I’m a sobbing mess by the time the movie is over. Turning my head, I look over at Sterling, who is watching me with his eyes wet. No tears fall from them but I can see the way he’s holding back. There’s something unreadable in his expression, like there are words on the tip of his tongue and he doesn’t know how to articulate them.
A forced laugh falls from my lips and I shake my head, suddenly embarrassed as I swipe the tears away from my face. “I’m sorry,” I laugh, smiling at Sterling. “This movie gets me every freaking time.”
Sterling’s throat bobs as he swallows roughly. A fire burns in his eyes as they’re filled with emotion. “Don’t,” he murmurs, wrapping his hand around my wrist as he pulls my hand away from my face. “Leave the tears. You look beautiful with or without them.”
He steals the oxygen from the room and my wrist burns under his touch as I get lost in the fire burning in his eyes. Time is suspended in the air and I suddenly can’t form any words. It isn’t often that I’m rendered speechless, but Sterling has me caught right now.
And I’m afraid I don’t want him to ever let me go.
“Olivia,” he says quietly, his voice thick with emotion. “I don’t know what it is about you, but I can’t get you out of my goddamn head. You’re always there, creeping around in the darkest corners. No matter what I try to do, I can’t seem to get you out of my system. You’re under my skin, burrowing yourself deeper and deeper each and every fucking moment.”
My lips part slightly and I stare back at him, my eyes bouncing back and forth between his rapidly. If I wasn’t speechless before, I’m at a complete loss for words right now. After the other night when Sterling took me out, he surprised me then with things that I never thought were real.
But now, here we are in his bed and he’s laying it all out for me. We aren’t pretending to be whoever we want tonight. We’re just Olivia and Sterling. And he’s giving me more than he ever has before.
“Sterling…” I start softly, my voice trailing off as I don’t know what I should say to him. I know what I want to say to him—the exact things I’ve been keeping to myself for years. But I can’t do that. If I do that, I’m only asking him to break my heart… which might not be such a bad thing anymore.
I would rather have him break my heart than to never get to experience his love.
“I don’t want you to fall in love with him, Olivia,” Sterling admits, his voice cracking around his words. “Fall in love with me instead.”
He literally steals all of the oxygen from the room, leaving me completely breathless. First he said he wanted to be one of my safety nets and now he wants me to fall in love with him. What happened to being off-limits? There are so many variables when it comes to this—so many what-ifs.
I’ve spent most of my life being cautious and living it on the safe side. I can’t help but be nervous as all the millions of tragic possibilities flood my brain. And they all lead back to getting my heart broken.
“What about Stella?” I ask him, my voice barely audible as I don’t fully trust it myself. “She would never approve.”
A chuckle vibrates in Sterling’s chest. “You know my sister better than that. She might be a little annoyed at first, but I don’t know that she would really give a shit.”
“Can I be honest with you for a second?” I ask him, not wanting to go here, but he brought this whole thing on. I don’t know how else to approach it.
“Of course,” he says gently. “I don’t want you to ever feel like you can’t be honest with me. You don’t have to tell me what you think I want to hear.”
“I don’t want to get involved with you because of the future. You have plans and goals of greatness after you graduate. I’m still a freshman. It would never work because of the uncertainty about the future.”
Sterling stares at me for a moment and he’s silent as he tilts his head to the side. “Do we really need to worry about the future when we could just focus on the present? You wanted to watch that damn movie we just did… did you not learn anything from it at all?”
“What are you trying to say? How can I not worry about the future?” I’m appalled that he would really suggest that the future wouldn’t matter when it comes to something as serious as messing around together. “You know I have to plan everything out. I have a literal plan for my life. There’s no way that that’d be good for me.”
“Olivia. You just made me watch a movie where their time was shortened. They could have died just from being near each other, yet they still lived on the edge and risked it all. Aren’t there somethings that are worth taking a risk for?”
“Yeah, but—”
Sterling abruptly cuts me off. “Nothing is guaranteed, Olivia. I know I asked you to think about it after the other night but it doesn’t seem like you’ve really thought about it at all. If you don’t want anything to do with me, I get it. I’m not asking for much. Just your time in the present.”
I stare back at him, a mixture of feelings coursing through me. Of course I want to just agree with it and go along for the ride. He thinks I haven’t put any thought into it, but he’s wrong. I haven’t been able to think about anything else, really. He’s had my sole focus and I’ve been running every possible scenario through my mind.
“And then what happens when the present turns into the future? You graduate and I’m just left behind?”
“Absolutely not.” He shakes his head, frowning at me. “What I’m really saying is that I want to spend time with you, one-on-one time that doesn’t belong to anyone else. And we will just figure it all out as we go along.”
“So, we’re not involved with anyone else during this time but we don’t have a real label?” I question him, trying to get a real picture on what he’s saying. “Basically a no-strings-attached type of deal, as far as the future goes.”
Sterling flashes his perfectly straight white teeth in a grin that he doesn’t often show. “See, you get exactly what I’m saying.”
I look back at Sterling, not sure that I fully agree with what he’s saying, but I do understand it. I don’t want to be his little secret, but that’s not what it sounds like he’s getting at. He just doesn’t want to have any commitments, anything in the future that could potentially hold him down or tie him up.
I get it, I do. Especially with the way he is about hockey and how he wants to play professionally. But is it fair to my heart to subject it to the inevitable pain it’s going to endure when this is over?
“I can do that for now, Sterling,” I tell him, the honesty heavy in my voice. “But I can’t make any promises for how I handle the future.”
“Just don’t get too attached.” He winks at me, playing it off as if we’re not talking about anything serious here. It’s like he didn’t just tell me to fall in love with him instead…
This is going to be a mindfuck I may never survive.
