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Leander perked up. “What is it?”
I handed the phone over to him so he could see for himself.
His eyebrows lifted higher and higher the more he scrolled. “Well then...”
Apparently the two had been committed to one another for quite a while and we were either too dumb or distracted to see it. It was hard to say.
One thing was clear — Cole was head-over-heels for Olivia. He told her as much in one of his last messages. He wanted her to move in with him, to make it official, to tell the rest of us. She said “No,” with no explanation. True to his nature, Cole told her he’d wait as long as necessary for her to be comfortable... and then cracked a joke about jerking off to her picture, like he used to do when he first met her. Predictably, she flipped him off with an emoji.
Then he stopped answering.
“Why didn’t they say anything?” I asked, shaking my head.
Leander shrugged again, handing the phone back. “Olivia is intensely private. She was probably worried about what the rest of us would say.”
“I would have told them congratulations,” I said sadly, watching Olivia’s brow furrow in her sleep.
“As would I.”
* * *
One night after dinner,Olivia disappeared abruptly. Leander and I exchanged a look before I inclined my head and stood. It was my turn to try and comfort her.Trybeing the keyword, since she wouldn’t talk about anything. But at least she was finally eating.
I found her in our bed again, curled up in the middle, hugging a pillow.
“Hey,” I said softly, crossing to my side of the bed and laying down next to her. “You ok?”
She shook her head mutely.
Suppressing a sigh, I ran my fingers through her hair, pulling it away from her neck and smoothing it across the pillow.
She tossed the pillow she was holding to the side and rolled over, hooking her leg around mine and using it to drag herself closer.
I wiped a tear from her face with my thumb. “Hey, beautiful.”
Her dark lashes fluttered, blinking away more tears. She swallowed visibly and opened her mouth, but only a squeak came out.
“I miss Cole too,” I said quietly, wrapping my arm around her.
No one had said his name since the night we found him, at least not to each other. The only ones who spoke about him were the people involved in business transactions — the funeral, the bank, the DMV, etc. Another account to close. Another name to strike off a list. And no one, I meanno one, had mentioned the connection between him and Olivia.
Simply saying his name unleashed the floodgates. The sobbing renewed in earnest, soaking through the front of my shirt as she buried her face against my chest.
“Everything ok?” Leander asked from the doorway.
I didn’t know what the hell to say since the last thing that came out was clearly the wrong thing, so I laid there with my mouth hanging open like a guppy.
Pushing off of the doorframe, he crossed the room in a few strides, edging onto the bed and rubbing small circles on her back. When her crying tapered off to sniffles, he finally spoke up. “We want to help you, Olivia. But we don’t know how.”
I followed his lead, nodding along as he spoke. “Tell us what you need, Kitten.”
She sat up, wiping her eyes with the edge of her sleeve. “I’m so tired of feeling this.” Her hands gnarled around some invisible ball of grief. “I don’t want to feel anymore. I don’t want to feel anything.”
Leander leaned forward, brushing a lock of dark hair behind her ear. “Turning it off doesn’t make it go away.”
“I don’t care. I just want it to stop.” She collapsed against him, sobbing onto his shoulder.
He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into his lap, stroking her hair.
