Chapter 11
ELEVEN
nathaniel
The days after she gave herself back to me felt like a hallucination I never wanted to wake from.
She was everywhere. Draped across my chest when we woke and tucked beneath my arm at every opportunity, as if being curled against my side was the only place she fit.
I indulged her greedily. She let me hold her like she needed the contact to breathe, and I held on like she was the last thing in the world I was allowed to keep.
The blissful routine we’d built before didn’t just resume—it deepened.
Her laughter filtered through the penthouse like sunlight, and I cataloged every smile she gave me like a man memorizing proof of divinity.
We spent every waking moment together until she eventually drifted off to sleep, pressed so close that I could feel the flutter of her every breath against my throat.
Those days felt dangerous in their perfection—too bright, too easy. The kind of happiness that makes you certain something sharp is waiting at the edge of it.
Olivia was softer than I’d ever seen her. Open, but only in the way a wound is—tender, raw, and pulsing.
A few nights ago, she told me she’d accepted an offer for a graduate position with Baxter & Company in New York. On the surface, she delivered the news breezily—bright enough to pass as excitement, if you didn’t know her.
She was standing at the counter, stirring sugar into her tea with a little too much focus. “They offered me the position,” she’d said, forcing a smile. “It’s a good role. A great one, actually.”
Anyone else would’ve believed her. But I know all her tells—the strain in her voice, the way her hand paused mid-stir, like the spoon had suddenly become too heavy, the careful refusal to meet my eyes.
She never said outright that Castor & Wyatt had passed her over, but I could read between the lines.
She must have been disappointed. Castor & Wyatt was the one she wanted most, the prize she’d been chasing since before she ever set foot on Halford’s campus.
I hated the thought of her settling for anything less, even if “less” meant Baxter—just as prestigious, just as competitive a position.
I offered to speak with the partners myself.
To make sure she got what she deserved. But the look she shot me—sharp, withering, as though I’d just told her she wasn’t enough—stopped me cold.
I let it go. She needs to feel like she earned this.
She needs to know I see her as capable, not as someone who requires my intervention to succeed.
And when I weigh it against the only outcome that matters—that she’ll be in Manhattan, with me—I can live with it.
Baxter is worthy of her. If she can’t have her dream, then I’ll make every other part of her life so full, so unshakably good, that she won’t wonder about what she missed.
Which is why I know this unease in her isn’t about her job prospects. It’s something else.
I saw it in her eyes, how they dimmed when she looked at her phone, and in her haste to hide it away after reading a message she wouldn’t let me see. She never explained. She just slipped away to the bathroom or stepped into the hallway, her voice hushed to a whisper behind closed doors.
Thankfully, the clone of her phone gave me everything I needed to know.
I saw every demand, every guilt-laced word, every cruel dig from the woman who calls herself Olivia’s mother.
Claudia Bennett sends texts like she’s firing arrows, aiming for soft spots and hitting her mark every time.
I’ve read them all—each line uglier than the last. I don’t understand how a mother could be this determined to make her daughter feel so small.
I wanted to call her. Wanted to let her know exactly what she was doing—how easily I could erase every trace of that life if it meant Olivia never had to crawl back to it.
But I couldn’t.
Because Olivia never told me about it.
She forced it down, buried deep under all that grace and composure. And whenever it threatened to rise to the surface, when her voice broke or her hands trembled…she still wouldn’t say a damn word about it.
Instead, she’d press her mouth to mine with a kind of desperation that made my chest split open.
I should’ve stopped it, I know. Should’ve pulled her back and made her talk.
But I was weak. I was intoxicated by how good it felt to be needed by her.
So, whenever she climbed into my lap and tilted her head back like she wanted to forget, I pressed my lips to her neck and gave in. Again and again.
It was blistering, what we found in each other. But it didn’t make it sting less, knowing she was hurting in silence while I stood on the other side of the door, pretending not to hear the pain I wasn’t allowed to soothe.
I kept wondering what she thought would happen if she let me see all of it. Did she think I’d pull away? That I’d look at her differently once I saw how deep the bruises went?
Or worse—was she afraid I’d pity her?
But that’d be absurd. There’s no pity in what I feel for her.
And yet, every time she offered her body like a bribe to keep me away from the parts of her that she thinks are too messy to love—I took it. God help me, I took it every time. Let her use me like a place to disappear, even as it broke something sharp and jealous in me.
We’re back at the library, side by side in our usual corner. Outside, dusk pools low across the windows, brushing the oak-paneled floor in shades of amber. Our laptops glow against blank pages and blinking cursors. We should be working on our capstone. Instead, we sit in silence, adrift.
Usually, we fall into rhythm without thinking―researching, trading notes, brushing shoulders as naturally as breathing.
But today, Olivia hasn’t typed more than a line and I’ve reread the same paragraph three times now.
She’s slipping somewhere I can’t reach, even as our thighs touch. The distance is a rope wrapped around my ribs, pulled tighter with every second she keeps walking backward.
So I reach for her.
It’s the barest brush of my fingers against hers under the table, but it steadies the turbulence inside me. Olivia doesn’t look up at me, but she doesn’t pull away either.
I curl my hand around hers and squeeze once. Are you still here?
She squeezes back. Yes, I am.
It’s just a crumb, but I take it.
I can’t demand more and risk her closing off entirely, as much as I want to grab the silence by its throat and shake the truth out of her. Instead, I hold the line she’s drawn and try to swallow the resentment rising like bile in my throat.
My thumb glides over her knuckles, tracing each rise and hollow.
I lean in slowly and press my mouth to the slope of her neck. The scent of her shampoo—strawberries and cream—quiets the noise in my mind. Her breath catches, warm against my cheek, while her hand slips from mine and fists the front of my shirt.
I loop my arm around her waist and pull her close until nothing separates us.
My lips part at her jawline, trailing downward. She tilts her head, offering more, and I take it like I’ve gone too long without air.
Her grip tightens. My free hand finds the nape of her neck, cradling it where her pulse stutters against my palm. She trembles beneath my touch, but she doesn’t flee—because she needs this too. It’s the only salve she’ll still let me provide.
I kiss my way down the column of her throat like the answer I’m chasing might be hidden somewhere in her skin. Eventually, my mouth finds the curve where her shoulder yields to her collarbone and I nip at the silken skin there.
Her reaction is immediate, her body tilting toward mine with a soft gasp, pliant and seeking.
If I pulled her into my lap, I know she'd melt into me without hesitation. She might even beg for it, as she has every night this week. She’d seek out the comfort I offer so easily, the pleasure I never deny her.
Any other day, I’d welcome her need. I’m hopeless for her, after all. She’s so beautiful as she falls apart, and I’ve always been insatiable with her. I’m addicted to her wreckage because it’s proof that she needs me.
I should want nothing more than this. But today, something twists inside me. For the first time, I feel anger toward her.
It hits low and hot, curling in my gut like a lit fuse. I try to smother it, but it won’t go quietly. The intensity of it scares me.
I don’t ever get angry at Olivia. I ache. I crave. But this? This is something else.
Now, I fucking hate that this is all she wants from me.
She keeps turning me into a refuge that she won’t live in, and it hurts that she trusts my touch, but not my devotion. That she’ll let me give her relief, but won’t let me carry her pain.
Haven’t I earned it by now?
What more do I have to do before she finally deems me deserving of her whole self, and not just the pieces she can offer in the dark?
The thought lances through me and I feel it again—that sudden, almost shameful urge to take.
I want to mark her, to leave evidence that I was here. I want proof that I matter to her, and that she’s mine in some small but undeniable way.
The fury floods fast and feral, and before I can think twice—I sink my teeth into her skin.
Her breath morphs into a gasp—pain, pleasure, both. One of her hands jerks against my chest while the other slides down, finding my thigh and clinging there, nails pressing through the denim.
Her body stills, but only to offer itself more fully.
It shatters something inside me. Not because she’s giving me permission, but because she’s asked for nothing else.
Her breath hitches, shallow and rapid, the rhythm of it skipping across my lips.
I drag my mouth across the mark I’ve left, tongue gliding over flushed skin as I taste what I’ve done.
I feel her body respond in small, more potent ways: a stuttered exhale, a tremble that starts in her spine and ripples outward.
She tilts her head, quietly surrendering the only part of herself she can bear to give.