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“No, baby. No. I’m sorry that I’ve made you cry. I don’t want you to cry, ever. Let me hold you.” When she shook her head, her arms going around her middle as if to hold herself together, I begged, “Please, Mia.”
“Just go, Barrick,” she whispered, and I wanted to fall at her feet and plead with her not to send me away. But a tear spilled down her cheek, sparkling like a diamond in the overhead light, making it impossible to breathe. “I-I can’t do this right now.”
I felt like I was leaving a piece of myself behind, but I gave her what she wanted. As I closed the door behind me, I was in complete agony.
I would give her this day, but come tomorrow, I was going to make her see that I wasn’t pretending. She was mine, and I wasn’t going to give her up without a fight.
Chapter 20
Mia
My bag felt like it weighed a hundred pounds as I walked out into the crisp morning air Monday morning. Pulling my sunglasses down over my eyes to hide the dark circles under them and the fact that they were still swollen and red from all the crying I’d done since Barrick left on Saturday, I turned in the direction of my class.
Before I made it ten feet, Braxton limped into view, and my heart stopped for a moment as I paused long enough to look around for his cousin. Seeing no sign of Barrick, I let out the breath I was holding.
All day Sunday, he’d texted and called so many times, I’d started dreading the sound of my phone going off. I blocked him and then cried myself to sleep. Every time he told me he loved me replayed and echoed in my head. I ached to believe him, but I couldn’t trust anything he said now.
As Braxton neared, he held out one of the two cups of coffee in his hands. My travel mug that he’d bought me one day at the campus café because I’d complained about all the paper cups we’d been wasting from getting to-go cups every day.
He wore sunglasses too, so I couldn’t see his eyes, but something in the set of his shoulders told me something was wrong. “What?” I demanded, taking the cup from him.
“Nothing,” he muttered. “Let me walk you to class.”
My already-swollen eyes filled with tears all over again, making them ache, and a headache began to throb at my temples. “I don’t need a bodyguard, Brax. So, if that’s why you’re here, so you can follow me around and report back to Barrick or my dad, then fuck off.”
“Mia—”
“But if you want to be my friend, I’m okay with that. Just know the difference.” Lifting the cup to my lips, I took a sip, not surprised it was made exactly how I liked it.
“I am your friend, damn it,” he growled. The tone of his voice told me he was having a bad day, and I instantly felt guilty for having snapped at him. “I want to walk you to class because I missed you, and I just need to be around you to try to shut up this damn noise in my head. Okay?”
I dropped my shoulders, but I nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”
Silently, we fell into step together, both of us limping.
We were halfway across campus when he finally blew out a harsh exhale. “I want you to tell your cousin not to come here next semester.”
I snapped my head around to frown at him. “Nevaeh?”
“Of course, Nevaeh,” he muttered.
My jaw tightening, I looked back at the building in the distance that was my destination. I had a math class, and I didn’t know how I was going to pay attention when all I wanted to do was cry. “Don’t worry about it. I don’t plan on coming back here after Christmas break, so Nev won’t have any reason to come here either.”
“Wait, what did you just say?” he demanded, pushing his glasses up onto his head, revealing eyes with circles under them even darker than my own.
“I’m not coming back next semester,” I repeated. “I talked to my mom late Saturday night, and I told her I’m going back to California. She’s looking for an apartment close to UCLA for me because there’s no way in hell I’m moving back in to her house.”
I didn’t trust my dad any more than I did Barrick. Less, actually. He’d broken something in me, something no amount of his apologizing would ever fix. Before all of this, he was my hero. The one man in the universe I didn’t question had m
y back. Now, I didn’t even want to look at or speak to him.
“You can’t!” he exploded. “This is going too far, Mia. You have a plan. What happened to that?”
“The plan changed,” I told him honestly, my voice just as tired as the rest of me. “I never should have come here in the first place. Who was I trying to kid, Brax? I’ll never be anyone other than Nik Armstrong’s daughter. Thinking I could find out who I really am underneath all the fame that comes from being the rocker’s princess was a pipe dream.”
“Your dad was just trying to keep you safe while you found yourself,” he explained.
“That is not finding myself. That’s finding an illusion.” A tear spilled free, and I angrily scrubbed it away. Sniffling, I started walking again. After a dozen steps, I realized he wasn’t beside me. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw him standing there just glaring at nothing, his jaw clenched, causing the muscle to tick. “I have to go, or I’m going to be late.”
