Waking Olivia (14 page)

I
refuse
to think about what just happened.

Nothing happened
,
nothing at all
.

We had a talk, I checked out her cheekbone, she left to spend her weekend however she sees fit and I am doing the same.

Nothing happened
.

Yeah, the nothing that happened maybe leads me to work a little extra at the farm, leads me to be late getting to Jessica’s again, makes me so distracted that I can barely carry on a conversation all weekend … but that doesn’t change the fact that
nothing happened
.

I’ve been with plenty of pretty girls. Jessica was hands-down the best-looking girl at my high school. But all of them felt …
replaceable
. Olivia, in my office, wasn’t replaceable. The need for her was sharp, urgent, painful, unlike anything I’d ever felt. At that moment, there was nothing in the entire damn world I wanted more than her. And it felt like there was nothing else I would
ever
want. It was insane and I’m taking it for the warning it was.

I need to stay away from her.

I
ignore her on Monday
. It’s the best thing for everyone. I’ll ignore her, and she’ll get pissed off and things will feel totally normal again. I just hope it happens sooner rather than later because all I can think about is her mouth inches from mine and the surprise of discovering there were a thousand things I wanted to take and do, and I only wanted those things from her.

I send them out on a six-mile run and try not to think about it. I will fix this somehow. Next weekend, when she’s staying at my mom’s, I’ll … I don’t know what I’ll do. I have five days to figure it out, but I
can’t
be alone with her again.

I’m just about to head out after the team when two police officers walk on the track.

I know who they are here for.

I
take
off for my run on Monday with Will treating me like a communicable disease, as if the shit in his office was entirely my doing, and I return with him thinking I’m a criminal.

The police are waiting to see me in Peter’s office. “Do you have any idea what this is about?” he asks as we walk inside.

“No,” I say stonily.

“I don’t want to be blindsided, Olivia. If you’ve done something please tell me now.”

“Maybe it’s that counterfeiting operation I run out of my bedroom,” I say, rolling my eyes. “I’m not on
parole
, Will. I don’t routinely go around committing crimes.”

I go shower and head to the office with my stomach in knots. Yes, I’ve had more than my fair share of “incidents” but it’s not like I have some secret urge to go knock over a bank or something. It seems unlikely I’d have done it in my sleep, but I’d also have sworn I never cried in my sleep and look how wrong I was there.

In Peter’s office, the faces could not be more grim, and my stomach sinks a little lower. “Have a seat, Olivia,” says Peter. He introduces me to the detectives, whose names I immediately forget. One is very tall and the other short. A couple of jokes come to mind, but given that I may be on the verge of arrest, this probably isn’t the time.

What unnerves me most is not the presence of the police. It’s the look on Will’s face. There’s something raw and shocked there that doesn’t bode well. I begin to shiver, and I’m not sure if it’s caused by my wet hair or something else.

“Olivia, these men are here to talk to you about your brother,” he says gently.

Immediately my heart rate accelerates and I begin to sweat. I’m tempted to bolt, which Will seems to sense. He moves to the chair beside me, placing a warning hand on my arm.

“As you know, your brother was presumed dead—” the tall one begins, but I cut him off.

“No. Just because you guys never found him doesn’t mean he’s dead. When I can’t find my house key or my phone, it doesn’t mean they’re
dead
.”

“There’s been a new development in the case,” the other one says.

Whatever he’s about to say, I don’t want to know. I want to plug my ears and sing to block him. I want to flee.

“Last month,” he says, “a child’s remains were found buried in the woods about a half mile from your old home.”

My ears begin to ring and it feels as if I can’t breathe. I jump to my feet, but Will blocks me, gripping my arms and holding me in place.

“Olivia,” he says. “You need to hear them out.”

“No, I don’t,” I insist, trying to wrestle free. “I don’t know who they found, but it isn’t my brother.”

“Miss Finnegan,” the officer says gently, “we ran a DNA test. It’s been confirmed.”

The sweat turns to ice. I’m leaving. I’m not listening to another word of this. I will my feet to move, toward the door, out of this office, but they don’t respond.

“An autopsy was performed,” one of them says.

“Stop,” I whisper. “Stop talking.” Why can’t I move? Oh my God, I need to get out of here as badly as I’ve ever needed anything. “Please make them stop,” I beg Will, but I know by the resigned look on his face that he will not.

“Miss Finnegan, we could really use your cooperation here. Someone snapped his neck.”

I need to go.

I need to go.

I need to go.

I need to go.

I take one step toward the door and then there is nothing but black. A long dark tunnel and I’m falling into it …

T
he first thing
I see is Will’s face. It’s October, but he’s still tan. He has beautiful eyes. So pale against his skin that they seem to glow.

“I called 911,” says Peter’s secretary. Where’d she come from?

“No,” I whisper. “I don’t want help.”

“I think we should—”

“No,” says Will, still looking at me. It feels as if I’m drowning and his eyes are the only thing keeping me from going under. “She’s okay. She doesn’t want help.”

He raises his head and looks to the police officers. “I think you should go now. Everyone out. She just needs a minute.”

There’s the click of the door and then there is silence. I sit up and he moves back, just enough.

I wish I could cry. There’s a sadness in me, so infinite and boundless that it seems as if I shouldn’t be able to do anything else.

“Can you make them leave? The police? I don’t want to see them.”

“Yeah, but you’ll have to talk to them eventually. You know that, right?”

I nod and squeeze my eyes shut. My brother … I can’t think about it. But I’m picturing him in spite of it, how little he was, how fragile. “I’m gonna be sick,” I whisper, and I lean over and throw up in Peter’s trashcan. Will holds my hair back while I empty the contents of my stomach.

I finally pull back and put my head between my knees.

“Is there anywhere you have to be?” he asks.

“I have astronomy,” I tell him, “at two.”

“Are you going?”

I close my eyes. Am I? “No.”

“Then come on,” he says gently, pulling me up by my hand.

“Where am I going?”

“To the farm,” he says. “I’m not letting you sit in that apartment alone all afternoon thinking about this, and there’s no way I’m letting you sleep there.”

This tight ball in my chest, this vacuum in my stomach … they are never going away, whether I’m alone or not. “You don’t have to do that. I’ll be fine.”

“You aren’t fine and you won’t be fine.”

Normally that bossy tone of his makes me want to fight. Right now I’m just glad one of us knows what we’re doing.

“Let’s go home.”

T
here’s
something frighteningly vacant in Olivia’s face.

For the first time during her waking hours she seems fragile, the way she does in her sleep. We leave straight for my car and she follows me blindly. I’m not sure she’s even aware that we’re moving and that I’m here.

“Are you okay?” I ask as we drive.

“Uh huh,” she replies, but she’s shaking.

I reach out and grab her hand. “It’s going to be okay.” She looks at me and nods but doesn’t release my hand the entire drive to the farm.

Peter has forewarned my mother about our visit, and she’s waiting on the porch for us. She’s at Olivia’s door the minute we pull into the driveway, enfolding her in her arms. “Oh, honey,” she says, tears streaking down her face. “I’m so sorry.”

Olivia shakes her head. “It’s fine,” she murmurs. “I’m fine.” She’s still shaking. I’m not even sure she realizes it.

“I think she should lay down,” I say, directing Olivia toward my room with a hand on her back. I bundle her in the quilt that lies at the foot of the bed, but there’s panic in her eyes when I stand to go. “Do you want me to stay?” I ask.

She nods, so I sit in my old desk chair beside the bed, frustrated by my inability to do anything for her. She stares blankly somewhere over my shoulder, still shivering.

“Scoot over,” I finally tell her, and when she does I climb in beside her, sliding my arm under her neck and her back to my chest. We’ve laid like this before, more than once, but she has no idea. I’d feel a lot less guilty about it if there wasn’t a part of me that
wants
to do this.

When she falls asleep, I carefully extract myself and leave the room.

“How is she?” my mother asks.

“Asleep,” I sigh. “Aside from that, I have no clue.”

“That poor, poor girl. Do they have any idea who did it?” she asks.

“We didn’t get far enough into the conversation. Olivia passed out and then wanted them to leave.”

“Do you think that’s what the nightmares are about?”

“I don’t know.” It would make sense, except the timing doesn’t quite work out. Her brother ran away—or whatever
actually
happened—when she was five. She didn’t start having the nightmares until after she moved in with her grandmother, which would have been a year later. Is it even possible that things somehow got
worse
after he disappeared?

I
go back
to campus to run the afternoon practice and call Jessica. I explain that Olivia had a death in the family and is staying with my mom tonight, so I can’t come by.

“Okay, I can just meet you there,” she says brightly. “I’ll bring us dinner.” She seems to be under the impression that our night can still be saved, that she can somehow make Olivia’s tragedy some romantic moment just for us. I gently dissuade her, but there’s a distinctly displeased note in her voice as she finally agrees. It surprises me given how understanding she’s been all year long about me helping my mom.

I head to Olivia’s apartment to pick up a few things. I assume she’ll need her laptop. Clothes too, I imagine, but I’m not touching that one. I have enough Olivia-based issues without looking through her underwear drawer.

I grab the key she keeps hidden under the planter and let myself in but come to a quick stop just inside the door.

The room is empty.

No couch, no table, no pictures, not so much as a cup on the counter. If I hadn’t seen her enter and exit this apartment on multiple occasions, I’d assume I was in the wrong place entirely. I knew she was hiding something, or someone, that time I came here to talk to her, but I never dreamed she was hiding this.

In the bedroom, I find evidence of her, but that’s only more unsettling. Her clothes still sit in a suitcase that’s open on the floor. She has a laptop but no books, no desk, no lamp and no bed, just a sleeping bag on the floor. I’ve had times in my life when I considered myself broke, but it was never like this.

S
he’s
awake when I get back, sitting on my mother’s couch still wrapped in the quilt, and her face hardens when she sees her suitcase.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were living like that?” I ask her.

She doesn’t meet my eye. “It’s fine.”

“I could have helped you, though. I mean, it’s insane that you’ve lived like that for over two months.”

She opens her mouth and closes it again. “I’m not a charity case. I have what I need,” she finally says.

My mother comes out of the kitchen, where she’s been baking, her go-to in times of stress. She sets a plate of cookies in front of us. “You know what you should do?” she says briskly. “Take Olivia out climbing.”

“She doesn’t climb.”

“Then teach her. It’s always helped you when things aren’t going well.”

I glance tentatively at Olivia. “I’m sure she doesn’t feel like climbing.”

To my surprise, Olivia stands and casts off the blanket. “Actually, I sort of do.”

Under any other circumstance, I’d refuse. I consider that part of my life over. But I don’t seem able to refuse Olivia anything under the best of circumstances, so I’m certainly not going to today.

W
e’re standing
at the base of a massive rock.

It looks close to impossible to climb. It’s not smooth like glass, but it’s not exactly laid out like a climbing wall either.

“I can’t climb that,” I tell him definitively.

“Yeah, you can,” he says. “You’ll be wearing a harness. I’m not going to let you get hurt.” It seems like the kind of thing he can’t promise, but I believe him anyway.

He leaps onto the rock without any kind of rope whatsoever. “It’s easy,” he says. “Seriously, watch.”

He scrambles up and across the rock effortlessly, his body twisting and shifting as if this is a dance he’s practiced a thousand times. It’s the hottest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Every muscle in his body straining and delineated, his attention focused entirely on the movement.

“You just have to shift your weight,” he calls. “And if you twist into it like I am, it won’t require as much upper body strength.”

He hops down and has me slip into a harness, carefully knotting ropes, checking and rechecking both mine and his own. He climbs up again, and affixes something into the rock, and slides the rope through it. When he’s finally satisfied, he slides back down with amazing agility.

“Ready?” he grins. His face is bright, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him quite like this. He’s happy, but it’s more than that. It’s as if he is 100 percent here, invested.

“I guess,” I reply doubtfully.

I set my feet in the most obvious place and look desperately for something to grab hold of before jumping back to the ground. “You were fine until you panicked about your hands,” he says. This time, I climb back on the same footholds and he places a hand against my lower back to keep me there. “Do you feel that?” he asks. “If you balance on your feet and lean in, you don’t even need your hands.”

No.

What I actually feel is his hand. Its heat and its breadth spanning my lower back, making it hard to breathe much less find some elusive foothold or balance. I fumble with my hands until I find something to cling to, and then he has me practice moving across the rock. I’m a graceless, slow-motion version of his earlier display.

“You made this look a thousand times easier than it is!” I shout.

“You don’t have to shout. You’re still only a foot off the ground.”

“Asshole,” I mutter.

“I heard that,” he replies, “proving you don’t have to shout.”

I go back and forth, time and again, and once I’m doing reasonably well he tells me I can start climbing up. I see now why he used to do this to get away from his problems: it requires such absolute concentration that I can’t think of anything else. I’m about 10 feet off the ground when I lose my balance and start to scream, expecting to plummet to the ground, but instead I’m suspended, and he’s standing beneath me laughing.

“I assume you’re laughing
at
me, not
with
me,” I say sourly.

He smiles. “You’re doing great. You need a break?”

“No, dammit,” I say, looking at the distance I still need to climb. “I’m getting to the top. I don’t care if it takes all night.”

“That’s my girl,” he says proudly, and for a moment I sway in the air, stunned by how happy that statement makes me though I’ve got no idea why.

It takes an hour, and by the time I get to the top I’ve fallen repeatedly. My arms and legs are undoubtedly bruised and my muscles are shaking. I slide back down on the rope and collapse at his feet.

“What did you think?” he asks.

“I think you need to carry me to the car.”

His smile is proud and happy and wistful all at once. “But you loved it.”

“Yeah,” I laugh, “I guess I did.”

Once we’re back in the car, I tell Will he can just take me to my apartment. “I’m fine. Honestly.”

“You’re going back to my mom’s.”

“She shouldn’t have to do that,” I sigh.

“My mom loves having you over. And you’re doing me a favor.”

“How am I possibly doing you a favor?”

“Because my mother’s couch is a hell of a lot more comfortable than your front steps, and I’m sleeping on one or the other.”

I don’t even know what to say. His willingness to take care of me time and again hurts somehow.

I
go
to my room that night, but I’m unable to fall asleep. No, I’m too
scared
to fall asleep. The idea of those nightmares scares me under normal circumstances but tonight they terrify me. I walk back into the living room just as he’s emerging from the bathroom freshly showered and shirtless. Jesus Christ, he should be in magazines looking just like this – tan and slightly damp and nothing but muscle. He’s so pretty that for a moment I’m scared I might make some audible noise of longing.

I move toward him, knowing I shouldn’t, unable to help myself. He stiffens as I approach. “I just want to see your tattoo,” I tell him. He’s unnaturally still as I run my fingers over his left arm. He seems to be holding his breath. “Denali?”

“I got it done the first time I climbed it. I was going to do all seven summits and get a tat for each.”

I want to move closer to him, to press myself against his damp chest. “Why isn’t K2 on there then?” I ask, mainly to have some reason to keep my hand on his arm.

“Because that was the climb where I realized I wouldn’t be climbing the other five.” His voice is stilted, wary. He moves away from me and reaches into his duffel bag for a T-shirt.

Dammit
.

He pulls the shirt over his head and I use the opportunity to ogle the shit out of his stomach when he does it. “Just before I climbed it, I called home. I thought my dad might actually be proud, but instead, he told me it was time I grew up. I hung up on him like an entitled little dick and went climbing, and when I got back to base camp, I learned he’d had a stroke. He was dead before I got home.”

My stomach drops. “I’m so sorry. So you came home then for good?”

He shrugs as if the aftermath didn’t really matter. “He wanted me to grow up. It was the last fucking thing he ever said to me, so it seemed like the least I could do.”

“You had a job, Will, a good job. And by the sound of it, a job you were good at. That’s a hell of a lot more grown up than a whole lot of people.”

“I had a duty to my family,” he counters. “I should have been pulling my weight around here, and instead, I let my dad take it all on by himself. No wonder he had a stroke.”

“You don’t know that his stroke was related to any of that.”

“I don’t know that it wasn’t, either,” he sighs, spreading a blanket over the couch and sitting down. “So why are you out here, anyway?”

“I don’t want to go to sleep,” I tell him. “You take the bedroom. I’m gonna stay up.”

“All
night
? Olivia, you know I’ll catch you if you have a nightmare,” he says. “You haven’t made it out of the house once since the first time you stayed here.”

I shake my head. “It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?”

I hesitate. I don’t even want to put words to it. “I don’t want to dream about him,” I finally admit.

“Your brother?” he asks. “I didn’t know he was in those dreams.”

“Sometimes.”

It’s usually at the start of the dream. My brother and I in a car or at the kitchen table. Nothing out of the ordinary except I’m terrified and I know he is too. My nightmares must be at least part fiction, but knowing how he died makes me think that the fear was real. And it’s far too easy to imagine Matthew’s last moments because I’ve lived them a thousand times.

He lays down and pats the space in front of him. “Come here,” he sighs reluctantly. Will feels guilty about so many things and I’ve become one of them.

“It’s okay,” I swallow.

“I’m tired, Olivia, and you’re tired,” he says, stretching out his arm. “So stop arguing and go the fuck to sleep.”

“What a sweet talker.” I laugh, but I lay down. He takes the quilt and tucks it around me. It’s the last thing I remember.