Page 30

Chapter 30

Nat

I wake with Olli James in my arms.

I don’t know what time it is; the room’s dark, save for a thin band of light leaking around the curtains, but a quick glance at my watch tells me it’s early afternoon. Syd’ll still be in school, Jerry covering for me at work. Good.

I don’t want to move. I just want to lie here, breathing in the soft, slightly flowery smell of the shampoo lingering in his curls, feeling the warmth and softness of his skin against my hand, my cheek. Tracking the soft rise and fall of his breath beneath my arm.

Peace.

This is peace.

It’s warmth and softness and comfort. It’s where I’m meant to be and I don’t want to move, don’t want to shatter this perfect, beautiful moment of him and me, us, enveloped in darkness and blankets.

But like he senses my wakefulness, he stirs, and his head tilts down to study the—admittedly very identifiable—hand wrapped around him. He traces my hand up to my rumpled sleeve. And he groans. “Well, this isn’t how I expected to wake up with you.”

I almost choke on my surprise. And relief. Because it’s his voice, Olli’s voice, the voice of my little ghost. My own voice shakes when I find it. “Well, it’s not how I imagined waking up in your bed. ”

“Oh? You’ve imagined it?” He tips his head up towards me so I catch the corner of his brown eye. Sparkling, but subdued. “Tell me more?”

“Did you imagine it?” I bite down on my smile, study him. On the surface, he seems like Olli , but his voice is still quiet, strained, his eyes lined, darkened with exhaustion.

Still he plays at normalcy.

“Imagine it? Only like four bajillion times.” He huffs a sigh, and his eyes focus on the ceiling. “There was definitely not a sweatshirt in any of them. Even the weird ones.”

I laugh, a fluttering sound of surprise and relief and lingering concern, maybe fear. An odd twist of softness and sharp angles, ease and anxiety. “Olli . . . are you . . . okay?”

“I will be,” he says, smile fading, so he looks truly tired. Bone-deep tired. “I bounce back pretty quick. My therapist says it’s not normal, but I’ve always been like this. Kinda . . . roller-coastery. All speed or no speed, you know?”

I feel my brows twist across my forehead. “Is that . . . healthy?”

“Eh.” He lifts a shoulder in half a shrug. “Dr. Huxley doesn’t love it. But it’s me. Perks of being obsessed with a dream. I never let myself stay down for long.”

Those words claw at something inside me, but I keep my words light. “I guess that has its merits.”

“For sure.” His mouth cocks in another tired attempt at a smile. “You know, I’m a little offended you haven’t asked about any of my weird fantasies.”

I chuckle, in spite of myself. I get it too, the desire to laugh away the lingering darkness despite the way it weighs him down.

“Dare I ask . . . ” If normalcy is what he needs, I can do that for him. “How weird is weird? Like, whips? Handcuffs? Sex swing?”

He squawks a surprised laugh, making both of us startle. “Sex swing, oh my God. No, that actually wasn’t one of the four bajillion.”

“Okay, good, because I’m not sure I’d be into that. ”

“No, me neither. I was thinking more like . . . ” He shifts, so he faces me directly. “Lace. Panties.”

My brows shoot skywards. “On you or me?”

“Which would you prefer?” He bites his lip against a smile—tired, but genuine. “’cause I could go either way.”

“Um. I think I would feel pretty weird in lace panties, actually.” But the idea of him in lace . . . I let my eyes trail from the sharp angles of his cheeks and nose down his throat, over the bob of his Adam’s apple, to his collarbones exposed above the blanket. The covers reach the top of his chest, hiding the rest of him from my observation.

I resist the urge to lower the blanket, to drink in more.

Just because he’s pasted on a bright smile, doesn’t mean he feels it all the way down. How could he, after such darkness held him hostage? But it also doesn’t mean he wouldn’t give me more if I asked for it—regardless of whether or not he was ready to want it.

“I might like you in lace.” I pull my eyes back to his face. “I’m not sure.”

“Could put some on for you,” he says, his mouth softening into a pensive twist. “But I’m kinda worried it might scare you off.”

“Might,” I agree. “My straight ass isn’t ready for that yet.”

“Straight ass,” he mutters. “Hate to break it to you, boy, but your ass is about as straight as mine is.”

“Maybe.” I nestle my head against him, dare to feather the lightest brush of lips against his jawline.

“Oh, no!” He shoots sideways so quickly I don’t even have time to tighten my grip before he’s pushing away. “Nope, no way. You’re not going to kiss me.”

I let go of him like I’ve been burned. Press my back to the wall and lift my hands up in surrender. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—I wasn’t—that was rude.”

“Nope.” His hand on my chest keeps me at arm’s distance. He props the other arm under his head. “You are way too hot to kiss me before I’ve brushed my teeth. ”

“I . . . what?” I lower my hands slowly.

“Look at you!” he says, and the hand on my chest lifts to wave over me. “You’re like . . . Okay, you’re easily the hottest guy I’ve ever hooked up with, and shit, I’m not gonna let a little morning—afternoon?—sleep breath change your mind about what your dick thinks he wants to do.”

I laugh.

The sound bubbles up from me, loose and free and unrestrainable. “Jesus Christ, Olli.”

“What?” He crosses his arm over his chest. “The hell’s so funny?”

“I’m just . . . glad to see you smiling again,” I admit, sobriety pulling me back down to earth. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Told you. I bounce back quick.” He chews his lower lip, sobering a bit. “Fake it till ya feel it, or whatever they say.”

I chuckle. But even still, I’m not about to pressure him into doing anything he’s not ready for. “How about breakfast instead of kissing?”

“See?” He flops straight back onto his pillow. “My morning breath did change your mind.”

“No, my empty stomach did.” I shift off the wall, and before he can slip away this time, I tug him against me. “You’re the one who didn’t want to be kissed.”

And then I slide out from under the covers. Head for the door.

I just catch his muttered words behind me. “The view would be so much better without the jeans.”

Laughing, I push through the door.

By the time he reaches the kitchen, I’m halfway through frying eggs, toasting bread, and hunting down plates in his incredibly disorganized kitchen.

“Isn’t it kinda late for breakfast?”

I turn at the hum of his voice, pan in hand. “You didn’t put anything away logically.”

“Organization isn’t my strong suit.” He pauses beside the kitchen table to stretch his arms high overhead. He’s donned a white Trivium T-shirt and grey sweatpants, and the gesture lifts the shirt up enough to give me a glimpse of dark skin between his low-slung pants and shirt.

I turn back to the stove. “I found a pan but not plates.”

“Oh. Um.” Olli scratches the back of his head. “Yeah, I think they might be . . . Be right back.”

He scurries away down the hall, reappears a moment later with a stack of plates in hand. “So, let’s never talk about that.”

“Right.” I dump eggs onto the top plate. “Instead, you can tell me where we’re going hiking.”

“Hik—what?” He sets the stack of plates down on the counter with a crack. “Isn’t there afternoon practice?”

“No.” I shift the top plate off the stack so I can pile the rest of the eggs onto the second plate, thrust it into his chest. “I told Coach you were still sick. There’s no way you should be back on the ice. We’re going hiking instead.”

He stumbles back a step, his face unreadable as he stares down at the plate of eggs half embedded into his shirt. Like he’s trying to unravel what I’ve said, or formulate a response, or maybe an argument.

When he finally speaks, the words are quiet. “Why are you here, Nat?”

“Because I want to be.” Silence follows in the wake of those words, broken only by the scrape of chair legs as I pull one out to sit. “Because . . .”

That word hangs. Because why? Why am I here? Because he needed me, and somehow I knew that? Or because I needed him, because I couldn’t face a day without his sunshine?

Because somehow, holding back his darkness helped me find my own light—enough for both of us?

“Because I want to go hiking this afternoon,” I say, finally, and that’s that. We dig into our eggs, neither of us talking because we’re both clearly starving. Our forks tap the plates, jaws and teeth crunch through toast, throats gulp down much-needed sustenance .

“You’re gonna need better shoes, though.” Olli sets his fork down. “I let it slide with Avery, but so help me God, I’m not bringing any more Vans-wearing gringos into the woods.”

“I have boots, calm down.” I roll my eyes as I swipe our plates away. “I am not a Vans-wearing gringo. And I’m not Avery.”

“And no washing dishes!” Olli calls after me. “It’s prime winter hiking time. Let’s go.”

Luckily, my boots are still in the trunk of my car from the last hike, and no good Day River native leaves home without a jacket, gloves, and hat. So in no time, we’re traipsing through Olli’s back yard.

The just-past-noon sun sets the city aglow, throws a sea of glittering diamonds across the yard, over the trees, atop the neighboring roofs. Blazes white fire across the world like the sun and the snow together conspire to burn it all down.

Beautiful, I realize. Breathtaking even, to see the world in such light. To see my city, my oppressor, my darkness, drawn in vibrant shades of white.

Olli doesn’t speak as we march through the crushed snow, and I wonder how much of his darkness still lingers.

He’s clearly trodden this way before, many times; the snow’s packed tight under my boots, in a wide enough path to show he doesn’t always follow the same trail he’s made.

Always blazing a new way for himself. Why is that so entirely Olli?

At the end of the back yard, we reach a road crusted with ice, little more than a trail itself. But Olli marches across it without hesitation, without any fear of slipping on the slick surface—practically a native himself. In half a minute, we’re plunging into the woods across the road, a thicket of pines and faint scrub broken only by the thin scar of a trail.

“You come here a lot?” I ask, even though I know the answer. This too is packed down tight.

He doesn’t answer right away; we come to the edge of the trees where another road cuts through, and he leads us swiftly across. More trees envelop us, and the only sound is our boots crunching against the snow, the occasional whisper of a branch against a sleeve or a breath of wind through the trees.

“Every day,” he says finally, and those two little words are like a new window into his soul. All the hard-packed snow crunching under our feet—that’s him. All him. Treading this trail every day, stomping off into the mountains before practice, or maybe after, always moving, always going, going, going.

Fleeing the darkness.

Another Olli, beneath all the bright sunshine and glittering snow, a darker one. The Olli curled on the bed, beneath the covers, alone in the dark. The Olli leading me now across another street, before we plunge into true wilderness.

Our boots crunch louder as the trail starts to climb. Olli takes the lead, his breath puffing out ahead of him like a pale specter luring us into the pines and aspen, into the stark air and cold sky, into the mountains.

We don’t talk, just climb. The snow blankets the world in heavy silence, like a physical weight against my body, like a pulse in my ears, a tangible presence. Like the low thrum of absence following a concert’s roar.

The crunch of our boots feels hollow compared to that oppressive quiet, like it barely scrapes the surface of the depth of sound. A David to its profound Goliath.

Somehow, the faint whisper of wind through the trees feels louder, ear-shattering, the way it sets all the trees to dancing, witchy fingers clacking together in a sweeping sea of music around us. Maybe it’s because it belongs to the woods, to the silence, to the vastness of nature, and compared to that, we’re so very, very small.

A branch cracks somewhere in the distance, and I jerk to a halt, my eyes tearing through the trunks of trees and the sparse underbrush, trying to discern its source.

“Fox,” Olli says, and when I turn back towards him, a grin cracks his face. “Why you so jumpy, city slicker?”

“I’m not . . .” I grumble. “It just surprised me.”

“You’re out of your element.” Olli nods knowingly, like a doctor delivering a diagnosis. “Don’t have to be wearing Vans to show your true colors.”

“All right, Florida.” I slide up closer. “You talk a big game now, wait till winter shows up. We’ll see if you’re still laughing with four jackets on.”

“Canadian,” Olli corrects. “You forget I’m Canadian.”

He turns away, but not before I catch the glint of white teeth clamping down on his bottom lip, like he’s catching his smile before it can escape. But I see it, know it’s there, because I always know.

“Oh, right, yes.” I pace beside him as he starts to walk again, faster this time, our boots pattering against the snow. “And when was the last time you lived in Canada?”

He keeps his profile to me, gaze straight ahead, but I still register the twitch of his mouth as he fights a smile. “When I was seven.”

I bark out a laugh that cracks the cold wintery world like a shot. A bird twitters madly from a nearby tree, but I can’t regret the outburst, not when it comes so naturally, so easily.

“You’re in for a real treat, little ghost,” I say, grinning at his profile. “This city’s a different world when it’s frozen under two inches of ice.”

This time, he tosses his smile freely towards me. “Looking forward to it. Maybe I’ll leave you in these woods, see who’s laughing then?”

“Right. Go ahead and—”

He takes off running before I get the words clear of my throat, his boots padding softly in the snow. Shit; he’s serious. He’s going to leave me here, alone, in these immensely silent woods.

I take off after him.

He’s fast. Faster than he should be, especially considering what he just endured. Faster than me. Faster than any human has any right to be, in hiking books on a snowy trail switchbacking uphill into the mountains.

In mere minutes, my breaths are ragged, lungs and throat seizing against the cold, struggling to drag in that crisp mountain air. Damn, I should run more, smoke less, probably get outside every once in a while .

I slow. Fall farther behind on every turn, up every steep climb. Around yet another sharp switchback, I lose him—he’s a jackrabbit, bounding through the snow on those long, lithe legs. Tireless, like the mountain’s not wearing him into the ground, step by step, or like maybe he’s learned to overcome it.

Maybe he’s the wind through the trees—part of the world around us. Part of the snow and the silence. Maybe the combination of exertion and elevation is clouding my thoughts.

I let my steps slow. Olli’s nowhere in sight, or in hearing distance. I stop, listening, trying to hear past the ragged gasps of my own breath. But there’s only that thick, heavy silence, like the air itself has filled with snow.

Lo and behold, a few fat flakes drift down through the branches, prick cold against my cheeks. Still no sound or sign of Olli. I cast my gaze up the trail, but I can’t even discern his footprints, because he’s traversed this way so many times, his boots are just a shuffle of disrupted snow.

The faint pad of crunching boots reaches my ears, and I close my eyes to track the sound. It’s coming from up the mountain, and the footfalls are fast enough to belong to a jogger, which means Olli’s coming back for me. Probably laughing the whole way.

The idea isn’t even a thought; one moment, I’m standing on the trail, the next, I’m backing into the trees. Tucking myself behind a particularly large pine to hide from view even as I peer around to watch the pathway.

Olli jogs into view, his breath a pale ghost before his lips, his skin dark against the white of his surroundings. And the sleek, steady way he moves, his breath undulating, arms swinging, legs stretched to eat up the trail, he does look like he belongs here, under the trees and the sky, enveloped in snow.

He slows.

Slows, head turning, because somehow he knows I’m here, hiding . . . Shit .

His gaze angles down towards my footprints. I left a fucking trail of prints into the trees—

I dive out from behind the pine, clinging to that faintest thread of the element of surprise. His head snaps up in the instant before my body collides with his, my arms enveloping him in a hold that’s half embrace, half tackle. He stumbles backwards, keeping his feet, until his back hits the trunk of the tree behind him.

He’s laughing. “You’re not very sneaky.”

“Fucking snow,” I mutter, and I almost let go, almost step back, except he tilts his head upwards, and his soft brown eyes meet mine. And the rest of the world vanishes.

The trees, the snow, the cold, all of it, gone. It’s just those brown eyes, like immense pools expanding to fill my vision.

The soft scent of coffee and strawberries lurks atop the cold of the snow and the crisp tang of pines, and the warmth of his breath offsets the frigid tongues of wind against my cheek. I breathe him in, deeper, the faded suggestion of mint, warmth and softness and heat.

“Nat,” he murmurs, and suddenly his hand is on my cheek, adding more warmth—fire, actually, because those fingers are a brand against my skin. His thumb caresses the arch of my cheekbone, and I lean into that touch, that faintest brush. “I should . . . thank you. For staying.”

“Little ghost,” I respond, not breaking eye contact with him. His eyes flash in surprise, brows knit tighter in confusion.

“Why do you call me that?”

“Because.” I step in closer, so my legs line his, so my hips pin his, so we’re chest to chest, so I feel him in all the places I should, all the places I felt him last night, and the last time we kissed, and the time before that. All the places that haunt me. “Because I can’t stop thinking about you. Because it fits better than Aspen. You’re not like a tree—sturdy and unchanging. You’re a ghost, flitting around me, hovering over me, and I can’t seem to make you go away.”

“That’s . . . kind of poetic and also kind of unflattering,” he says, laughing a little .

“Shut up,” I say, and I crush my mouth to his. I might have intended it to be a sweet kiss, a soft kiss, a kiss of tenderness. But with him . . . with him it’s always instant heat, want, need for more.

I drive my tongue between his lips, and he opens readily for me, instantly, so those two tongues play a hot, wet game of push and pull. My hips rock forward into him, and my hands clutch at his hair, tilting his head back against the tree.

By the second thrust of my hips, I’m hard, hard enough he must feel it. Hard enough the press of his thigh sends a wave of fizzing pleasure through me. Hard enough to groan when he pushes back and I feel him, hard too.

I don’t care that we’re kissing like teenagers, rutting like animals against the trunk of a tree. All I know is him. The mint of his tongue, his sweet-bitter scent in my nose, his mouth devouring mine as his hips match mine for rhythm. The friction is such beautiful, brutal temptation.

Alluring, heady, not enough.

Like he hears my thoughts, Olli breaks off the kiss, his chest heaving under mine. “We don’t have to come in our pants, you know.”

My own breath shudders in a white cloud between us. My thoughts spin, and all I can really focus on is the pulsing need of my cock pinched between his erection and his hard thigh. I want more, much more, but . . .

“I don’t think either of us should kneel in the snow?” I say, like a question, because I’m realizing I’m out of my element. Again. “I’ve um, never . . . I mean, what else could we . . .”

Without warning, Olli flips us. So it’s me with my back to the bark and him pinning me. Like that night at the bar, the first time we kissed, the first time I realized how badly I wanted him.

Now is no exception. I ache for him.

So when he presses into me, grinding his cock against mine, I groan, nearly beg and tell him whatever he wants to do, I’ll do it—gladly, willingly .

Anything, for more of him.

“I could show you some things.” Olli’s lips whisper down my jaw. Down my throat. “Things I bet you’ve never done.”

His fingers drop to the waist of my jeans, and before I realize what’s happening, he’s gotten them undone and his fingers slide down the front of my underwear to cup my cock.

I gasp. That soft grip of fingers—through the cloth—why does that feel so damn good? Why do my hips rock forward to fuck friction from his palm, why is everything with him so much more intense than it’s ever been with anyone else?

The answer hits me in a rush.

Because he’s . . . Olli. Because this, with him, with us, it’s different.

More.

He squeezes me gently, the force sending my mind spinning on a spiral of desire, so I almost don’t realize he’s unbuttoning his pants with his free hand.

“Are you ready for more?” he whispers, pressing a kiss to the corner of my mouth. “You tell me to stop, and I’ll stop.”

“No way.” I huff a laugh against the soft press of his skin. “You can’t say stuff like that while you’re touching me like . . . shit. Shit, do that again.”

“How about I do more?” His fingers slide up towards my waistband, and I get one more lucid thought before it all goes to hell.

“Are you sure? Olli? Are you—”

He lifts his left hand, a little tube clutched between his fingers. “Would I have brought lube if I wasn’t sure?”

“What—” But the word cuts off, the thought lost entirely, as his fingers slip down the front of my underwear to circle my cock.

“Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you.” Olli bites at my lower lip, his fingers still stroking. “My plan this whole time was to get you alone in the woods and take advantage of you.”

Suddenly he’s tugging at the waistband of my underwear, lowering it down beneath my balls so I’m exposed to the cold winter, to his body heat. So there’s nothing to hinder his hand as it closes around me again. His lips whisper over mine, like he doesn’t want to distract me from the expert ministrations of his fingers on my cock.

“Want to feel something really good?” he murmurs against my mouth. His free hand moves between us, and I don’t realize what he’s doing until I glance down to find his own cock exposed between us—large and erect.

Then he presses his body close to mine, trapping our bare cocks together between our two bodies. Heat zings through me, and a groan tears from my throat. “Fuck.”

“Yeah?” He murmurs against my throat, pressing in closer, harder, adding a little rock of his hips. “You like that?”

More heat floods me in a fizzy, fiery rush. It’s all I can do to keep breathing. “Yes.”

His fingers wrap around my cock—no. Around us both. Encircling us together in a welcome prison of heat and friction.

And he strokes.

The pleasure hits me in a wave so hard, so strong, I crack my head back against the tree. “Holy shit.”

“Thought you might like that.” He melds his mouth to mine, and strokes again. This time, he adds a little press of his hips, so I get the friction of his abdomen and his cock and his fingers against my taut, tender skin. Triple pleasure, so much sensation it’s all I can do to hold onto my sanity, let alone the orgasm that’s welling up inside me.

“Olli, Olli,” I groan, tearing my fingers into my hair, my head back against the tree, seeing stars instead of sky. “I’m gonna come.”

“It’s okay, baby,” he murmurs against my jaw as his lips dance their way down my skin. As his fingers stroke and his hips thrust and the heat builds between us. “Let it go. Let it happen.”

His pace increases. His mouth stutters down my throat. “Come for me, Mouse.”

I do.

I let go .

I come.

I shatter.

I nearly black out, it’s so hard and heavy, so all-encompassing, the way my entire body, entire being, gives itself to that orgasm.

“Yeah, that’s right, baby.” Olli’s cooing against my throat, and he’s stopped pumping my cock, but his hips are still thrusting. “You did so good. So good. You want to watch me come too?”

He’s still thrusting, still jerking himself, and the way his voice escapes in a breathy scrape, he’s close.

“You don’t have to,” he says, but I know that’s not true. I do have to, I want to, I want to watch him come undone. “Shit, I’m so clo—shit. Shit.”

His head tilts toward the sky, body softens. A faded little moan escapes the perfect O of his lips, and I look down to watch his cock spill milky-white into the snow.

The thrust of his hips weakens, and it’s instinct, to put my arms around him and pull him against me. Hold him in close so I feel the heave of his lungs and the frantic thud of his heart, so we share breaths as much as we share body heat and bare skin.

“That was,” I murmur, but I don’t have the words, any words, so I just press a kiss to his hair. “Thank you.”

He laughs. “Maybe I’m the one thanking you.”

“You don’t need to,” I say, too softened and sated to be affronted by the suggestion, even in jest. “I have no expectations, you know that.”

“I know.” His beautiful mouth still curves upwards. “I was lying. I just really, really wanted to touch your cock.”

I laugh, pull him in closer. “You’re kind of a pervert ghost.”

“You’d be lying if you said you didn’t like it.”

“I would,” I agree, marveling at the way our slowing hearts beat in sync, the way our breaths form one single cloud out in the cold, the way even the mess in the snow at our feet seems to be one homogeneous spill of . . . us. “But I’m even more impressed how you figured out what to do with the cum.”