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Tracing her curves with his hands, he pulled back and held her gaze as he took her leg and hooked it over his hip. The singer crooned as his heart thumped hard.
Colin groaned as he lowered Olivia ever so slowly onto him, hearing her broken cries. He held her still against him. Looking into her eyes, seeing how lost she was staring at her old apartment door. Images of them in the diner, the night of the storm when they’d first met. The very first time he saw her red hair in the diner window while he was on his bike, and he pulled over just before he got ready to take a steep curve too fast in the storm.
He’d stopped to watch momentarily when she’d lifted her head and he saw a helpless, tortured expression in her eyes before she lowered her head into her hands again. Her hair reminding him of the family that he’d killed on that cold night many years ago.
A family of all redheads.
Would Olivia be his redemption? Help heal him?
I breathe you in my dreams baby, Colin shuddered, pressing his hand to the side of her face, staring deep into her eyes as she moaned, trying to close her eyes against his stare. His other hand went to her breastbone to feel her heart beating.
“Please look at me, baby. I need your eyes,” Colin whispered, his skin pebbling as he pushed her wet hair behind her ear and caressed her lip with his thumb. He loved this woman; it was going to be her or no one else. He knew she saw pain when she looked into his eyes. He sifted through more memories, placing his hands around her neck with his thumbs, stroking her throat.
Olivia in her apartment in her pretty green dress, her nervously rifling through her kitchen trying to hide just how destitute she’d become. The two of them standing side by side looking at her blueprints and drinking one-hundred-and-fifty-dollar wine out of fifty cent mugs. He and her at the Italian restaurant as he was translating the menu in English to her.
And she still tried to order something cheap, thinking she wasn’t worthy. She was more than worthy.
Colin moaned as she ground her hips against him as she was whimpering. He fisted his hand in her hair as his heart went into overdrive. More memories flashing. The singer’s voice was torturing them both. He pressed his hips up into hers, grinding with her.
Them in the car when she’d set a grueling schedule designed to break her body and her spirit in the span of five minutes. Her, when she’d seen their agreement for the first time. The look on her face when she introduced Allison to him. The first time he entered her sweet body after he’d spent most of the day in a panic thinking he’d lost her. Her, the night before when she pulled him out of his fucked-up nightmare, thinking nothing could save him from his torment.
It was her. This sad, beautiful, secretive woman who was so haunted.
It all came to the forefront of his mind as she sat perched on his lap, trusting him after he’d so viciously unleashed himself on her last night.
He moved gently, sitting back, and encouraging her to set the pace. Watching her swaying breasts as she gently rocked them to the beat of her heart. They were so entwined in that moment, neither of them orgasmed. Just wanting to be close. His hands held her tightly to him while he walked them out of the hot tub and back upstairs to their bedroom, where he held her for hours, giving her the care that he should have given her that morning. Not bothering to even figure out if she’d gotten her grocery order.
He'd already called the caterer, anyway.
***
A bit later, they ventured downstairs, where they settled into the lounge and ate cheap fried bologna sandwiches and chips and watched Hamilton. Colin got a kick out of watching her giggle at the king’s song, not even minding when she rewound it several times. She sat on the floor between his legs and leaned her head back on his thigh. He stroked her hair contentedly, feeling rather raw and exposed after their lovemaking session in the hot tub.
“He spits when he sings! Haha, look at him Colin,” she laughed, rewinding the scene again.
He chuckled with her, much preferring the joyful look on her face than the haunted, tortured one from earlier.
They fell asleep in the lounge, being woken up by Mary the next morning. Then, to Colin’s delight and dismay, Olivia took him on the craziest grocery store shopping excursion he’d ever experienced in his whole life. He was so decidedly frightened by their fourth store run that he excused himself to the men’s restroom to text Vanessa and Mary in secret. Unashamedly creating a group chat to ask them if this shit was normal.
Later that night, after they unloaded an insane number of groceries, Colin texted Mary again, to let her know that in case he didn’t make it through the holiday that he loved her, and where the life insurance policy and living will was kept. He instructed her to bury his body, preferably alongside Olivia’s, as she would be dead too, theoretically. She wrote back with a bunch of laughing emojis, telling him he got it bad.
He didn’t need that reminder. He knew.
The evening before Thanksgiving, they all reconvened to hang out and be together. Johnathan’s family lived across the world in the Middle East and didn’t celebrate, and the two of them usually went on vacation to some obscure island and had general billionaire man fun.
But this year was different. Johnathan joked around with him, saying that he just wanted to see if Colin could do it-be a normal family man. And ironically, Olivia wanted to test a batch of mac and cheese, just to “see if she could do it.”
They stood around the island, listening to Allison’s show playing in the background. They all stared at each other crowded around the mac and cheese pan that Olivia worked so hard on. Attempted to wait each other out, the three of them holding a spoon and a small saucer plate. Each one waiting for the other to take the first plunge. Colin looked at Olivia, who was smiling so proudly.
Vanessa was currently absolved, blinking back tears, Johnathan was sweating, having been filled in thoroughly by Vanessa, and then he in turn filled Colin in. Which made him so anxious earlier that day that he had to have a rare time out in the study to dissociate for a minute.
Olivia moved first, completely oblivious to the inner war that each person was fighting in their head over a relatively innocent looking pan of mac and cheese. It actually looked good, which made Colin feel a little better. Colin grinned, before frowning.
He sobered quickly, knowing not to judge a book by its cover.
Scooping out a spoonful of mac and cheese onto each of their plates. “Dig in!” Olivia sang happily as she beamed up at Colin. And he realized one of her rare joys was also the holidays. Catching Vanessa’s eye he put a spoonful in his mouth, and then quickly corrected himself before he physically recoiled.
Oh. My. Mother fucking God, he thought, as every taste bud he didn’t even know he had was activated at once.
