I hated my body.

I hated the reactions it had and the erection that’d condemned me.

I didn’t care I’d been tricked into taking Viagra—it was still me who fucked my teacher, and I couldn’t unscramble that from choice or command.

“Gil.”

I rounded the corner by the gym, almost smashing into Olin where she waited for me. Her bag rested by her feet, her hands wrung in front of her, shadows decorated beneath sleep-tired eyes.

I sighed hard, pretending impatience and chilly disdain when really it took everything I had not to crush her to me and beg for her forgiveness.

“I love you, Gil. Doesn’t that mean anything?” She reached for me, her body jerky and foolish.

Again, I just reacted. Instincts that no longer attributed affection with love lashed out and hurt the one person I never wanted to hurt.

Affection came at a cost. A cost I could no longer afford.

My hand latched around her throat, and I shoved her against the brick wall. I was tired and struggling, and I had nothing else to give.

Nothing else to offer.

I was dead.

And she deserved better. “Stop. Just stop.”

She stiffened.

I froze.

Time stood still as I physically mauled her.

Bruised her just like Tallup had bruised me.

I reeled backward, ripping my touch from her, drenched with disgust and dismay.

Fuck!

Trembles hijacked my limbs as I almost tripped to the ground.

Olin stood there, shock making her eyes wide, fear making her breath fast.

And we stared at each other.

Stared with our history and our hope, knowing that this was the moment it was truly over.

She didn’t say a thing.

I couldn’t.

I turned and walked away from the best thing, the only thing, my forever.

* * * * *

She started dating Justin Miller a few weeks after I’d bruised her.

The first time I caught them together, I ran off school property before I did something that would end with me in jail for two crimes.

Seeing her with him?

I couldn’t bear it.

I couldn’t survive it.

I’d taken three steps toward Olin, words on my tongue full of apology. Of how much I missed her, wanted her, needed her, craved her. I’d taken another three with my fists curled ready to pummel Justin’s face into his skull.

But somehow, in the mist of possession and pain, I stopped.

If I told Olin how much I loved her, Tallup would ruin her life and have me arrested. And if beat up Justin Miller for laughing with the girl who owned my heart, I’d be sentenced to yet another crime.

It took everything I had, but I endured the flirting, the tentative smiles, the knowledge that Justin touched her.

I deliberately picked fights with my old man when I caught them kissing behind the gym where I’d shown her my sketch book for the first time. I thought I’d die from the way my chest split in two.

But I didn’t die.

And my father cracked a rib with his drunken fist.

Week after week, I had to bear witness to Olin replacing me with another. And week after week, I crumbled inside, turning into an empty shell of grief.

By the time school holidays rolled around, I was hanging on by a fucking thread.

Knowing Olin would spend most of her time with Justin during the holidays.

Wondering if she’d give him her virginity.

Imagining her kissing him, laughing with him, touching him.

Fuck, it made me break into a million pieces and roar with fury.

I’d have nightmares of him hurting her like Tallup had hurt me. Visions of Olin writhing in ecstasy with someone who wasn’t me.

It was enough to drive me insane.

Maybe I was already insane.

Even my father started leaving me alone. His beatings weren’t as often, his slurs and drunken tirades not as loud—almost as if he didn’t like the way I encouraged them, accepted them, needed them.

I got a job working at a local construction company, accepting payment in cash. In return for hard labour, I earned money to repay my debts. I returned to the places I’d stolen from and left the exact dollar amount for what I’d taken—the art supply shop where I’d stolen the cans of spray paint. The stationery store where I’d nicked a sketchpad and pencils.

Once I’d paid them, I bought more supplies, returning to the freedom painting gave me.

I graffitied the ugly corners of town.

I doodled the unwanted pavements of alleyways.

I filled paper with my heartbreak.

And through it all, I never stopped watching her, protecting her, waiting on the street outside her house...making sure she was safe.

OceanofPDF.com

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter Thirty-Six

______________________________

Olin

-The Present-

YESTERDAY, MY PHONE had no power to reach Gilbert Clark.

No matter how much I begged it to connect me to him, each attempt was futile.

Now, when I needed space, the damn thing wouldn’t stop ringing.

I’d gone to work this morning.

I’d left Gil’s hatchback parked a few blocks from my office and walked to the office without being assaulted or kidnapped. I’d pretended it was a perfectly normal day even though my nerves were fraught.

I uninstalled the news app from my phone, unable to handle the regular updates on the painted murders. I plastered on a professional smile and allowed Status Enterprises to surround me in its usual hive of employees settling in for a long day. I pretended everything was normal—that I had a boyfriend with normal secrets, that I had a love story worthy of fairy-tales.

When Shannon appeared at my cubicle at lunch, I’d apologised profusely for the mess my life had become. I’d thanked her for the opportunity of employment and promised I wouldn’t let her down again.

She’d given me a hug when exhausted, screwed-up tears wobbled my voice, making me hate myself for my weakness.

For my confusion.

For my aching, breaking heart while I suspected the worst thing anyone could suspect of another.

I couldn’t stop picturing Gil’s muddy size eleven boots.

I couldn’t stop connecting dots from his disappearance, to the unusual vodka use, to the night-shrouded confessions.

On the inside, I was an absolute catastrophe—tangled and tired, doing my best to latch onto an answer that would make sense of the labyrinth I’d been dragged into.

On the outside, I sat in my cubicle, replied to emails, and answered calls. I was the perfect employee, doing the job she was paid to do.

I’d managed to stay busy until lunchtime.

To stay away from Google and stop conjuring stories without facts. But when I caught the elevator to the second floor café, I’d made the mistake of checking my phone.

Ten missed calls from Gil.

The first only a few minutes after I’d left him—as if he’d sensed I was no longer in his home.

I deliberated calling him back, but I had no idea what to say. He’d dumped his hardships on me last night without any concrete explanation of what it all meant. I needed time to understand—or at least try to. I needed space to clear my mind before I could handle any further conversation that I couldn’t decipher.

Gil may or may not be a killer. He may or may not be blackmailed into doing things he despised. He may or may not have a tragic secret in his past that explained everything he did in his present.

The only thing that would help us move on from this mess would be honesty. Bitter, brutal honesty with nothing left out.

And I didn’t think he was ready. Didn’t think he had the strength to tell me what he hid in that second bedroom, where he was last night, or why he disappeared at the same time two girls went missing.

And if he wasn’t ready to talk about it...I definitely wasn’t ready to listen.