Chapter 11 #2
I keep one hand at her waist, the other splayed across the back of her neck, steadying us both. I need her to feel this—not just the heat of my mouth or the pressure of my grip—but the intention behind it. I need her to feel wanted, yes, but more than that—kept.
If she won’t offer herself, then let her at least feel the weight of my want.
Let her carry the proof of it in the places no one else will ever see.
I’m about to take her in the way that only I can—
Her phone vibrates on the table. The sound is an insistent, crude intrusion.
She rises so abruptly her chair jerks back. One of its legs catches on the rug and nearly topples, but she stops it just in time.
I reach out to steady her, but she’s already closing in on herself, muttering a breathless, “I’ll be right back,” before she disappears between the stacks, phone pressed tight to her chest like it’s a detonator.
She’s gone before I can even stand. All I can do is sit there, pulse hammering, while the cold rushes in to fill the space she’s left behind.
What am I supposed to do with this?
The imprint of her warmth is fast-fading from my skin, her perfume still suspended in the air—there, but just out of reach.
I lean back in my chair, but it feels too small, too flimsy for the weight in my chest. My bones feel too big for my body―as if I’m swelling with something I can’t contain.
Something I’ve tried to control out of love, patience, and loyalty.
Something I’ve swallowed every time she’s walked away instead of letting me in.
I know I’m reaching my limit. Whatever line I drew for myself—it’s blurring and being replaced by something far less rational.
I won’t let her keep doing this. Not to herself. Not to us.
When she returns, I feel her before I see her.
The energy around her has shifted, tightened.
Her shoulders are set, her eyes red-rimmed, lashes damp.
I watch her as she walks back to the table—how she slows before she sits, reassembling herself piece by trembling piece.
She’s so damn good at hiding. But I know her too well.
I see every fissure she tries to plaster over.
She sinks back into the chair, her phone still in her hand, and I watch as she tucks the weight of that conversation somewhere behind her eyes. Then she turns to me with a watery smile so practiced it slices straight through me.
“I’m sorry for the interruption, my love—”
“You’re coming away with me next week for spring break,” I cut in, my voice harsher than I mean it to be. “End of discussion.”
Her smile vanishes. Her brows knit, the cracks breaking through the surface again.
“Please, not this again, Nathaniel—”
“No.” My hand curls around the edge of the table to keep from reaching for her. “If you won’t let me fix whatever’s going on, then at least let me shield you from it. Just for a little while. We’ll go wherever you want. Somewhere they can’t reach you.”
She goes very still.
Then she closes her laptop with the careful precision of someone trying not to shatter.
“I can’t talk about this right now,” she says, eyes fixed on some distant point beyond me.
Frustration rises—quick, hot, and mean—but I bite down on it. I’ve spent years mastering control over my emotions. Even when I wanted to ruin things just to feel something. But loving her has undone that composure thread by thread. I can’t think straight when she’s like this.
I don’t want to.
“You say that every time,” I say, my tone gentler now, but no less strained. “And every time, you put another wall between us.”
Her hands tremble in her lap. When she speaks, her voice cracks like a fracture under pressure. “Nathaniel, please stop. My mind is all over the place—”
“Then tell me.” I reach for her, just enough to close the space, my words coming faster, more frantic. “Whatever it is, I can take it. I can solve it. Whatever problem you think you have—I’ll make it go away. Just leave it with me.”
“Nathaniel, enough!” Her voice rips out of her like it’s been lodged there for days. The sharpness of it stuns me.
Her tears come hard and fast now.
I reach for her, and she jerks back like my touch burns. It lands like a blow.
She starts shoving things into her bag frantically, barely pausing long enough to make sure she’s grabbing everything. Her goal is clear: flee.
Panic slams into me. I scramble to pack too, my hands clumsy, fumbling with my charger, my laptop still open on the table. By the time I shove my bag closed, she’s disappearing through the doors, not even sparing me a backward glance.
I’m on my feet immediately.
Outside, she’s walking fast, but I catch her easily, reaching for her elbow.
“Olivia, wait. Talk to me—please.” I try to pull her into me, to get her to stop running, but she recoils and it slices through me once again.
Her voice splinters when she whips around to face me, finally.
“I’ve let you set the pace of this relationship from the start, Nathaniel. Every step. Every turn. I’ve followed your lead. But I need to move at my own speed for once.”
I don’t know what to say. My chest is hollowing out, a slow, sinking ache. I nod—automatically, stupidly—because I’ll agree to anything if it keeps her from stepping further away.
“I will,” I say desperately. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to push. I just wanted to help. I thought…if I could make life easier for you—”
“Then stop putting me in situations I’m not ready for!”
My mind careens, grasping at the edges of what she could possibly mean. This isn’t just about spring break. She has to be talking about more—the move-in, my proposal, New York. Every next step I tried to plan for her because I thought I was helping.
For a second, hope flickers that this could finally be the moment she tells me what she wants, what she’s been holding back.
No. Not like this.
I just need to soothe her and remind her of what we are. She loves me. If I can get her to breathe, to see straight, to let me hold her long enough to remember…then maybe she won’t say it. Maybe she won’t—
“Please don’t follow me.” She says, pulling her bag higher on her shoulder.
“I just…I need to be able to hear my own thoughts for a minute. I’m getting overwhelmed, Nate.
And I can’t sort through any of it with you breathing down my neck.
” Her voice trembles. “If I stay, I’ll break something between us. I can feel it.”
No. Not this again.
I can’t bear the distance that she’s trying to impose once more, the slow retreat that I’d fought so hard to keep from recurring.
Yet, I say nothing.
Not because I don’t feel every inch of space she’s about to carve between us like a blade against my ribs. But because I know if I don’t let her go now—if I try to stop her—she might not come back at all.
The thought alone creates a tightness in my chest, and I can’t find my footing in the space she’s about to leave behind.
My hands drop helplessly to my sides, fingers curling as if they might hold on to something that’s already slipping away.
She doesn’t so much as hesitate. She pulls her coat tighter around her frame and walks off in quick, purposeful strides. I watch as she leaves, how her shoulders tremble, the way she swipes at her cheeks with both hands as if she can scrub the whole moment from her memory.
And I let her go.
Every instinct I have screams to follow, to close the gap, to keep her near. But I stay rooted where I am—held there by nothing but the desperate, aching want for her to stay.
I tell myself not to text her.
Not to check her location.
I last twenty minutes.
Have you eaten?
I hope I’ll see you tomorrow. Even if it’s just for a little while.
Don’t stay up too late, baby.
I love you.
She doesn’t respond to any of them.
I check her location. She’s in her dorm. Hasn’t moved. Just like she said.
A sense of vindication unfurls inside me.
This is why I do it—why I track her, why I built systems to keep her within reach even when she tries to disappear.
Because when she shuts me out, when she walks away with tears in her eyes and doesn’t look back…
this is all I have left. This little red dot glowing on a map. A sliver of her that can’t lie to me.
I don’t watch the footage. I could. God knows I want to. But the thought of seeing her, curled up on that narrow dorm bed, looking small and tired and alone—it feels like touching a wound still bleeding. I know what it would do to me. I’d be halfway to campus before the feed even loaded.
So instead, I go to the gym.
I haven’t boxed in weeks. Not since she started staying over every night, not since I found better ways to exhaust myself—with her skin under my mouth, her voice in my ear, her body clinging to mine like I was something worth holding on to.
But tonight I need violence.
I wrap my hands and drive my fists into the bag until my knuckles split. Until the ache in my chest has somewhere else to go. But even then, even after my arms shake and sweat drips into my eyes, it’s not enough. Nothing is.
When I get home, I check her location again.
She’s still in her dorm.
I hover my thumb over the surveillance app.
And then I put the phone down.
This is my penance. I drove her away. I can’t look at her until she lets me. I have to earn the right to see her again.
Because watching her won’t bring her closer. And god, I need her close.
I drag myself into my home gym and run ten miles on the treadmill, punishing my legs until my mind finally gives out. After a cold shower, I collapse into bed and sleep like a man who’s been dragged through every edge of his longing.
Morning comes slowly. Light spills across the duvet in golden slats, warm against my skin, but it does nothing to thaw the chill that’s settled in my chest.
I roll over and reach for my phone—9:14 a.m.
Still no messages. No missed calls. Nothing from her.
A restless edge curls through my spine as I swipe to the tracker.
Everything stills.
She’s no longer in Boston.
The dot is moving—steadily, deliberately—cutting northwest with purpose.
Not a walk around the block.
Not an early morning errand.
She left me.