Page 142 of Jaded

The crowd roars around me, maybe in disapproval, but I don’t give a flying fuck.

All that matters is that Olli’s behind me, his hand on my shoulder. He guides me into the locker room, down onto a bench, sits beside me. “What the fuck, Taylor?”

The words shatter my rage like cold-weakened glass. Their harshness, my name. The swear. Olli James doesn’t swear.

Until now.

At me.

The last of the anger billows from my lungs in a whoosh. “Aspen.”

“What the hell happened out there?” Uncharacteristic coldness seeps from his words.

“I don’t know,” I say, and I don’t.

The fleeing anger leaves my blood cold with shame, regret, guilt. Leavesmestruggling to understand, to clean up the destruction in its wake.

I stare at my hands, the knuckles swollen and red, dripping blood onto the black matting. Not the first time I’ve sat here and bled onto the floor. It won’t be the last.

Doesn’t mean I want to be here, like this—bleeding my anger out where everyone can see it.

“Here.” Suddenly, Olli’s fingers slip under my palm to guide it towards him. I don’t know when he managed to find a first-aid kit, but a wipe appears in his other hand. The wetted cloth caresses my knuckles with such gentleness, he must believe I’m sensitive enough to feel that pain.

I watch in fascination as he lifts the blood away, the fresh and the dried, leaving only the bruised, cracked, callused knuckles behind. The perpetual, unyielding sign of my shame.

I exhale in a slow, tired sigh. “It was fucking stupid.”

“Something’s off tonight, isn’t it?” His fingers trail across my palm, feathering tiny tingles across my skin that ignite every cell in my body.

“Everything’s fucking off.” I can’t look away from his hand on mine, filling my every nerve with delicious sensation I shouldn’t be allowed, not when I’m like this—this ugly, jaded mess.

I should pull away.

I can’t.

“You want to talk?” Olli’s voice is a low hum.

He’s so soft, sogood, and maybe that’s what makes the next words tumble out. “This place is fucking stifling. Don’t you feel that? I don’t know how you can see so much sunshine and beauty in it.”

“Sometimes you have to look for beauty to find it.” He shifts back to let go of my hand, leaving my skin cold in the wake of his heat. “It doesn’t always present itself to you. Just like happiness.”

His own hands tangle together in his lap, his gaze cast down like he’s studying the long digits, coiled together. But the angle of his head’s just off, so I know he’s staring sightlessly at the floor. “You gottalookfor that light in the darkness. And yeah, it’s a constant battle. One you sometimes lose.”

The words hang between us, a dark and heavy weight. Something that should belong to me, not to him, not to sunshine and smiles and laughter.

I wriggle my fingers. Luckily, nothing seems broken. “I haven’t fought like that in a while.”

“Did something happen?” Olli’s gaze never leaves my face.

My instinct is to force a smile, brush it off. Brush him off. I’ve gotten so used to saying I’m fine, everything’s fine, things have always been fucking fine.

Probably why so many of my relationships have never gone very far.

But maybe the fight has me too riled to pretend, because my chest clenches tight with unspoken words. I want to tell him. I want to bring him into my fold, my inner circle, my closest confidence.

I don’t knowhow.

How do you explain your feelings, your entire life, to someone new when you don’t even understand them yourself?

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