5

“I miss you.” Drew traced the curve from Olivia’s hip to her waist, his hand coming to a stop below her ribs.

Olivia shivered. She was lying on her side, the sheets beneath her still warm and sleep-rumpled. She looked at Drew, taking in his gray-blue eyes and the sharp lines of his face. She didn’t know why she did this, why she so often tortured herself by imagining him there with her.

“You’re not real,” she told him.

Drew smiled sadly and shifted closer, bringing their faces mere inches apart. “That doesn’t mean what I’m saying isn’t true.”

Olivia closed her eyes and swallowed. “This needs to stop,” she said, the words for herself and not for the phantom lying in her bed.

When she opened her eyes again, he was gone.

Olivia had started seeing a therapist after the accident, and the woman was the only one besides Olivia who knew about her fantastical daydreams. The woman, unsurprisingly, had shown concern. She’d insisted that Olivia needed to work through her feelings in order to deal with what was clearly a subconscious desire for closure. It was months later, and Olivia apparently had yet to make a breakthrough on that front.

She let out a heavy breath and eased herself out of bed. After she did the stretches and exercises prescribed by her physiotherapist, Olivia got ready in a foggy haze. The numb disconnect wasn’t unusual for her. There were things that helped to drive it away, like hanging out with Ella or listening to her favorite songs, but mostly, it felt like she existed behind a rippling barrier of water.

Everything was muted and slow, like she was underwater, while everyone else existed in the louder, faster, more vibrant world above. And seeing Drew always pushed her deeper below the surface.

“Everything okay?” Ella asked when they were on their way to Georgetown.

“Yeah,” Olivia lied. “Just tired.”

“Not a great way to start a Monday,” Ella teased.

Olivia groaned. “It already feels like it should be Friday.”

Ella chuckled. “Welcome to college life. Isn’t it wonderful?”

Olivia shrugged. “So far, it’s not entirely awful.”

In fact, aside from the few incidents with people who’d decided she belonged in jail, she’d been enjoying her time at Georgetown. Her classes were challenging, but she liked that about them, and she loved being able to meet with Ella and Noah for coffee or lunch during the day. She hadn’t exactly been making other friends, but people had been friendly to her for the most part. Other than her run-ins with Chris and her other haters, Olivia had no complaints.

“That’s the spirit,” Ella replied with an amused grin.

“I am but a fount of enthusiasm and good vibes.”

“Sure,” Ella drawled.

Olivia rolled her eyes despite the glaringly obvious reasons for Ella’s skepticism. She wasn’t exactly all sunshine and rainbows these days. “Are we still on for lunch today?”

“That depends,” Ella said, sounding like she was about to navigate a minefield rather than make lunch plans.

Olivia’s eyes narrowed. “On what?”

“On whether or not you want to have lunch with Chris.”

Olivia lifted her hand and gripped the round pendant of her necklace between her thumb and pointer finger. “Oh.”

There was a time she’d worn a crucifix around her neck, but she hadn’t put that on since the accident. She hadn’t been to church either, much to her parents’ dismay. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe anymore. It was that she wasn’t sure if she deserved to be wearing crucifixes and entering churches anymore.

“It’s just that Noah invited Asher and Riley,” Ella explained. “And then they kind of just assumed Chris was also coming and mentioned it to him, so—”

“I get it,” Olivia said. “I think I might give this one a miss then.”

Ella sighed. “Riley would really love it if you came.”

“And Chris would hate it,” Olivia pointed out, her eyes lowering to her aching leg.

Ella changed lanes before speaking again. “Have you seen him again since the first day of college?”

Olivia’s fingers pressed tighter into her pendant. “I saw him in the library last week,” she admitted.

“And?”

“And nothing,” Olivia lied, not wanting to get into the ugly details of why Chris had come over and into the confusing speculation of why he’d bothered. “He was at another table studying.”

“So he didn’t come up to you?”

“No,” she lied again. “He saw me, but he managed to restrain himself.”

“Good,” Ella said.

“He’s allowed to hate me, you know,” Olivia reminded her. “I love that you and Noah want to protect me, but Chris needs support too.”

Ella turned into the parking garage near Cooper Field and pulled into the first parking space she could find. She turned off the car and turned in her seat to face Olivia.

“Chris has our support,” she said. “Noah and I cooked meals for his family and Paige after the accident, I’ve offered to babysit Luke if Paige needs help, and Asher goes to Chris’s place at least once a week to make sure things are okay.”

Olivia had no idea they’d been doing all of that. She should have known they’d be helping however they could, but it still came as a surprise to her.

“We do support Chris and his family,” Ella continued. She placed her hand on Olivia’s knee and squeezed gently. “But we will never let him get away with taking his anger out on you.”

Olivia bit her lip and fought the growing burn in her eyes. “Thank you,” she managed to get out through her tight throat.

“You know it’s not your fault, right?” Ella asked, her dark brown eyes filled with concern.

“I know that I tried to stop Drew from driving,” Olivia said, knowing she couldn’t answer the question with a firm yes. “And I know that I called the cops.”

“Which means you should know the accident wasn’t your fault.”

Olivia’s eyes were aching now, begging her to let herself cry. “It’s more complicated than that.”

The voice in her head scoffed at her describing that night as complicated and joined the voices of Chris and others in condemning her as guilty. Olivia wondered if that voice would ever fade.

Ella’s lips pinched together. “Maybe, but I also know that you didn’t willingly let him drive drunk. How can you be complicit when you were trying to stop him?”

Olivia nodded, still fighting back tears.

“If you’re not comfortable coming to lunch today, that’s okay,” Ella told her. “But I hope that one day when Chris’s anger fades and he realizes how wrong he is, you’ll find your place with us.”

Olivia wasn’t sure if that was possible, but she hoped so, too. She was tired of being on the outside, of being left out of family trips and excluded or left behind because she was the bratty sister or nuisance daughter or the one who’d gotten in the car with Drew that night.

Ella was the only person who’d ever seemed to see past all of that, and Olivia wished others could too. Riley might have started to, but Olivia wasn’t sure she could ever get past Riley’s not wanting anything to do with her when they were younger.

“I hope so too,” she said, but less than three hours later, she realized how far away that dream was from becoming a reality.

After eating lunch by herself on Copley Lawn, Olivia was walking to her Probability and Statistics lecture, her crutches clicking on the brick path, when her phone started ringing. She’d put it in her backpack, so she was forced to stop walking, put her weight on her good leg, lean one crutch against the other, and shrug the bag off of her right shoulder and into the crook of her arm.

It was a ridiculously complex process to get to her bag, and her phone had already stopped ringing once she’d managed to unzip the front pocket and fish it out.

The missed call was from Ella, but before Olivia could call her back, Noah’s girlfriend sent a message saying she’d missed her at lunch and would see her later. Olivia put the phone back in her bag. She would reply to the text when she got to her lecture hall and when she wasn’t balancing on one foot and juggling with her crutches.

She was zipping her bag back up when she lost her hold on it, and it dropped to the ground. For most people, that wouldn’t have been an issue. For Olivia, it posed a big problem.

“That’s just great,” she muttered, tipping her head back and letting out an annoyed huff.

Before attempting a risky balancing act in a very public area, Olivia looked around to see if anyone had noticed and might offer to help. Unfortunately, the only person whose gaze she met was the last person who would want to do something nice for her.

Chris’s brown eyes were the color of chocolate, but there was nothing comforting or tempting about the way he was looking at her. He looked down at her bag as he kept walking in her general direction, and one of his eyebrows lifted in a display of mocking amusement.

“Yes, it’s hilarious,” Olivia said with a roll of her eyes once he was only steps away. “No need to gawk.”

She adjusted her stance and put all of her focus into stretching her free arm toward the bag and tipping herself carefully forward.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Chris muttered with a sigh before leaning down and grabbing it for her. He held it out to her. “Here.”

Olivia stared at the outstretched bag for at least five seconds before taking it carefully. “Thank you,” she said, sounding as suspicious as she felt.

“Try to be more careful in the future, Princess,” he said, sounding every bit the ass she’d expected him to be. “Picking up after you isn’t high on my list of things to do.”

Olivia ground her teeth together as she hiked her bag up her shoulder and went back to relying on both crutches. Of course, he’d do something decent only to remind her of how much he loathed her.

“Right, because nobody wants to help a monster like me.” Her words were sarcastic barbs designed to show him how absurd he was being.

She might have thought that he was allowed to be angry at her, but that didn’t mean she could always handle his cutting remarks well. Especially after the morning she’d had and after she’d eaten alone while he and the others had probably had a blast together.

Chris smirked, his dimples making an appearance. “You said it, Olivia. Not me.”

It was always Olivia now, ever since the accident. Never Liv.

“Funny,” she deadpanned.

Chris’s eyes turned into slits. “You really don’t think you did anything wrong, do you?”

Olivia’s eyebrows flew up, disappearing under her bangs. “What?”

Just a week earlier, she’d told him he had a right to be angry with her, and now he was accusing her of not showing any signs of guilt or remorse. It was ludicrous.

He shook his head and let out a disbelieving scoff. “You really don’t think you’re to blame for letting Drew drive that night.”

Now he was just pissing her off. Olivia’s lips pressed together, and her nostrils flared. “You think I just let him get in the car?” she asked. “You think I didn’t try to stop him?”

“Well, did you?” Chris asked, the anger carved into every line of his face.

Olivia could feel the stinging threat of tears again. “Of course I did,” she hissed, letting her frustration show. “I begged him to give me the keys. I fucking begged him not to drive.”

“Yet you still got in the car with him, didn’t you?” he argued, stepping close enough to her that she could feel the heat emanating from his body and she had to crane her neck further to look up at him.

She hated that. Hated that he towered over her.

“Of course, you wouldn’t understand,” she spat. “You have no idea what it feels like to go up against someone who weighs nearly twice as much as you do and who could snap you like a fucking twig if they wanted to.”

Chris blinked and took a step back.

“You can stand there and judge me because you wouldn’t have needed to ask Drew to give you the keys,” she told him, her hands starting to shake as they gripped the hand grips of her crutches. “You could have taken them from him, but guess what, Chris? I’m not the size of a football player. I’m not strong or intimidating, so what the hell was I supposed to do?”

It was so easy for him and for others to pass judgment on her, but they hadn’t been there. They hadn’t been in her shoes. Based on Chris’s expression, he was only now realizing that things weren’t as simple as he wanted them to be.

“Was I supposed to fight him for the keys when he wouldn’t give them to me?” she pressed. “Was I meant to tackle him to the ground to stop him from getting in the car?”

Chris only stared at her, looking dumbstruck for a change.

“And once he was in the car, was I meant to just let him drive off?” she asked, the moisture that had been building in her eyes finally falling and rolling down her cheeks. “Or should I have done what I did do and got in with him and kept begging him to pull over?”

Chris’s throat bobbed as he swallowed.

“What would you have done?” Olivia asked through gritted teeth. “If you were a five-foot woman arguing with a drunk and irritated six-foot football player, and he refused to listen to you, what would you have done?”

“I—” Chris shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Exactly,” she said, still furious. “You have no idea how scary it is to know that you’re powerless and can do nothing to stop someone from making a terrible decision. You have no fucking idea. So, the next time you want to blame me, remember that.”

She left him standing there, her pace faster than her crutches would have usually allowed. Chris had the right to be angry with her, but accusing her of not doing anything to stop Drew from driving that night was bullshit. She wouldn’t let him or anyone else get away with it anymore.