Stay with me

“Please, let me see him. I can get through to him. He’ll listen to me.” He had already said too much, and now I was overreaching at this point. The air around me changed. It grew thicker, and too much oxygen was being shoved down my throat.

Dean Lynch chuckled as if my request disrespected him in a way. Though he chuckled, it was only because my request was absurd and the tension suddenly ignited. “Absolutely not.”

“Dean Lynch, with all due respect, this is a reformatory institution meant to help people, not to destroy them even more. Now, you had him arrested when he did nothing wrong, shoved him into an isolated room for a week, and now he’s probably scared and lashing out because he feels no one is on his side.”

Lynch, his mother, his brother, and Isaac were all supposed to be on his side, and each one of them had failed him. Ollie had to know I wouldn’t fail him. I was on his side. He wasn’t alone.

“Excuse me, Miss Jett, but he is in no way i

Lynch had a point. We’d broken the rules. “I understand. Really, I do. But if you could just let me see him, I can talk to him, convince him to take the meds, he can get out and go back to his normal routine. Please. Give me five minutes with him.”

Lynch stared at me for a long hard moment. I held my breath as he stood from his chair and walked toward the door. I closed my eyes, waiting for his words of dismissal. “Well, come on, then.”

We walked through the corridor and down a flight of stairs to the basement—another security checkpoint. I’d been down here once before. It was quiet and bitter. There were three rooms on each side of the hallway. From experience, I knew nothing was in those rooms. The walls were padded much like my room, and there was no window, bed, or furniture. The rooms were meant to break you into submission.

Ollie wasn’t created to be broken down—he was created to burn bright.

Lynch stopped before one of the doors. “Five minutes,” he stated without looking at me, then stepped back as a guard unlocked the door.

After the door opened, my heart immediately caved. Ollie sat on the floor in the corner with his long legs bent at the knees. His head hung over his folded arms, and I couldn’t see his face. When the door closed behind me, he lifted his head, and his whole face changed when he saw me. At first, it was a look of denial, as if his mind played tricks on him. The lump in his throat moved when he swallowed, and then he blew out a shaky breath.

“Ollie?”

His whole body reacted to my voice, and his shoulders shook. He clenched his eyes, and my heart broke for him all over again. Suddenly, he pinched the bridge of his nose as the tears fell.

I collapsed on my knees before him, gripping his legs. Ollie had reached utter ruin, and he was ashamed as he held his face in his hands and lowered his head into a silent cry. He was rendered powerless, stripped. Gutted. Ollie arrived at his rock bottom, and I had never wanted anything more than to switch places with him.

Ollie had never prepared me for these kinds of tears. The overwhelming ones when seeing the one you love carrying so much burdened pain.

“I’m right here,” I choked out through staggering tears. I was scared to touch him, but couldn’t bring myself not to. I gripped his hair, and he dropped his head into my neck.

“I’ve never had so much hate in my heart,” were his first words. He pulled back, and his eyes were clouded with mist, his long lashes soaked with tears. His chin trembled. “I’m so angry, and I’m going fucking mad. I want to kill him, Mia.” Ollie’s breath wavered as he tried to get it under control. “I don’t know what I’ve done. What is it about me others seem to hate so much. All I’ve done was try to do the right thing, make sure everyone was happy, and in return, I get this”—he threw his palms in the air—”shoved in a bloody corner and hated upon.” He turned his head away, not wanting me to see him like this. His cheeks puffed as an unstable breath blew from his lips. “And now I even hate myself for what he did to you.”

The words seemed so foreign from his lips.

“Look at me,” I pleaded, and Ollie shook his head. I grabbed his face to force him to see me. “I love you so much. Give me your hate, let me carry it all for you because I have enough love to crush your burdens. There is so much, and there is nothing anyone can do to diminish that. I’m right here, Ollie. You don’t have to be strong anymore. You only have to hold on, okay?”

Ollie’s hardly used frown line between his brows deepened. “He raped you!” he whisper-shouted. “He stood right out there and bragged about it, wanting me to hear every bloody word.”

“No, Ollie. He didn’t. He never got the chance. He hit me. I had a concussion. I wasn’t raped.”

His eyes fixed on me for a moment as my words set in, and then he exhaled. His once weakened body went rigid. “He fucking hit you?” His voice was full of guilt and remorse as he looked me in the eyes.

“It’s over now. I got Oscar’s full confession recorded. You can leave here, Ollie.”

Ollie shook his head. “Please don’t tell me you put yourself in that situation on purpose.”

“No, of course not. I knew it would have only been a matter of time before Oscar tried again. So I carried your phone with me just in case, everywhere I went. I had to have proof it was him.”

There was a sudden lift in the air when Ollie wrapped his arms around me and finally pulled me to him. He reached for the back of my head, and even though I was supposed to be the strong one, I melted in his hold.

“The only way they’ll let me out is if I take my medication,” he said into my neck.

I pulled him away to see him. “What did you do?”

“I was so angry after I heard that, and when my door opened, I didn’t care who was on the other side. I fucking lost it.” Ollie fell back against the wall and ran his hands through his hair. “What do you want me to do, Mia?”

“I convinced Lynch to let me see you. I told him I could convince you to take your prescription so you’ll get out of here, but I can’t be selfish. I can’t tell you to do something you don’t want to do. It wouldn’t be fair. I just want you to be okay.”

“I’m so scared of what will happen to us if I take it. I know how I was before, and you will hate me, Mia. I’m certain of it. I was dead. No conscience.”

My heart was in my throat. The panic of the possibility consumed me, but Ollie loved me. The small voice in the back of my head convinced me he couldn’t possibly be capable of making me hate him. “It’s not possible. We can’t be tainted, remember?”

“We can if it’s no longer me,” he stated with confidence. There was a long pause, and the worry grew bigger and bigger. “And when I take the meds, and they let me out of here, you have to promise you will bring me back, alright?”

Bring him back? Bring him back from what? What did the medication turn him into? None of this was making sense. As I remembered our conversation about what had happened with Maddie, I’d always thought it was because of how insane she was, not because of Ollie’s side effects from his pills. “How do I bring you back?”

“You have to remind me. You have to find a way.” He was so sure this would happen that there was no doubt in his tone. He didn’t even want me to have an ounce of hope. From the look on his face, he was telling me he would, in fact, change, his feelings for me would, in fact, change, and there was nothing he could do about it.