Oliver turned my phone around and stared at me with vacant eyes. I took my phone from him and watched him walk back over to the window. His shoulders squared, fists still clenched. I looked down at a tabloid alert on my screen.
BRIT ROCKER OLIVER WALT INVOLVED IN UNDERGROUND CHILD FIGHT RING AND POSSIBLE MURDER OF CHILD FIGHTER
My heart leapt into my throat. Something like this could ruin him. It could ruin any chance the band had of being part of the industry for the long haul. I tossed my phone onto the bed and walked over to try and console him. I had no idea if there was anything I could say, but I had to do something.
“You didn’t kill anyone, Oliver!” I reached up and touched his shoulders. Oliver spun around and brought his hands up between mine and knocked them away.
“Don’t. Touch. Me.” His eyes were hooded and something insidious boiled behind them. I’d never seen Oliver this angry so I had no idea what he needed from me. I took note that when he was visibly disturbed he didn’t want to be touched.
“Tell me what we to do. I won’t touch you. But I want to know how I can help you through this.” His breath was hot against my face and pushed and pulled the fallen tendrils of hair across my cheeks. I shivered and lifted my hand to tuck the strays behind my ear. Oliver flinched and took a step back when my hand came between us.
“Leave.” His voice was nothing short of a growl. Eyes blazed and hooded.
“Okay, we can leave.” I turned and started to grab the things we’d tossed aside. Oliver’s cape, our phones, my clutch. I grabbed the keycard from the dresser and headed toward the door. But, I couldn’t feel him behind me. I checked to see what Oliver was doing. “Are you coming?”
“No.” He hadn’t moved from the spot he stood when I tried to touch him.
“No?”
“You can leave.” His voice was quiet and the room filled with regret and sadness as he spoke those three words. I threw everything on the bed and hurried over to him. I was sad that he would think I would run out and turn my back on him at a time he needed me the most.
“What?” I shook my head and tried to rid my ears of his request. “Oliver, I’m not leaving you. This is when we stick together. I didn’t turn my back on you when you told me about the fight ring. Why would I run now?” I hesitated at first but then slowly reached for his arm. He was stoic and didn’t recoil this time.
“Was it the money? Did you need it that badly? You could have asked me for it. I’d have paid for school if you needed me to.” His volume had decreased significantly, almost like he was unconsciously speaking his thoughts, not realizing he was actually saying them out loud.
He wasn’t making any sense. Again, I shook my head and tried to rid my mind of all distraction to try and make sense of what he was asking. I reached out and squeezed his arm to show him proof I was here. I was staying. His jaw clenched in reaction to my touch.
“Oliver, I’m confused. I don’t know what you’re asking me. What money?”
He sucked in a deep breath and stood up as tall as he could, shaking my hand from his arm. He stalked over to the door and put his hand on the knob. He squared his shoulders and his eyes opened wide then lowered to their previous position. Hooded. Angry. Unsettling. But I followed closely behind. I reached for him again and he flinched away.
“Don’t, Kate. You need to leave.”
“Oliver!” I was desperate to make sense of what he was trying to communicate.
I watched his hand turn the knob. It was as if he fought against his heart to make it turn. There was a struggle. I heard the click of the latch untucking itself from inside the mortise. He pulled the door open barely an inch.
“I trusted you, Kate. With everything I had, I trusted you.” His head lowered and he let go of the door and leaned back against the wall. The door latched just as another clap of thunder vibrated everything inside our room.
“Trusted? Like past tense? Wait. You think I had something to do with this?” I took two long strides to the bed and grabbed my phone. I had only read the headline. I brought the story back up and my legs gave out beneath me when I scrolled down and saw the first sentence of the actual article. I sat on the edge of the bed and felt my world crumble beneath me.
University of Maryland student Kate Green claims Phobia5 frontman revealed more than just his body during their short but steamy love affair.
“Oliver.” His name was wrapped in breath and fell from my lips, hardly audible. “Oliver, I would never do this. Someone else—”
“STOP! Just fucking stop.” He sucked in a staggered breath and reached for the door again. This time he opened it far enough for me to walk through. He was done. “I’ve let you lie to me for too long, Kate. You are an ace at what you do and you dragged my heart right behind you to carry out your little plan. Well, I hope it was worth it.”
“Oliver! I didn’t do this!” My heart struggled to beat, my chest caved in on itself and I couldn’t catch my breath. Sobs came in waves, so fast I choked on them as they left my mouth. “Oliver, you have to believe me.” I reached for him but his hand shot up to stop me.
My heart panicked and I felt a fissure forming. Oliver thought I did this. It both angered and hurt me deeply, so deeply that if a broken heart produced blood, I’d bleed out before he would have a chance to respond.
“Let’s get one thing straight, Kate…” Oliver seethed. He let go of the knob and walked toward me. My whole body jumped when the door slammed shut. He bent over and spoke to me through a clenched jaw. “I have never told anyone…NO one…about what I did in that warehouse. So, how could the tabloids have this information if you didn’t sell it to them? Your name’s right there in black and white! STOP LYING TO ME!” Spit from Oliver’s trembling lips sprayed my face when he yelled. My ears rang with the contention in his voice.
“O-liv-er!” I choked out words amid my sobs and gasps for air. “I don’t know how this happened. But I swear to you I didn’t do it.” Oliver’s strong fingers pressed into the flesh of my bare arms as he lifted me off the bed. “I would never do something like this! You have to believe me! I love you, Oliver!”
“All of my life, love and pain were synonymous. You have proven it no different.” He shook me a little as he let me go. “Grab your things and get out. GET OUT, KATE!” He stomped to the door and flung it open so hard it bounced off the stopper on the wall. He caught it and held it open.
My whole body shook. I couldn’t catch my breath between the sobs. But I had no explanation as to how something like this could have happened. I swiped my hand across the comforter to feel for my phone and my clutch that I couldn’t see through the curtain of tears that left my eyes.
“Ol—”
“GET OUT!” Oliver’s eyes were bloodshot, tears streamed down his face and a sob left his throat. His lips trembled with hate. “GET OUT!”
“Is there a problem, Mr. Walt?” A concierge stood in the doorway, glancing back and forth between Oliver and me.
“There is a problem, Grant. I have an intruder. Could you please remove her or call security and alert them of a trespasser?” Oliver wiped his face with the back of his hands and spoke in a respectful tone but his lips trembled and he never looked my way. His words were curt but had a deep dual meaning. I was the intruder. My relationship with Oliver was built on a lie. I was an intrusion. I let him trust me to the extent he did and I knowingly withheld information from him. I’d trespassed on his heart.
“Ma’am, if you would, please come with me.” Grant likely knew each one of the guys from the band as somewhat long-term residents of the Hotel Monaco. Residents that would check out in mere hours and fly back to England.
I had no choice but to leave. Maybe if I left and called Oliver later, he’d have calmed down enough to talk through what had happened.
“Oliver, I—”
“Please. Just. Go.” His voice was small, his mannerisms dull and obviously exhausted. He never made eye contact with me but motioned toward the door.
; I took the crumpled poem from my clutch and laid it on the dresser. I cleared my throat, straightened my dress and headed toward the door. I stopped when my body was close enough to Oliver’s to feel his heat.
“I will always love you, Oliver. Always.” I ducked my head in an attempt to make eye contact but he turned his face away from me.
“It’s midnight, Cinderella. This is where your fairy tale vanishes.”
Oliver’s words sucked the wind directly from my lungs. The fissure tearing through the flesh of my heart was almost audible at that moment.
“Miss?” Grant stood patiently at the door, eyeing both of us.
I sucked in a sob then nodded and walked across the threshold of something I’d never intended to happen and something I’d never forgive myself for.
“Kate?” Oliver’s voice stopped me dead in my tracks but I mustered enough energy to spin on my heel. Hopeful.
“You forgot this.” He held Mack’s mask out for me. When I reached for it my hand grazed his and my eyes fluttered. Everything I’d wanted for Oliver hung in that small millimeter of skin that for a moment felt fused together. Everything I wanted to say tried to break through his hard exterior but fell short. His eyes met mine and the sorrow within them forced me to look away. I couldn’t bear that I’d broken Oliver even more than he’d already been when all I wanted to do was love him.
Oliver’s hand dropped to his side as soon as the mask was firmly in my grasp. I continued to divert my gaze but I thought I heard him whisper something as I took a step away from him. I froze for a moment, hanging onto every bit of hope I could scrounge but the slam of the door told me that was futile. And then his childlike cries and the sound of things smashing in the room broke me.
Grant could see how upset I was and I was pretty sure he could sense that I wasn’t really an intruder. He kindly had one of the hotel shuttles drive me back to my dorm. The ride seemed to last forever and I shivered and cried the whole way despite the warmth coming from the heater.
If I would have been honest with Oliver from the beginning when he started sharing so much of himself with me, he most likely wouldn’t have accused me of selling one of his stories to a tabloid. But it had only been hours since I dropped the Lexi/Gretchen bomb. How could I expect him to believe me this time?
I walked straight to the bathroom, holding my shoes by their straps. I relieved myself and then headed to my room. I grabbed a pair of sweats off my bed so I could climb into bed and sleep away the ache in my chest. I unzipped my dress and when my hands dragged the dress down my body my eyes closed and I allowed myself a moment to pretend it was Oliver taking off my dress. I sobbed harder than I had in the hotel room. I reached for tissues on my vanity and muffled my sobs with my hand, then glanced up into the mirror.
My reflection in the mirror was what sent me over an emotional precipice. My hair was a mess, my eyes swollen, my skin blotchy, my makeup ruined and my face was contorted into an expression that reminded me of everything I’d lost. I touched my lips and thought of Oliver’s mouth and how it wrapped itself around mine when he kissed me.
I cried so hard I gagged. I needed to shake the tree. Get it all out of me and start getting over him. I’d call him and wish him a safe trip home but in my heart of hearts I knew I’d never see Oliver Walt again. At least not in person.
I looked for my journal so I could let everything from my heart flow out through my hand and from pen to paper in a meager attempt at letting go. Sometimes it got jumbled up in the piles of books on my desk. It wasn’t there. I was frantic, as if not dispelling this story immediately would eat me alive. But I was certain no matter how quickly I got rid of the words, the pain would always be a part of me. There was no amount of cathartic ritual that would rid my heart of the pain of losing Oliver.
I reached under my mattress, having remembered tucking it there a few times when the girls were over. My journal wasn’t there but a small slip of paper was. I assumed it was an inventory marker or something the school puts in place to keep track of the furniture issued with each dorm room.
When I pulled it out, I recognized the handwriting immediately.
Kate,
I told you to watch your back.
Gretchen
And that’s when I remembered. I’d been writing in my journal the last time Gretchen stopped by and that’s the day I stormed out and stayed in the bathroom hoping she’d let herself out. She must have seen the journal on my desk and took it. That’s why I couldn’t find it the night I wrote the “When I Lied” poem.
It was Gretchen who sold the story to the tabloids, and she’d used my name. But she’d never admit it and for all I knew she’d destroyed the journal and there’d be no way I could prove it. I threw my covers off my bed, trying to find my phone. As soon as I told Oliver what really happened, he’d understand. It wasn’t over. Everything would be okay.
My hands trembled as I scrolled to “W” in my contacts and that’s when I knew nothing would ever be okay.
His name was gone.
Twenty-one
Nothing’s ever really ok. No one’s totally honest. No life is altogether painless. How could it ever be? The fairy tale is over.
It had been awhile since Oliver had taken to Twitter to vent. He didn’t need an outlet after he started confiding in me. I touched each of his words on my screen as if a hidden message would reach him through his phone. I couldn’t call him but I could send him a direct message. I took a deep breath and typed. Tears fell on my screen.
Me: I love you, Oliver. I always will. Gretchen stole my journal. Please believe me! It wasn’t me who leaked the story. PIERCE IS ALIVE!
I hit send and a window I’d never seen before popped up.
Your message has been blocked by this user
Blocked.
I climbed under my covers and cried. All I wanted was for Oliver to believe me. I didn’t have the energy to confront Gretchen, and quite honestly, I didn’t want her to know she was the reason Oliver would never speak to me again. I couldn’t give her that satisfaction. So in two days we’d carry out our semester Psych project for Professor Woods as if nothing happened. That is, if I didn’t cry myself into oblivion.
My phone buzzed with a text and my heart stopped. My head knew it wasn’t Oliver, but my heart hoped.
MacKenna: Dude, you home already? Saw your lights on.
Me: ---
MacKenna: Kate?
I turned my phone off.
****
I woke up and saw sun then closed my eyes and pulled the covers over my head. I lay still for what felt like hours, but with my phone off I had no idea what time it was. But my bladder knew the time.
I scuffed to the bathroom, peed and walked back to my room.
I slept some more knowing Oliver had probably boarded his plane.
Woke up in the dark. I wasn’t ready to be awake. My body still ached with sadness, so much sadness I wanted to die. I got up and grabbed a vodka bottle from my fridge. Like a drunk on the sidewalk, I drank it lying down. Streams of vodka dripped down the sides of my face. I could hear it hit my pillow and the moisture soaked through the back of my shirt. It felt like poison. I didn’t really want to die. But I did want to numb the pain.
I read a little to try and distract my mind. But every book I picked up reminded me of Oliver. I was a sucker for a good romance so those were the only books I had on hand. So, I slept some more.
****
The second time I woke to sun I turned on my phone. The string of notifications that came through made my head hurt. I turned the sound off and watched text after text from MacKenna pop up on my screen. At first she was giddy because she assumed my lack of contact meant I was still “under the covers with Oliver doing the nasty.”
I had a missed call from my mom. Before I could talk myself out of it I hit call back.
“Katie? Well, thank goodness. I was starting to think you were avoiding me.” She let out a half-nervous giggle.
“Hi, Mom.�
� I don’t know what it is but when your heart is breaking and you don’t want to talk to or even look at anyone, just the sound of your mom’s voice can take you to your knees. It was a good thing I was still stuffed under my covers.
“Katie Lynn, your voice tells me something is wrong. What’s wrong? Are you okay?” She sniffed. My mom had this habit of starting to sniffle when she assumed whatever she was about to hear would make her cry. It was almost like she thought if she got a head start she’d be able to keep a handle on her emotions for the sake of the other person. It never worked.
“I did something, Mom, and I’ve hurt someone I love. It was unintentional but he’s still hurting so badly and it’s crushing me to know I did this to him.” I put my hand over my mouth and choked back a couple silent sobs.
I wasn’t sure why I started to tell her about what I’d done to Oliver. The pain in my chest and the lump in my throat told me I had exhausted the word count for the current conversation.
“Now, Kate—”
“I’ll be fine, Mom. But, I gotta go.” I reached deep down into my soul and pulled out the last bit of composure I had. She’d never hang up if she thought something was really wrong. “I just wanted to let you know I was alive. I will call you later, I promise. I have a huge project due tomorrow and I have to finish up a few things.” I took a big, long cleansing breath and vowed to hold it together until she hung up.
“Are you sure, honey? You don’t sound okay.”
I dug a little deeper.
“Honest, Mom. He’s a great guy and I just feel bad that I hurt his feelings. I’m sure it’s not as bad as I think it is. You know me. I worry too much.” I squeezed my eyes and bit the inside of my cheek to hold it together just a moment longer.
“Okay, sweetie. Call me later. Love you.”
“Love you, too, Mom.” I ended the call and pulled the covers up over my head. Besides getting up to go to the bathroom a couple times, I had done nothing for over twenty-four hours but drink a fifth of vodka, pee and cry. I wasn’t that girl. I didn’t even stay in bed the day after I lost my virginity to Charlie. I was at the library at nine in the next morning to study for my Calc exam.
When I Lied Page 24
