Chapter 4 – Vale
THE GREAT RED SPOT
VALE
Ican feel him over there, next door, that huge presence like a beacon calling out to my soul.
I know he’s there and it’s driving me insane.
Sometimes I wake up covered in sweat, my mouth wide open, calling out his name.
“Come to me,” my voice cries out. Help me put the fire out, Oliver, please.
He never comes, and I don’t think he should.
It’s so bad I almost called my mother for advice on how to stop these devilish thoughts. That’s true desperation. I’ve searched the internet for ways of clearing my mind, such as meditation and staying busy, but nothing helps. He creeps into my thoughts over and over again.
His beautiful face, his warm hands, those long, pianist’s fingers flash into my mind. Every thought, every memory makes me yearn for more. I want to be the one he touches. I need to be the one he touches. I need to be touched.
I’ve gotten intimately acquainted with my own touch because I constantly ache for him. It does no good to try though. It’s like I’m trying to put out a fire without having anything to smother it. It burns brighter the more it consumes. Oliver Byron consumes me entirely.
And to make things even more odd, I think Gramps has his first man crush on someone who isn’t Winston Churchill.
Turns out Oliver has a rare book collection.
He has an entire library actually. He’s offered Gramps a job cataloguing it.
I think that means organizing, but I’m honestly not sure.
I knew Gramps would take the job as soon as he told me about it.
I think he’s been bored in retirement, and he lives for bookish things and the written word.
He’s inspired by it, and from time to time, he even writes for himself.
Yeah, Gramps is my hero. He understands me, this lust for life, to experience it all before I’m lost to adulthood.
He understands there’s a person inside me who needs to break out.
I hide a lot of my truth from everyone, but Gramps sees me, and he knows what I want to be, the end goal.
Unlike my parents and their awful punishments though, he doesn’t lock me away when I screw up.
He doesn’t destroy everything that gives me joy.
Instead, Gramps likes to lecture, he was a professor after all. He’d use those lectures to make me understand my screwups. He’d help me see my errors and turn things around. But I don’t get in trouble anymore, and he knows no one’s harder on me than me.
Truly, it’s my own fault for being bored and alone.
I could go into town. I could try to make friends, but I don’t.
Most people exhaust me. I don’t like to pretend that I’m like them because I’m not.
My life experience is different from other young people.
How am I supposed to explain to people that my father’s a cult leader whose hobbies include exorcising demons out of evil women and listening to his own sermons because he likes the sound of his own voice?
See? Not normal. I’m lucky to have Kat, I just wish she was here.
Gramps says I can come with him to Oliver’s, that I’ve been invited, but I can’t bring myself to go.
I’m embarrassed Oliver caught me checking him out.
I don’t know how Gramps would react if he knew I had a crush on the new neighbor.
He might send me back to my parents early.
I didn’t have many rules but no dating without permission was a big one.
Then I might end up in the middle of nowhere with my parents as they preached to people who were better off without a new religion.
No, I can’t lose my place here. I need my summers at Gramps’s house.
I hope to live in Silver Springs next year.
I want to go to school where he taught. I’ve got plans, you see. I can’t mess up now.
It’s late, nearing dawn, when I step out onto the sleeping porch in a black tank top and gray shorts—God forbid my parents ever see me in something like this.
I open my telescope’s lens caps, I’d modified it with dual eyepieces, then look up toward the sky, searching, hoping to get a good view of Jupiter.
The sky’s clear, and I locate the right area.
The Great Red Spot is visible. I step back and start dancing. “Yes!”
Finally! I’ve been trying to catch it all summer, but I’ve never gotten the timing exactly right or there’s been too many clouds from the heat and humidity.
I reach out beside me, searching for the stool that normally sits beside my telescope.
I step back and look around for it. It was just there.
Then I notice the shadows, how they move and slither like smoke.
Someone’s watching me. I feel the scream sliding up my throat about to burst free and I take off.
They grab me and turn me around so fast my head spins.
I look up at my assailant and that’s when I realize it’s Oliver.
“Shh,” he whispers with a smirk.
“What are you doing here? How did you get up here?” I back away from him, trying to calm my racing heart. This man is going to kill me. He’s going to give me a heart attack if he keeps showing up . . . if he continues existing so near me is more like it.
Oliver takes a single step back. My heart calms immediately when there’s distance between us. This is getting really embarrassing. I can’t control my reactions to him anymore than I can control the way my body pumps blood, it’s ridiculous.
“You haven’t been to the house yet. Nick said you’ve wanted to see it since I started the remodel. He told me you came out here every night to look at the stars, so I thought maybe if I invited you in person, you’d actually show up.”
Oliver leans against one of my bedroom windows. He watches me. He seems so at ease. I grab the stool and make my way back to the telescope. I look through the double eyepiece and let out a loud sigh. “Fuck!” Clouds had rolled in and I hadn’t noticed because he was there. I missed it, again.
“Stop saying fuck, Vale,” Oliver says. I sit up straight, covering the eyepieces and draping a tarp over the telescope. I feel the temperature drop and I know it’s going to rain soon. I can smell it in the air now that the breeze is blowing. The rain would be here within minutes.
I’m angrier than I should be when I face him, but I appreciate the sudden anger over my usual anxiety around him. I press my fists to my hips and close the distance between us to get into his face.
“Don’t tell me what to do. I can say and do whatever the fuck I want. I’m not a child. If I were, you still wouldn’t be the person who could make demands of me,” I explain as my blood boils.
I didn’t often let the anger in but when I did, I’d chide myself for screwing up.
The rage made me brave, to the point of being stupid.
I’d say and do things that were different than my normal self.
I became something altogether different.
That’s exactly why I tried so hard to keep all those emotions at bay.
I don’t want to be crazed by emotions. It’s better to keep them under lock and key, especially around my parents.
To hide it is to survive it. And I’ve relentlessly trained myself not to react, but Oliver brings it out of me.
I don’t know what I expect, maybe an apology from my hot as sin neighbor, but I didn’t expect the way his eyes light up in challenge or the way he starts to circle me.
I follow him with my eyes, turning as he steps around me.
Then he’s there, in my face, taking all my oxygen and pushing me up against the house.
His body is flush against mine, his warmth seeping through the thin fabric of my clothes.
I suck in a breath, desperate for air as he leans in. I feel his hot breath against my face, his eyes alight and inhuman but so completely, utterly fascinating. He’s so beautiful he doesn’t seem real, he can’t be. Men like him don’t exist and yet, he’s right here.
Am I ready for this man, this beautiful fucking demon that’s haunted me?
The man who’s wound my body up tight, making my heart speed with fear and lust. I wish I understood why I reacted like this toward him.
I’d never been a lust-filled girl. I’d been curious about sex of course, but it hadn’t filled my every waking hour like it did with Kat.
I could see beauty in others, but it had never hit me so hard, not like this.
I coveted this man. My body ached, on fire for the first time with absolute hunger.
“I can see very well that you’re not a child. I see the way your body reacts to me. I can see your nipples poking through that thin top right now,” he says and I want to hide. I try to fold my arms over my breasts, but he stops me. “Don’t cover yourself. I want to see.”
Oliver looks down at my breasts. He’s right.
I’m not wearing a bra, and my nipples seem to be trying to bust through the thin fabric.
Heat rises in my cheeks as he studies my body.
He’s too close. My nipples ache, my breasts feel heavy.
It’s like two nerves coming alive for the first time, leading directly between my legs, pulsating with each beat of my racing heart.
Oliver doesn’t touch me, but his breath is warm against my flesh, even through the cotton. A strangled sound escapes my throat, and my body trembles with the adrenaline pumping through my veins.
“You’re so sensitive to me. Your arousal is like wine, and I’m a thirsty drunk ready to suck up every . . . single . . . drop,” he says, his eyes locked on mine. He leans his cheek against my breast as he kneels in front of me.
What the fuck is happening?
I take in a stuttering breath. “What are you doing?”