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“It’s going to be just you and me from now on,” Mike continued. “I was thinking that you and I should go on a trip when I get out of here. Just us. Maybe rent one of those RVs and drive around the country. See the sights. Leave this place behind. I’ve always wanted to see the Grand Canyon and Mt. Rushmore. We can go somewhere cooler for the summer and then this fall we can drive to see the leaves change. I know how much you love that. Then when the weather turns cold, we can come back to Florida.”
Just how long was this trip so supposed to last? It was only June.
“I’m not sure about a trip,” Mia replied carefully, not wanting to upset him, but also not sure how she was supposed to respond. “There are a lot of contracts that the business needs to complete. It’s all up to me until I hire some help.”
“You can work from anywhere,” Mike said. “And you won’t need to make a bunch of money. I can take care of you.”
She was not going to let someone else pay her bills. Plus, it would feel like a betrayal to Lane if she abandoned the business that they’d built together.
“It’s something that we’ll need to talk about when you feel better. Right now isn’t the time. You have some healing to do.”
“You love vacations. We’ll have a wonderful time,” Mike pressed. “Why aren’t you excited about the prospect?”
“You’ve sprung it on me. I haven’t even had time to think about it. We need to talk about it more. When you’re better. You need to see what your doctors say.”
She was hedging, and she could hear it in her own voice. He could probably hear it, too.
Mike’s smile dropped, his brows pinched together in a frown. His lips were a flat line, and Mia wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him wearing that expression - a mixture of anger and unhappiness. He was usually a happy, easy-going person.
“Is it him? Is he the reason that you don’t want to go?”
She couldn’t pretend not to know who he was talking about. She was surprised by his reaction. He’d never said anything negative about Grant before. It had to be because of what had happened. He wasn’t himself, and he had a good reason for it. She didn’t want to be the person that upset him. He’d been through far too much in the last twenty-four hours.
“This is about a lot of things,” Mia protested. “Not just about Grant. I’ve just never been a spontaneous person. You know that. I’m a planner. I like to take my time with things.”
“But you don’t want to leave him for months, right?” Mike demanded, his eyes cold and hard. “I can’t believe you’d put some guy in front of our friendship, Mia. This is hurtful. We need each other after what’s happened. He’s just some guy. We’re your family. Family. Shouldn’t that come first?”
She couldn’t argue the statement, and she didn’t want to talk about her feelings for Grant either. They were personal and private. And while Mike was like a brother to her, he wasn’t someone that she regularly confided in about her love life. In fact, other than describing her rat-bastard ex when she’d shown up on Lane and Mike’s doorstep, she hadn’t discussed her love life with him at all.
Luckily, a nurse bustling in to take his vitals interrupted their awkward conversation. Grant and the sheriff had also shown up with their drinks and chatted until the nurse said that the doctor wanted to come in and take a look at Mike, and the room needed to be cleared.
“Can’t you stay?” Mike pleaded, holding onto her hand. “I don’t want you to go.”
“The doctor needs to see you. You want to get out of here, don’t you? You have to cooperate so they’ll discharge you.”
“But you’ll come visit me at Steve’s, right? You can come over later. We’ll order in dinner. We can watch a movie together.”
“Mike, I did have a few questions I forgot to ask earlier,” the sheriff said. “After you see the doctor, would you mind us talking for just a few minutes? It won’t take long.”
“Sure, whatever I can do.”
Grant’s arm had wound around Mia’s waist, and she had to extricate her hand from Mike’s so she could stand up. Her friend wasn’t happy, but the doctor had joined them in the room and the nurse was shooing them all out.
Mia would be relieved to go. She loved Mike and Lane, but it had been hard to be there and not break down crying. She hadn’t wanted to lose it in front of Mike when he was holding himself together so well.
She needed to pull herself together, but she really wanted to crawl into bed and not come out for a week. Was that an option?
“Mia, would you be okay if I dropped you back at the house?” Grant asked when they were back in the hallway. “I’m going to see the Ellers’s home with the sheriff to see the crime scene.”
“I can go with you.”
Grant and the sheriff exchanged a glance that said she wasn’t going.
“Ma’am, I think you might want to skip this, especially as you were close to the victim,” Sheriff Wallace said. “I don’t want to be responsible for giving you bad dreams.”
“I don’t even really know what happened.”
She sounded frustrated because that’s exactly how she felt. Her best friend had been killed and she had no idea how it had all happened. How was she supposed to get over something when she didn’t have a clue what events had led up to it.
