Page 94 of Waking Olivia

At that very moment, Olivia walks in. She’s in a green silk dress that matches her eyes, pours over her curves, and reveals only a hint of cleavage while allowing you to imagine what youcan’tsee too fucking easily. Her hair is straight tonight, falling over her shoulders and down her back, highlighting her long neck and the angles of her face.

As always, I seem to settle on her mouth. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen her wear lipstick before and, for some reason, this opens an entire Pandora’s box of fantasies. I want to see it smeared. To kiss her so hard that neither of us can breathe. To pull back and find that mouth ajar, panting, the lipstick a pink blur around the edges.

My God, I want it so badly I’m not sure how I’ll get through the goddamn night without having it. That and all the things that follow it. My hands sliding that silk dress over her head, learning every inch of her the way I’ve dreamed about for months.

Except right now her eyes are focused on the point where Jessica’s arm is linked with mine, and when she raises them the hurt I see there is like a knife to the chest. I step away from Jessica, grabbing my beer and draining it.

“I’m sitting with my mom,” I say as I distance myself.

“I see what’s going on,” she hisses, looking from me to Olivia.

“There’s nothing going on,” I say in disgust, turning toward my table.

I justwishthere were.

“Doesn’t Olivia look gorgeous?” my mom asks.

“She looks like she needs more clothes,” I grumble.

“Ibought her that dress,” my mother says with a brow arched. “It fits her like a glove.”

“Yeah, exactly,” I retort. “That’s sort of the problem.”

She ignores me and I go back to thinking about Olivia’s mouth, about seeing that lipstick smeared, of her breathless under me.

And then a single possessive arm wraps around her waist, his hand cupping the hip bone I can make out through the thin silk, and I’m ejected from my fantasy at high speed.

Evan. She came here withEvan. My lust morphs into rage over the course of a single breath.Why the fuck is she with him? She said she wasn’t interested. She said he wanted something serious. She said…

She said she wanted me, and I turned her away.

I grab my beer and realize it’s empty. She’s moving on, doing whatever she needs to get by. The same thing I’m doing, I guess.

I stand abruptly and return to the bar.

She and Evansit at Erin’s table, on the far side of mine, giving me a painfully direct view of the two of them. He is physically incapable of keeping his hands to himself, and I’d love to relieve him of that problem. Whenever she stands, his eyes are on her, devouring her. He paws at her when she returns, jumping to pull out her chair but managing to get his fucking hands over approximately 70% of her body when he does it. And if he tries to look down her dress one more time, I’m definitely taking him out.

She doesn’t even notice he’s doing it.

I go to the bar again and move from beer to whiskey. I don’t normally drink much, but tonight’s a special case. It’s either this or I completely lose my shit in front of hundreds of witnesses.

Food is served which I can’t taste. Awards are given out that I don’t notice. She is more real to me than anything in this room or out of it, the only thing I can see.

No one knows her fears like I do. No one knows how fragile she really is, how sweet. They don’t know that she cries in her sleep and that she curls her whole body up against me as if she’d like to crawl inside. ButIknow these things. And for all the fighting we’ve done, there aren’t two people in this room as made for each other as the two of us. My world is constructed entirely of artificial rules about what I owe people—my father, my family, the school. But somehow it excludes the only thing that matters to me.

Her.

If it weren’t for the goddamn farm and the school, she’d be here withmetonight.

I watch her say something to Evan and he nods, wrapping a hand around her waist and pulling her toward him as she begins to rise from her chair. He kisses her. It’s just a small peck, nothing like what my asshole brother did, but that’s when I’m fucking done.

“Enough,” I say quietly as I stand.

I don’t know what possesses me to follow her. I know, with every bone in my body, that it’s the wrong thing to do. That I have no claim on her and I should be distancing myself from her as fast as humanly possible, but I saw that kiss, saw the look in his eye, the one that says he intends to leave with her soon, and I found myself on my feet.

She’s halfway down the hall by the time I reach her. She looks over her shoulder warily when she hears me, but she is too late. I’m already there. I grab her elbow before she has time to react and pull her into a classroom.

She stiffens and pulls back, ready as always to fight. Squaring off, eyes flashing and hands on her hips. Seething before I’ve even said a word.

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