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Not satisfied that any progress had been made at all--and maybe a little bit not happy with the fact that I had clearly struck a nerve with Reagan without even meaning to--I opened my door, moving out, rushing up behind her as she tore up the pavement with her long-legged pace.
"Hey, wait," I demanded, reaching out, closing my hand around her bicep, pulling, turning her to face me.
"Let go of me," she demanded, moving to yank her arm, trying to free my hold.
"Hey," another voice joined, raised, a little authoritative. Michael. "Rivers. Get your hand off of her," he demanded, shocking me enough to drop my hand and move back a step.
As Reagan stiffened from crown to sole.
Interesting.
"We were--" I started, only to be cut off.
"Reagan, princess, are you alright?"
She recoiled at that word. Princess. She hated it. Even if she was a sort of modern-day princess, raised into wealth and privilege, the whole world at her feet.
"Mr. McDermot," Reagan greeted him, icicles dangling from her words.
"Michael, princess. Michael. I've been telling you to call me Michael since you were a little girl."
Okay then.
This was an unexpected layer of intrigue.
If he'd known her since she was a child, he was clearly a friend of her parents. But nothing in Michael's tone implied he was surprised or angry or upset by her presence. If anything, his greeting was warm and familiar. While Reagan went cold and stiff.
What the hell was going on here?
Clearly, there was more to this than I had realized.
"Reagan, is everything alright?" he asked, actual concern in his voice. For someone other than himself. Another layer I was having trouble stacking onto the others. "And you, what the fuck are you doing putting your hands on her?" he asked, turning his attention to me.
Yep.
And there was the asshole I was vaguely familiar with. His eyes were small. His tone was condescending. Not because I had grabbed her. Because someone the likes of me dared to put his hands on someone the likes of her.
Reagan was glancing between us, an unexpected guard down over her features, making it impossible for me to figure out what was going on in her head.
"Nixon is a... friend," Reagan surprised me by intervening, tone strong, almost firm.
"He didn't appear to be acting very friendly," Michael countered.
"Well, no, but I can be rather unpleasant at times. So can he," she added a bit pointedly, giving me a look I was struggling to interpret.
"You've always been a good girl," Michael argued. There was something about that phrasing that creeped me out. But that was likely just me. "I would never call you unpleasant."
Reagan sidestepped all of this. "Nixon was just trying to stop me from rushing off angry. And he's right. It is never good to leave unfinished business, is it?" she asked. And there was something pointed in that wording, some deeper meaning lost on both Michael and me.
"No, of course not. It is always best to get it all out on the table," Michael agreed. "Are you sure you don't want me to stick around?"
"I promise you, I'm fine," she assured him, giving him the most forced smile I'd ever seen. "We are going to go get some coffee down the street and hash things out."
That, though, was pure honesty. If I was any judge. And I was. We were going to get some coffee. I wanted to get some answers. But I had a feeling Reagan had some other plan.
"If you're sure..." Michael relented.
"I am," she assured him with another of those phony smiles.
"Tell your parents I would love to get together with them," he said. And Reagan went to stone.
Interesting.
"I will," she told him, but it was not even a halfway convincing lie.
"Nice seeing you again, princess," he said, then, clearly not one for reading signs, leaning forward, placing a hand on her arm, and pressing a kiss to her temple.
With that, Michael moved away.
We stood there, suspended in time, unmoving, she barely breathing, until he climbed into his car and drove around the corner.
"You're green," I told her when we were completely alone. "I mean, the fucker disgusts me too, but you're really green." She had no reaction to this, her hand stroking up her arm over the spot where Michael had touched her. "Did you... do you want to go get that coffee?"
I had to admit, I wasn't great with emotional displays. And I was even worse at interpreting them unless tears or screaming were included.
The fact that I wanted to try to diffuse the feelings clearly coursing through Reagan was very telling since my general reaction was to run fast and far.
"I need to walk," she told me, turning, striding back the way we'd come.
Walk.
Okay.
I could walk.
"Hold up," I called a moment later, seeing a shiver rack her body. "You're cold. I have a sweatshirt in the trunk," I told her, bleeping the button, reaching inside to produce a black pullover with white pulls, handing it to her, watching as she slipped into it, disappeared a bit inside of it.
