The unspoken words hovered in the air, but I held back from saying them, instead sitting up and pushing Ollie to the ground. He let out a surprised laugh as I straddled his hips.
“There something you want?” he asked, a teasing smile on his lips.
My erection strained against my pants as I leaned over him, grinding myself over the top of him as his cock swelled in response to mine. “Mhmm,” I said, as I bit down gently on his full lower lip.
“Tell me,” he murmured against my mouth.
“I think you know.”
He pulled his head back, and I fell into his warm green gaze. “Tell me anyway.”
“I want you, Ollie.” I brushed a kiss across his lips and whispered, “I’ll always want you.”
I woke up with a jolt, panting as I sat straight up in my bed. Sweat trickled down my neck as I brought my fingers to my mouth, the feel of Ollie’s lips still velvety soft on mine. My dick jerked under the flimsy material of my briefs, my body responding favorably to the memory. Because that’s what itwas, wasn’t it? A memory. Not a dream. Not a hallucination. A fucking memory.
I’d been with Ollie. I’dbeenwith Ollie.Ollie. No matter how I tried to say it, I couldn’t wrap my brain around what I knew now to be true. All I’d done for the past seventy-two hours was lie here and try to filter through the chunks and fragments I remembered to make sense of things. Well, I’d alternated between the bed and the couch, and at one point I ordered pizza so I wouldn’t have to venture out anywhere or starve, but other than that, the only thing that moved was my mind.
My thoughts shuffled between things making sense but not making sense. That I wasn’t going crazy was a relief, but it was such a shock to my system that I’d apparently fallen for a man. I hadn’t seen that part coming, and my family sure as hell hadn’t dropped any hints that they’d known. Had they known? Or had I hidden him away completely? But Ollie said he spoke with my mother, that she’d come to him recently, which led me to believe she knew something. She had to. Had she approved? Had my father?God, this is too surreal for words,I thought as I put my head in my hands.
And then there’d been the memories of the time I’d spent with Ollie. They were no longer showing up as just bits of platonic scenes, but as part of something deeper, a relationship that hadn’t at all been one-sided. If anything, it was almost as if I’d been the one to pursuehim, which at first made me wonder how hard I’d hit my head, but the more I thought about it, the more I could almost begin to understand the appeal. After all, in my interactions with him since the day he’d walked into my classroom had proven that he was a caretaker at heart, someone who could be depended on in a crisis or even day to day. He didn’t take himself too seriously, as his piano skills and self-deprecating jokes showed, and there was something justgoodabout him. Not to mention his arms were something out ofMen’s Musclemagazine. And I guess if you lined up a hundred guys, he’d be the best-looking one out of the bunch, not that I’d ever noticed a guy’s looks before. All in all, looking at it objectively—which meant when I wasn’t downing a Crown and Coke—he could be considered a catch for anyone. Anyone in the world, and somehow he’d chosen me. Or I’d chosen him.
Ollie…and me. Together. Like…togethertogether.Fuck.
Oh, and I couldn’t forget that he’d lied. Lied by omission, which was still lying. Coming around, getting to know me as if we were strangers, when the whole time he knew exactly how to play me. Showing up at the Music Junction had to have been my mother’s idea, because Ollie wouldn’t have known about my last-minute fill-in otherwise. Which meant he also knew I didn’t drive and would need a ride.But he knew exactly how to help you when you came across the accident and panicked the hell out.
“Shut up,” I said. “Just shut up.”
Ripping off the sheet, I tumbled out of the bed and filled a glass with water. I chugged the entire thing down in one go and then wiped the sweat off my forehead. I had to stop obsessing over this, or I was going to go crazy. If I hadn’t already.
An insistent knock sounded at my front door. I hadn’t ordered more food, and no one had called at the gate, which meant it could only be one of two people, and I wasn’t in the mood for lectures.
I swung open the door and leaned against it as my mom lowered her arm. Even on a Saturday in the middle of summer, she looked the part of a prim school teacher: a pale yellow skirt that fell to her knees and a simple white blouse with pearls. No need for the matching jacket in this heat.
“What are you doing here?” I said.
“You haven’t answered my calls or returned messages. I needed to make sure you were alive in here.” She lifted aneyebrow as her assessing gaze took in my bare chest and boxer briefs and what I knew had to be disheveled hair, since I hadn’t brushed it in three days. “You look awful.”
“Thank you. I’ve been better.” I scratched the stubble on my jaw, which wasn’t quite as prickly now, given that I hadn’t bothered with a razor lately either.
Her smile was hesitant. “May I come in?”
I held the door open, and she walked inside, looking around at the discarded pizza boxes and plates on the counter, and the almost-empty bottle of Crown.
“Good to see you’ve been staying hydrated,” she said wryly as she eyed the liquor and continued on to the living room while I grabbed a shirt and shorts from my room and threw them on. I let her comment pass, not caring one way or another if she knew I’d been self-medicating. She placed her purse on the coffee table and cleared off a space to sit, folding the rumpled blanket neatly before placing it over the back of the couch.
“Make yourself at home,” I said, flopping on the other sofa and rubbing my eyes.
“Do you mind telling me what’s going on with you, Reid?”
“Actually, I do mind.”
“It wasn’t a suggestion.”
I sat up and crossed my arms over my chest. “Weeell, what isn’t going on with me nowadays? Hmm. For starters, I don’t remember the last time I played the piano, and I’m really feeling the need to bang on some keys right about now.”
“Then why don’t you?”
With my eyebrows raised, I looked around the room. “You see one anywhere?”