Waking Olivia (7 page)

O
n Tuesday afternoon
, I tell the team that there will be a time trial the next morning. The top three runners will fly to Oregon in early December for the Cooper Invitational. I don't want to look at Olivia's face, but I do,
and I regret it
. She's scared. I can see it in her eyes. She deserves one of those three spots. Hell, she deserves all of them. She's the best runner this school has seen in a decade, if not more. But that fear I see is only going to feed on itself, ensuring that she runs tonight. I feel powerless as I send her off. I hate the feeling, and I hate that it's probably how she feels almost all of the time.

J
essica
and I have an early dinner. I walk her to her door, but I don't come inside. "You're not staying?" she asks, looking at me beneath long lashes, arching her limber frame so her chest brushes mine. She has the kind of body few men can say “no” to, and she’s well aware of it.

"I'm sorry, I've got to be up early tomorrow." She knows I don't sleep well at her place. It’s nothing personal, but I inevitably wind up sleeping on her couch because I can’t fall asleep next to someone. I’ve never been able to, but that has nothing to do with why I'm not staying tonight.

"I have alarms here, you know," she says, tucking her hand into the waistband of my jeans before she starts to tug at my belt. I place my hand over hers.

"I would love to stay, but you're slightly too distracting, and I've got work to do."

“Work? Will, it's 10 p.m. What work can’t wait until tomorrow?"

And that's the question I can't answer.

There's no way to make what I'm about to do sound reasonable, or ethical. But I think about the possibility of stopping Olivia, and how spectacular she might be at a meet on a full night's rest,
and I just don't care
.

As I head to Olivia's apartment, I recall a conversation I had with Peter only two weeks ago when he accused me of being too harsh with her. He was right, and I knew he was right which made it hard to defend myself.

"
S
he's just trouble
," I told him.

"Trouble for you or trouble for the team?"

“What do you mean? She’s trouble for everyone.”

He shrugged. "She's a very pretty girl.”

"What's that got to do with anything?"

He exhaled heavily. ”I’m just wondering if maybe what worries you so much isn't that she's going to cause problems for the team but that she's going to cause problems for you."

"You cannot be implying what I think you're implying," I snapped. "When have I ever been inappropriate with a student?"

Peter shook his head. "Never. And I'm not implying you would be now. In fact, I know you wouldn't be, which is precisely why it might trouble you so much to have her around. Unnecessary temptation."

I
'd shut
the conversation down, dismissed it as ridiculous, but now, as I pull up to her apartment, I have to wonder.
Am I pretending?
Am I really here because I want to see her succeed, or am I here for another reason? Olivia Finnegan is so pretty that you feel compelled to look at her even when you don’t want to. You want to memorize the delicate structure of her face, her full rosebud mouth, the way her green eyes spark when she looks at you and make you want to uncover all the secrets behind them. So pretty that pretty isn’t even the word for it. It’s something that makes me feel like I can’t breathe on the rare occasions I see her smile.

It’s that last part that worries me.

I
watch her apartment
. I see her shadow moving back and forth behind the window, and when her lights finally go off, I sit on her steps. I'd rather stay in the car, but I'm drowsy enough at this point that I'd pass out and never even notice her racing past.

It's almost 2:30 when I'm startled awake by a noise inside. My heart is beating hard, as if I'm about to cross a line, but then again, I'm sitting outside a student's apartment in the middle of the night.

I guess that line is already crossed.

T
here's a storm coming
. Something bad. The sun is out, but my mom is like a tornado, running from room to room.

"Mommy?" I ask. "Are we okay?" The possibility of disaster always exists in this house.

She spins on her heel to look at me, running her hands through her dark hair like she's fixing to yank it all out. I shouldn't have stopped her.

"No!" she screams. It's her angry-sad scream, the one that brims over with the tears she's holding back. Her sadness makes her want to lash out, and when she does the guilt will make her sad all over again. "Just give me five minutes in peace, Olivia, please!"

I nod and back away. She drops to her knees and begins crying hard, holding out her arms for me. "I'm sorry, baby," she whispers into my hair. "Mommy is just a little stressed.”

She tells me we’re going on a trip, but we have to leave really fast. She asks me to run to the basement and grab a few toys, and then to go to my room and get the white dress I wore on my last day of school.

I run to the basement and pick a doll I don't even play with, don't even like really, so when I look at her, it won't make me feel sad for what I've left behind. I go back upstairs but haven't reached my room yet when I hear a car door slam outside. My mother comes to a dead stop, a violent shudder running over her skin.

There's a storm coming. A storm that is outside but rushing at us fast.

She squats in front of me. "Run out the back door. Run as hard as you can and don't stop until you get to the woods. And whatever you do, don't come back."

"I want to stay with you," I beg.

That’s when we hear the front door open, the heavy tread on the first step, and I know the storm has caught us. And when a storm is inside your house, it's too late to run.

She shoves me into the closet. She tells me to stay and hide and not to make a sound until she comes for me, not a sound. Her words are threatening but her face is so, so sad. “Don’t watch,” she says. “And if he finds you, run."

Then she shuts the door.

I peer through the crack. Darkness fills the house, clouds rumble overhead, and his shadow stretches long and thin across the room, reaching from doorway to bed, where she sits with her hands in her lap. I can feel her fear. It diffuses like the spread after a nuclear blast. She will not fight him because there are things in this world too large, too terrible to fight, and he is one of them.

Suddenly I’m running, hard like she told me to do.

Down toward the high corn where I am small and he is big and only I can hide. But then he has me, grabbing me from behind, his arms wrapped around me like a straightjacket, immovable. I fight but it's useless. I wait for the pain to come, the pain I know is coming again, the sharp heat in my back and the wet feel of my shirt sticking and the blood on his hands. I know all this will come.

But there is nothing.

He tells me to calm down, begs me to calm down, but it's not the monster's voice. It's a soothing one, one that rolls over me and through me like a drug. A voice that tells me I'm safe, which can't be true but he says it again.

I give way.

I believe him.

I stop fighting and let the world grow black.

"
L
iv
. It's time to get up."

I open my eyes slowly. I'm not in my room, and it's daylight. In a flash, my grogginess gives way to panic. If I’m not in my own room, I’ve done something very wrong. I’ve run or I've passed out again and I'm in a hospital or somewhere worse.

The time trial. I've missed it or I'm about to.

I sit up, blinking at the bright sunlight, at the unfamiliar room. The first thing I see is Will. For a fraction of a moment I see something on his face I haven’t seen before, something that isn’t disdain or even concern, and then he squeezes his eyes shut.

"Jesus, Olivia," he groans. "Cover up."

Oh God. I look down and then look over the bed, where at some point in the night I flung my tank. This is getting worse and worse.

I yank the sheet up, but he's already turned away and leaving the room.

"Where am I?" I ask.

"I'll talk to you when your clothes are on," he rasps, his voice sounding a little strangled.

I don't mind getting naked. I'll strip down in front of almost anyone. But not
him
. My tank is still the tiniest bit damp, and I shiver as I slide it over my head. I must have run and, par for the course, stripped it off at some point. But how exactly did I end up stripping it off
here
? And why don’t I remember any of it?

When I walk out, he's in the kitchen pouring coffee, his shoulders rigid as if he’s angry. He seems to be making a point of not looking over at me. "Where am I?" I ask.

"My apartment," he replies. He glances up as he hands me a cup of coffee, and then storms out of the room.

I've clearly done something terrible. I try to recall the evening before. Large quantities of alcohol would explain both why I was here and why I stripped off my clothes, but I don't remember anything.

He returns, handing me a T-shirt, again without looking at me. "Put that on," he says. "You're practically naked."

I look down. Between the fit and the dampness of the shirt, I guess it doesn't leave much to the imagination. There is only one logical explanation for why I'd be in his apartment with no memory of it. "Why am I here?" I ask. "Did we...?"

"No," he gapes, with an insulting mix of shock and disgust. "Of course we didn't."

"You don't need to act like it's so repulsive," I snap. "You could do a lot worse than me."

"You don’t remember anything?"

I scowl. "Isn't that somewhat obvious?"

"I caught you trying to run from your apartment. You were asleep or ... I don't know what you were. I stopped you and you just kind of passed out."

I close my eyes and feel dread wash over me. I'd prefer that he'd seen me drunk. The running episodes are a mystery to me. I'm scared of who I am in those nightmares, and I'm scared of who I am when I'm running away from them.

"Did I, um, do anything?" I ask. The words are so quiet I'm not sure if he's heard me.

"You took a swing at me.” He chuckles. "But I kind of deserved it, under the circumstances."

"Sorry," I murmur, looking for signs of damage. "Did I hurt you?"

“No, I sort of knew what I was getting into. You're hardly known for your even temper."

I roll my eyes, and then force myself to ask the other question. "Did I talk?" I don't want to know what I said, so God knows I don't want
him
to know what I said.

"A little." He hesitates, and my stomach drops. "You were really upset. You kept saying something like 'I left' over and over, but I couldn’t understand it.”

I steel myself to look at him and find the exact emotion on his face that I don't want to see.

Pity.

I'm inclined to just walk out of his apartment right this minute, except I'm barefoot and I have no idea what part of town I'm in.

"Then you just sort of collapsed."

"Why were you there?"

His shoulders sag. "I shouldn’t have been. I thought you’d be stressed out about the time trial and would run, so I waited. I just thought if I saw it firsthand ..." He sighs, shaking his head. "I don't know what I thought. I didn't expect anything so extreme. Do you know what the dream was about?"

"No," I whisper. I stare at my hands, gripping the coffee cup so hard that they are drained of color.

"Maybe you should try to remember. Maybe that’s the key to ending all this,” he says. “Did you talk to the counselor?"

"She was a moron."

"I'm guessing you say that about 95% of the people you meet.”

“Well, it's true of about 95% percent of the people I meet, so I'm okay with that statistic."

"You need to talk to someone," he insists.

I ignore him. Therapists are for people with little problems. Therapists begin to drown the second they hear about me.

“So how did I end up here?" I ask.

He rubs his temples as he begins to pace. "Your door was locked. I could have woken you, but I was scared that you'd ..."

"Freak out?"

He nods. "I didn't know where else to take you. I put you in my room and I slept on the couch. But this is bad. You absolutely should not be here. I could get fired for this."

"It's not like anything happened," I argue.

"No one is going to believe that, Olivia," he sighs, turning away. "Not with you."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I snap. "Just because a few guys on the team ask me out doesn't make me the team slut."

He rubs his eyes. "I wasn't trying to imply that you were," he groans. "You're attractive. That's all I was saying."

A tiny warmth weaves its way through me. It shouldn't. I shouldn't care what he thinks. "I'm attractive, huh?"

He walks away. "Don't worry, your personality ruins it. Let's go. You're gonna make us both late."

M
y eyes slide
toward him as he drives me to my apartment building. It's almost unfair how pretty he is, with that jaw and that hollow under his cheekbones, the ruggedness of his face contrasting with his soft mouth.

"Oh, shit," he says as we pull up. "I forgot you're locked out."

"I keep a key under the flower pot to the right. Just in case you ever happen to be stalking again."

"I wasn't stalking," he growls.

"I guess I never thanked you," I say reluctantly, "so, um, thanks."

"I can't keep you from doing what you're going to do," he says quietly, "but if you tell anyone, I'll probably lose my job."

"I would never tell anyone." I start to remove his T-shirt and he stops me.

"Just keep it. You being seen leaving my car is bad. You leaving it half-naked would be worse.”