about calling in sick to my shift tomorrow,” I counter.
“Twelve hours is a long fucking time to be away from you.” I draw her closer, trembling under the light tickle of her hair on my skin, and sliding my tongue across her bottom lip, my cock thickens in response to her quivering smile.
“Twelve hours of you sitting here all alone. Replaying everything that’s happened… ”
She shifts over me, bringing her knees up until she’s straddling my hips, then she fists my cock and slides onto my length with a wispy, sweet sigh.
“Fuck.” I palm her ass cheeks, from gentle touches to the kind that bruise. “Rose…”
“If you insist on overthinking everything we’ve done, instead of sleeping when we both know you really should, then I insist on this.
” She rises over me, her long black hair creating a curtain that comes down to drape over pebbled nipples.
Rolling her hips forward, she tips her head back and moans.
“Jesus. It’s so much better than it should be. ”
“Insatiable.” I glide the pad of my thumb over her clit, stoking the flames between us. “You’re a thirsty girl, Rosaline.”
Warmth floods her face, pinking her cheeks and making her eyes dance. “I like it when you call me that.”
“Feels right?”
“Mmm.” She creates a rhythm that sets my blood on fire.
It’s slow and intoxicating. Tender and yet, powerful enough to tear my heart clear out of my fucking chest and slam it against the wall.
“Feels right. Now focus on me.” She takes my hand and cups her tit.
“Focus only on me, Oliver. Not tomorrow. Not on the what ifs. And not on this imaginary argument you think we’re going to have where I run away and regret what we’re doing. ”
I rear up and take her nipple between my teeth, and reaching around behind her, between her legs, I slip my finger into her ass and groan at her explosive cry of delight.
I hold my breath before she yanks me over the ledge too soon.
I bury my face against her neck, in the curtain of her beautiful hair, and I vow to stay here. With her. In this moment.
Tomorrow will come soon enough.
My phone vibrates in my pants somewhere on the floor of Rose’s bedroom, my five o’clock alarm buzz-buzz-buzzing against the hardwood and drawing me out of my sleep.
My eyes ache, and my body weighs a thousand tons.
My whole fucking soul rejects the idea of climbing out of this bed and leaving the beautiful, naked Rose alone.
But Dawes has done his twelve. He’s paid his dues, and bailing on the old coot without finding a suitable replacement is shitty. So I peel my eyes open in the dark and try to find my pants just by listening to them vibrate.
“Noisy.” Rose curls into my side, drawing her knees up until the bony caps dig into the side of my thigh. She huffs in her sleep, draping her arm across my torso and digging her fingers under my back to lock me in. “Make it stop, Darcy.”
“I’m—” Stunned, I stop and swing my eyes down to her shadow in the dark. My heart pounds painfully against my sternum. My stomach taunts the base of my throat. Darcy? “What?”
“It’s too early,” she moans, her eyes racing beneath her eyelids. “Not time yet.”
“Rose?” I rub her arm, gently nudging her while her arm twitches and her knees dig into my side. She’s like a puppy dreaming of a fanciful run in a wide meadow. “Wake up, Rose?”
“Don’t want to—”
“Rose?” I inch out from beneath her and prop myself up on my elbow. I’m careful not to let her fall, laying her cheek on my deserted pillow and tucking her hair back behind her ear. “Hey? You have to wake up.”
She hiccups and whimpers, crying in her sleep the way I’ve heard her do a thousand times already. So I give her arm another shake. “Rose!”
Her eyes snap open, her chest coming to a standstill, not even her pumping heart can change. Then, swallowing, she shifts her gaze and locks onto mine in the low light.
“Ollie?”
“It’s just me.” I drag her blankets up to combat the goosebumps bursting all along her flesh, and though I’d do anything to kiss her awake, to touch and tease and steal one last taste before I’m forced away, I can’t un-hear what she said.
Darcy. To think of her dreaming of someone else—missing them—while she lies with me…
is enough to make me want to puke. “I have to get up for work, Rose. You can go back to sleep if you want to.”
“Work?” She inches up and stares across the room, squinting to read the time. Then, with a huff of exhaustion, she drops again and grumbles. “Before you get in your feelings about this, you should know I don’t regret you. But I do regret only getting two hours of sleep.”
My stomach jumps with an odd combination of nerves and delirium. Dread and anxiety. My phone continues to vibrate against the floor, but as she curls into the blankets, hugging them now that I’m no longer her pillow, I battle against the words so horrifyingly close to the tip of my tongue.
Ask her about him? Remind her of what she might’ve lost in that space between asleep and awake? Or let it go and pray he’ll stay gone with her memories?
I already know which is the wrong choice, but knowing doesn’t make it easier to do the right thing.
So I roll out of bed instead and leave her to sleep for a little while longer.
I walk across her room, naked as the day I was born, and scoop up my clothes, and digging my hand into the pockets of my sweatpants, I silence my stupid phone and turn back to stare down at the woman who has no clue how close she is to unlocking a new memory.
How insanely fucking close she may be to shattering my heart.
“I’m going for a shower,” I whisper, swallowing the ball of dread intent on choking me to death.
Walking back to the bed and lowering into a crouch, I push loose locks of hair back off her face, uncovering soft cheeks and relaxed eyelids.
Bow lips, swollen and tempting. And long, dark lashes lying against the tops of her cheeks.
“If you wake up, come out and have breakfast with me, Rosaline. But if you stay asleep, that’s okay, too. ”
“Mmm.” She smacks her lips and sighs. “Tired.”
It’s so easy, so fucking simple, to pretend letting her sleep is for her own good, and not because I don’t want to say his name. Darcy. Who the hell is Darcy? And why does he get to have one of classic literature’s most well-known heroes’ names?
She’s not yours, Ollie. She never was. You dumb motherfucker.
Shaking my head, I bundle my clothes in my hands and push up straight, and turning on my heels, I move into the hall and through the bathroom door.
I toss my clothes and set my phone on the vanity, pointedly ignoring the dying battery alert obnoxiously flashing on my screen.
I have forty-five minutes to shower, dress, make something decent to eat, and get my ass out the door.
And for the first time since she came here, I kinda hope Rose doesn’t wake and join me for breakfast.
Because I’m a selfish bastard who jumped headfirst into a situation that cannot come with a happy ending.
Not for me, anyway. Not while she has an entire other life somewhere else.
I flip the taps on and wait, cold and naked, for the water to warm, and a full ten minutes after stepping in, I turn the taps off and walk out again.
I wrap myself in a fresh towel and go through the motions of swiping the mirror clear and finger-combing my hair.
Drying off. Spraying deodorant. And then moving into my room and selecting my clothes for the day.
At five-twenty, I emerge from my room fully dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved button-up shirt. Sneakers. A sweater that goes well with my shirt, since wearing Love & War hoodies to work raises more brows from the nosy patients than I’d rather deal with.
Moving along the hall in silence, I pass Rose’s bedroom door and slow, wishing it wasn’t so dark still. Or that I’d had the forethought to shower without the lights on, all so my eyes could stay accustomed to the shadows.
Instead, I’m forced to keep going, toward the end of the hall and into the living room so I can plug my phone in. And since I’m here, I place fresh kindling and a new log on the fire, the red-hot coals providing enough heat to catch on and start the flames anew.