Page 84 of Count Your Lucky Stars
As if Olivia choosing Brad hadn’t been bad enough, Margot had felt like her best friend, the girl she loved, the person she believed would always be there... suddenly wasn’t. Like Olivia was abandoning not just their plans, but Margot, too. Like maybe Margot hadn’t meant as much to Olivia as Olivia had to her. Not if she was so easy to move on from. So easy to forget.
Olivia guppied, mouth opening and shutting before she blurted, “That’s not what happenedat all.”
Margot crossed her arms. “I was there, Liv. I’m pretty sure I know what happened.”
Olivia pressed a hand to her forehead and sighed. “Okay, first, I didn’t follow Brad to WSU. The scholarship I applied for? I got rejected.” Her lips twisted and she dropped her eyes. “Even with the scholarship, UW was going to be more expensive than WSU. Without it?” She shook her head. “If I had told Dad I had my heart set on UW, he’d have tried to figure something out, but I couldn’t ask him to do that. I couldn’t ask him to burden himself financially when I’d gotten into another perfectly good school thatwasoffering me a scholarship.” Olivia scratched the tip of her nose. “Did it help that Brad was going there, too? That we were back together and that—at the time—he wanted me? That Iknewhe wanted me? I won’t lie and say that wasn’t a perk, a point in WSU’s favor. But it wasn’t the reason, Margot.”
Margot swallowed over the lump in her throat. “Oh.”
She bit back the next words that almost came out of her mouth.Why didn’t you tell me that?But she already knew the answer. They were barely talking back then, mostly because post-hookup, Margot had avoided Olivia, preferring to lick her wounds in private. To suffer in silence. Look how well that had served her.
“As for why I asked what you thought I should do, it’s because I wanted you totellme that. I wanted you to tell me you wanted me. That’swhyI asked. We hadn’t talked about it. What it meant. How we felt. I’d hoped you’d tell me...” Olivia’s teeth sank into her bottom lip. “All I wanted was for you to want me the way I wanted you.”
She had.God, had she ever. “I did. I...” She shook her head. “That was eleven years ago, Liv. We were eighteen and—”
“We shouldn’t waste time on what-ifs.” Olivia’s lips quirked, smile small and subdued. “You’re right. Who’s to say what would’ve happened? There’s a million ways it could’ve gone right and a million more ways it could’ve blown up in our faces.”
Margot nodded. As much as she’d wanted Olivia back then, she hadn’t been ready for a serious relationship at eighteen. Clearly, her communication skills had needed some work—in all likelihood they still did, but she was a work in progress and she was trying and wasn’t that half the battle, really?—and all that teenage angst had been a recipe for disaster. “But now?”
Olivia leaned in, lips brushing the corner of Margot’s mouth in a kiss that was far too brief. She drew back and met Margot’s eyes. “Now.”
Chapter Nineteen
Olivia stretched an arm out toward the nightstand, rolling onto her side when her fingers skimmed nothing but smooth wood, her phone too far to reach.
“Mm, where do you think you’re going?”
One of Margot’s arms wrapped around Olivia’s waist, dragging her further into the bed, snuggling up close behind her.
“I was trying to check the time. We don’t want to be late to dinner.”
Margot burrowed even closer, like merelyclosewasn’t close enough, like any amount of space between them was unacceptable. Olivia could relate.
This was all so new.
Not just lying here, wrapped up in Margot’s arms, but actually having what she wanted.
For so long, everything she’d wanted had been unattainable, either by some huge, insurmountable margin, pie-in-the-sky dreams, or by a smaller gap, fingertips skimming, just shy of grasping.Almostwas always worse, the hope it stirred leadingto a harder letdown when it, inevitably, didn’t pan out. A scholarship to the school of her dreams. A relationship with Margot. All the little desires she’d given up here and there, incidents explained away as coincidences until the pattern became clear, irrefutable evidence stacking up against the small measure of hope to which she’d held fast. Sacrifices she’d made thinking they were worth her happily ever after with Brad, bargains she’d made in the name of love that became lies she told herself because the truth was too grim. Only to discover that happily ever after, in and of itself, was a sham.
After a certain point,wantingbecame pointless whenhavingremained hopeless. Why bother? Why continue to put herself through constant disappointment? Maybe some people just weren’t meant to have what they wanted, to be happy. So she’d settled on the next best thing, little crumbs of contentment where she could find them. Never wholly satisfying, but enough to get by on, to subsist.
But now...
All in.Warmth flooded her chest. Margot wanted her.
Maybe disappointment wasn’t an inevitability. Maybe everything in her life so far had happened for a reason, the way it was supposed to. All those little disappointments not the dead ends she’d thought, but turns she had to make, all leading her to something bigger, something better, something lasting, something real.Hers.A perfect convergence of being in the right place at the right time.
Margot pressed one chilly foot to the back of Olivia’s calf, her other foot still elevated, the pillows beneath it slightly askew, one hanging off the edge of the bed, in danger of falling.
“I don’t want to get up,” Margot complained. One hand swept the hair away from the back of Olivia’s neck, icy fingers sending shivers down her spine. Warm lips brushed against her nape, featherlight, and her skin prickled all over, Margot’s touch giving her goose bumps. “I’m cold and you’re warm and this bed is too comfortable.”
Itwas, but she had a feeling she could’ve been lying on a cinder block and she’d have been equally as reluctant to move, her desire to stay in bed having less to do with the comfort of the mattress and warmth of the duvet and everything to do with having Margot wrapped around her.
“We skipped lunch.”
Margot’s mouth curved against her skin. “Debatable,” her voice lilted, sounding coy. “I ate.”
Laughter burst from between her lips.“Margot.”
