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I pulled back and blushed, quickly averting my gaze. “I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that.”
“Why did you do that then?”
I blinked and looked up at him. His blue eyes were striking, even in the dim light of the hotel room. His hand, rough and calloused, stroked my cheek and I found myself answering without even meaning to. It was like he'd cast some magic spell that compelled me to answer him.
“Because I wanted to,” I said softly. “Honestly, I wanted to kiss you so many times since you walked into the hospital room to see me. But, the fear of what happened between us stopped me every single time.”
Oliver looked at me for a long moment, a thoughtful, perhaps even nostalgic, look on his face.
“Why did you disappear on me back then, Madison?” he asked, his voice quiet.
The question made me blush and dredge up all the guilt I'd been harboring for so long. But I smiled because I knew that, after all these years, I could finally make amends for the wrongs I'd done to him. For leaving him high and dry. Oliver didn't deserve what I'd done. I knew that then and I knew it now. I'd been an asshole, plain and simple.
We'd gone to the same high school, we were in some of the same classes, but I'd just ghosted him in the worst way possible. I stopped talking to him. Stopped even acknowledgi
ng him in the halls. I pretended I didn't see him, always looked right through him like he wasn't even there.
The only solace he could take – even though he didn't know it – was that doing that, treating him that way killed me. I wasn't that kind of a person. At least, I never thought I was. After ghosting Oliver like I had, I started to change my mind about that. Started to change how I saw myself.
“I'd like to say because my father made me, but that would be a lie,” I said. “Because God knows, I never listened to my father.”
He cocked his head again, those deep blue eyes searching mine. “Then, what was it? Was it something I did? Didn't do?”
I shook my head quickly. “No. Definitely not. It had nothing to do with you, quite honestly. It was all me. I know that sounds like a terrible cliché—”
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Yeah, it really does.”
The smile on my face felt wooden, so I let it fall. “It's just— I saw what happened to Katrina,” I said. “She fell in love with the first boy she dated. She didn't go to college, even though she'd been accepted to several really great schools. But, she couldn't bear to leave her boyfriend behind. She made some really poor decisions about her life. Because of a boy.”
His fingers moved to my hair, stroking it gently away from my face as he listened to me confess my sins. Yet, he didn't look at me like he was judging me. Condemning me. It surprised me because he actually looked like he understood where I was coming from. Or, maybe I was just hoping he understood and was projecting that onto him.
“I just— I didn't want that for myself,” I said. “I had dreams, you know? Ambitions. Things I wanted to do and experience in my life. I needed to get out of Chicago to make it all happen and I couldn't let a boy – any boy – get in the way of that. I hate that it was you though, who was mixed up with me back then. You, unfortunately, got caught up in a perfect storm of my father, my own head, and my selfish desires.”
“You weren't selfish. You were a smart girl, Madison. Still are a smart girl. I knew you had dreams and ambitions,” he said. “I would never have stood in the way of those. I would never have asked you to stay—”
“You wouldn't have had to ask me, Oliver,” I said, biting my lip. “I knew if I fell in love with you, I'd never leave Chicago. And Penn State was calling my name.”
“Like I said before – the past is the past,” he said.
His voice was soothing and gentle, and he actually sounded like he meant what he was saying. He leaned close and pressed those lips to mine again, making my pulse race. It was a sweet kiss and, when he pulled back, I felt myself drowning in those bottomless blue eyes.
“And all that matters,” he said, “is the here and now.”
“So, you forgive me?” I whispered, my lips brushing his.
“There's nothing to forgive,” he said.
Not even his absolution could wash away all my guilt, but it certainly helped. The next thing I knew, Oliver's hands were in my hair, pulling my face into his. Our lips were meshed together, our tongues moving in and out of each other's mouths. As my hands explored the hard, toned body beneath his clothes, my body started to ache for him.
The sweet, emotional, and thoughtful Oliver I was getting to know suddenly turned into someone else entirely. Once we kissed, it was like he knew what he wanted, and he was going after it with everything in him – and I felt my body responding to his every touch. His every kiss. His every movement.
Pressing me down against the sofa, he hovered above me, kissing my mouth, then my neck, his lips moving slowly and deliberately down to the neckline of my dress. His erection, so thick and so long, pressed into me, and I wrapped my legs around his waist, pulling him closer to me.
“Yes, yes,” I muttered, my eyes fluttering open and shut as Oliver covered me with kisses.
My hands kneaded at his back as he reached for the hem of my dress, lifting it up. I shuddered at the feel of his hands moving up my thighs, feeling the warmth and wetness blossoming between my legs. Oliver slid my dress all the way up my body and smoothly slipped it up and over my head.
He fumbled only a tiny bit with my bra but was much better than he'd been at unhooking them back in high school, that was for sure. Not that we ever actually went very far – I was a good girl back then. But, I had let him grope me. That night was when I realized if I didn't want to be like my sister, I needed to put a stop to things.
