Page 76 of Not Made to Last

“Thank you!” I turn around, run.

“What about our session?” Miss Turner calls out.

“Next time! Sorry!”

“Ollie!” Oscar shouts.

I stop, spin on my heels, and give him the respect he deserves. “Yeah?”

“Whatever he did, he didn’t mean it.”

My chest tightens at the thought. “It wasn’t him,” I say, breathless. “It wasneverhim.”

I take the stairs to Rhys’s office two at a time, never once looking back or down—always ahead. The stairs lead to a narrow hallway with two doors, two windows, and through the cracks of the blinds, I can see Rhys sitting behind a desk.

I force myself to stop just outside his door and take a few long breaths to calm the hell down. Shaking out my hands to release my pent-up anxiety, I close my eyes, count to ten. Then knock.

“Yeah?” Rhys calls.

I suck in a breath, hold it, then open the door.

Darkness surrounds Rhys’s eyes when they look up from his desk, and just as quickly, he drops his gaze again, never actually looking at me. He sighs, a palpable sound that fills the entire room. “What’s up?”

I had so many things I had planned to tell him, but now that he’s in front of me, I can’t think of one. “We should talk,” I say, just above a whisper, and start to close the door behind me.

“Leave it open.”

I freeze.

“The last thing I need is people making assumptions because a female student is in my office with the door closed.”

Female student? That’s what he’s minimized me to in his head.A female fucking student.

I leave the door open and step farther into his office. There’s not a lot here. A desk with a chair on either side and a couch pushed up against a wall. I take the seat opposite him and wait for him to look at me. Seconds pass. Nothing changes.

Tears well in my eyes, and I plead, “Rhys, come on….”

“Come on,what?” he all but yells, lifting his eyes to mine. But when I see the anger there, and the hatred that goes with it, I wish he’d never looked at me at all.

I lock my hands together, squeeze as hard as my minimal strength will allow. “I need to explain?—”

“You don’t need to explain shit, Olivia.” He leans forward, elbows resting on his desk, and spits each word like venom—made to hurt me, destroy me from the inside. “My mom showed me the contract. I was nothing but a fucking job to you. Understood. Loud and clear.”

“Rhys…”

“What?” he yells, and I rear back at the loudness of it. He stands, walks around the desk, to the other side of the room, asfar away from me as possible. “What the fuck do you want from me?”

I stand, too, and go to him, but he holds his hand up between us, stopping me. “No,” he fumes, shaking his head, and I choke on the giant knot in my throat, let it block my airways completely. A single tear falls from my lashes, but he doesn’t notice. Or if he does, he doesn’t care. “You know what the most fucked up thing is?” he says, his jaw so tense it doesn’t even move when he speaks. “Two nights ago, I lay in your bed with you in my arms, and I was so fucking close to telling you I was falling—” He stops there—at the point of no return. And I drown on the inside, wave after wave dragging me under. “There’s nothing you can say that will make any of this okay.”

I try to look him in the eyes, even though I can’t see him through my tears. He has to understand. Surely. “Taking that job was the only way I could save us, Rhys.”

“I genuinely don’t give a fuck.”

I’ve always believed in pain.

Believed in agony and grief and suffering.

But I never believed in heartbreak.

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