The police take statements from us both and the process feels endless, interrupted by nurses and doctors and a trip to get x-rays. Olivia is attached to monitors tracking her heart rate and oxygen levels, every unusual noise they make drawing her ire and bringing back a small taste of the panic I felt when she was lying in my arms, still and pale.
///
Olivia's father is also in the hospital somewhere. He was just gaining consciousness when they took him away. He's under police guard, but I'm not going to feel secure until she's far away from him and he's in jail.
It's not until the police are done and the doctor has left to get the discharge paperwork ready that we are finally alone.
"I guess Erin told you," she sighs. "I knew you'd feel guilted into coming after me if you found out what Jessica did."
I look at her in astonishment. "I'm not here because I feel guilty. And I don't know how the hell you thought I'd choose my job over you."
"You did choose your job over me," she replies. "You chose it when you sent me off the night of the banquet to pretend like everything was normal. I understood why you did it but … "
"I quit, Olivia."
"You what?" she demands, springing forward, twisting the blood pressure cuff in the process. "You can't do that! Jessica got what she wanted. I left. She's not going to tell."
"It had nothing to do with Jessica," I reply, lowering the railing on the side of her bed so I can sit closer to her. "I knew the night of the banquet that I was going to quit. I just had to do it in a way that wouldn't jeopardize your scholarship or get Peter in trouble."
"You can't," she insists. "What about the farm? What about Brendan?"
"Olivia, I made my choice when I followed you at the banquet. I put you first then. Everything else will have to work out somehow."
"You don't have to do that," she argues. "It was sex, not a promise ring. You never once suggested it was anything more than that, so stop trying to do the honorable thing and go get your job back."
"I've been far from honorable for a long time," I tell her. "I'm here because I love you. Because I'm so in love with you, I can't see straight."
She turns away from me. I don't know how I thought she'd react, but it certainly isn't like this.
"I don't see how that can possibly be true, Will," she finally says, avoiding my eye. "We both know how fucked up I am. How could you want to be with me knowing what you know?"
I rest my palm against the curve of her cheek, gently forcing her to look back toward me. I wish I were more eloquent. I wish I had some way of explaining it to her, but right now what I feel seems so deep, so vast, that I could sit here all night and never manage to describe it all. My thumb brushes her lower lip, lingers there as I struggle to find the right words. "Olivia, I'd give anything to change your past," I finally tell her, "but at the same time it's made you who are. The things you think are so terrible? I love those things. That fragile part of you, the way you freeze when someone tries to hug you or compliment you or acts like they care. I can't separate that from everything else now, so I love all of it. I don't want some other version of you. I want the one in front of me, and I want it more than I've ever wanted anything in my entire life."
She doesn't reply, just looks at me wide-eyed as if everything I've said to her is a surprise when it shouldn't be. Everyone but the two of us saw it months ago.
I run my hands through her hair and lean in. "In case you haven't done this before, this is the part where you tell me you love me too."
"Have you done this part before?" she asks.
"Yeah, about five seconds ago. And she didn't say it back."
She takes a deep breath, looking terrified, as if she's about to dive into a stormy sea. "I love you too."
I lean down, brushing her lips with mine. "That was pretty good for a first time," I whisper against her mouth.
She smiles and I lean back in. I mean only to seal our words - a quick kiss, a promise of things to come. But her lips are so damn full, and soft, and it's been too long, so I don't pull back like I should. Instead I deepen the kiss, tease her mouth open, and find myself sinking into that place I always go to her with her, the one where there is no thought, only impulse and action. Where nothing exists but the soft skin just beneath her jaw, her mouth, the sounds she makes, my hands tracing her curves as I follow her gasp with my tongue, her body arching toward mine …
An alarm goes off and we both startle, opening our eyes to discover I'm alongside her, the blankets thrown off entirely, my knee wedged between her thighs and my hand on the verge of sliding under her gown.
///
Jesus Christ. She's in a hospital bed and I'm on practically on top of her. I'd be ashamed of myself if I wasn't so damn turned on.
"Don't stop," she says.
"I have to," I groan, climbing out of the bed and returning to the chair beside it, "or that doctor's going to walk in on something she can't unsee."
In fact, that doctor's still going to get an eyeful unless I get a cold shower or change of conversation fast.
"You sure?" she asks, with a smile that goes straight to my dick when the last thing it needs is more encouragement. "I'm not wearing anything under this hospital gown, Will. It'd be so easy … "
I groan aloud.
This girl is going to be the end of me. But I guess I've known that since the day we met.
76
Olivia
It's late by the time I'm finally released from the hospital. Will finds us a hotel near the airport that's reasonable by LA standards and gets us checked in.
"I need a shower," I exhale, kicking off my shoes the moment we're in the room. "Although I'm not sure I'm ever going to be able to wash off the seven hours I spent in that strip club."
"I probably don't want to know exactly what happened that led you to punch someone, do I?" he asks with a small wince.
"Probably not," I reply, peeling off the skirt. He tries not to watch, but it's like he can't help himself. "You're allowed to look now, you know."
He closes his eyes tightly. "I think it's best if I don't."
"Why?"
"Just go shower, Liv," he sighs, not opening his eyes. "You need some rest."
"Rest? So you're saying that you're no longer my coach and we're alone in a hotel room and you want me to get some rest?"
"Olivia, in the last few hours you were assaulted and nearly died. You just got out of the hospital. So yeah, under those circumstances, I want you to rest."
"I'm fine."
"Well, I'm not. We have lots of time to do this the right way."
"Oh my God," I groan. "You're not going to do, like, candles and rose petals and shit, right? While you recite poetry, maybe play some slow jams on your guitar?"
"I'm pretty sure there's some middle ground between being sensitive ponytail guy and the guy who fucks a girl as she's exiting the hospital."
"You go first then. I'm going to call Erin."
Which I don't do, of course.
I hear the water start, the slide of the shower door, and give him two minutes before I strip off the rest of my clothes and walk into the bathroom, pausing for a moment to take him in -perfect arms, tight ass, water streaming off that delectable v where his waist meets his hips.
"Olivia," he sighs, opening his eyes to find me ogling him. "What are you doing?"
I step into the shower. "Don't mind me." I lather the soap in my hands. "I'm just here to get clean." My hands slide over my skin, down to my thighs and between my legs.
"Liv," he groans, half-plea and half-warning. To my delight, I notice that he's already hard and I haven't laid a finger on him.
"Oh, how rude of me." I wrap my slippery hands around him. "I should clean you first."
"You just got out of the hospital," he says through gritted teeth.
"Maybe you'd feel better about it if I was sitting," I say as I drop to my knees, washing away the soap before I take him in my mouth.
"Fuck," he gasps, and in that single word I hear him cave. "Stop," he tells me, but it's half-hearted and already his fingers are pressing into my scalp, running through my hair. When I glance up, I find him watching me, eyes at half-mast and feverish. I think I could come from his reaction alone: his low groan, the way he strains not to push hard into my mouth, his hips still jutting forward softly despite his best efforts.