Fix You: Bash and Olivia by Christine Bell Page B

strike me and I didn’t have a chance to think. I just acted, covering my face and turning away. A whirlwind second later, I found myself face-first against the mirror with my hands behind my back and Bash’s body pinning me in place.
    For the first time since he’d arrived I realized I should probably be afraid. I’d invited a guy I hardly knew to the nearly deserted hall, assuring him in advance that I had no idea how to protect myself, and now here I was, helpless. In hindsight, it seemed like sheer idiocy. But for some reason, even as I stood there, still gasping for air, the fear never came. Somehow I knew with total certainty that Bash would never hurt me.
    At least, not physically.
    Our gazes locked in the mirror and his jaw flexed before he let me go. His voice sounded think when he finally spoke. “If you come back at me like that, I can use your momentum against you. That can work whether you’re big or small. Want me to show you how to do it?”
    I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and nodded. Hell yeah, I did. Plus, it would give me a much needed couple of minutes to collect myself. Being pinned against anything by Bash McDaniels wasn’t something I’d forget anytime soon.
    It took a while for him to show me, but I caught on to the mechanics of it relatively fast. Soon, we were going at it. We probably looked like lunatics rushing at each other like a pair of bulls in a pen, but eventually, I got him. Pinned him good, and let out a shout of victory. “Oh, yeah! Whoot!”
    He broke free easily and laughed. “Good. But ideally you don’t want to try to hold someone bigger than you. You’d just work with that momentum to try to get them to the ground and then—”
    “Yeah, yeah, I know, get the fuck out of there. Got it, coach.”
    A grudging smile lit his face, even reaching his eyes, before he grew serious again. “Olivia, I know you think you know him, but Andy…” He blew out a sigh and ran a hand through his bristly dark hair. “What happened in that bathroom is going to happen again if you let it. I’ve seen it too many times before. These kinds of things almost never get better. In fact, they usually get worse and worse. And if you think breaking up with him is going to be easy, or safe, think again. You need to be prepared for the worst. Maybe do it somewhere public.”
    I padded over to the corner of the room and picked up one of the water bottles. Whether what he was saying was true or not, I didn’t want to hear it. Not yet. Andy had been a friend for years, and the thought that this new side of him was a permanent addition, or that he was going to get physical with me when I tried to leave him, made me want to throw up.
    “You don’t know him, Bash.” I took a slug from the water bottle to ease the sudden ache in my throat.
    “I know his kind. I lived with his kind.” The words seemed like they were torn from him rather than offered, and that soft mouth turned into a bleak line. “If I’m wasting my time here, let me know now. I have a policy against helping people who don’t want to help themselves. I’m not in that business anymore.”
    My own discomfort over his dismissal of Andy as a person was overridden by the solemn tone, which wrapped a fist around my heart and squeezed. I wanted to ask who had let him down. Who had hurt him. But his face was a mask now and I could feel him pulling away.
    “I think we’ve done enough for today.”
    As he popped a squat to load his duffel bag, the urge to beg him to stay for a while longer was overwhelming. I didn’t want our time together to end this way. For once, I just wanted things to be normal. I’d only turned twenty-one a couple weeks before, but I felt like I’d aged ten years in the past few months. Why couldn’t I be young, and carefree, and the two of us be just two people enjoying each other’s company? And what would it have been like if I’d known him before? Before Andy. And before whatever awful thing had