“Mike.” He looks up. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know where else to go. I can call Nate and—”
He shakes his head. “Don’t apologize for coming here. If it were up to me, you never would have left.”
He holds my gaze, steady and more serious than I’ve ever seen him, clear of any alcohol or drugs. Just those bright blue eyes and—
“What happened to your face?” I blurt out, finally noticing the bruise under his left eye. I don’t know how I missed it until now.
He was wearing sunglasses earlier.
Someone hit Mike.
Hard enough to give him a black eye.
“It’s fine,” he says, looking down at my hand, running his thumb over my red knuckles.
“It’s really not.” I reach out before I remember that I shouldn’t, turning his face toward me so I can get a better look.“Who did this?”
“Trent,” he says with a sigh, letting me move his face however I please.
“Trent hit you?”
“Well, to be fair, I hit Trent first.” He pulls back, looking around the room like the explanation lies somewhere in the furniture. “A few times, actually. He got one in before Damon pulled me off.”
“What? Why?”
“He said something while you were visiting your family,” Mike starts, not meeting my eyes, bouncing his leg up and down. “About you. Us. He was being a dick, and I let it get in my head. And then you left so—”
He shakes his head, looking up at me with a little smile and his shrug, but I can see that whatever happened, he’s still shaken by it. I’m not gonna add to that by making him talk about it.
“Look at us.” I turn his hand over, and sure enough, his knuckles are fucked too. As upsetting as it is to see, I smile. “Getting into fights.”
“Yeah,” he says, a matching smirk growing on his own lips. “Never again. Punching people hurts.” He winces at the memory.
And god help me, I laugh. Loud, uncontrollable, damn near delirious, because how is this real life? I had to punch my best friend because he tried to kiss me. Mikebeat upTrent over me.
I laugh for the emo teenage version of me that wouldn’t have believed a single word of this.
Mike’s eyes go to my face when it happens, and he smiles. The one that means I think he loves me, too, and my heart doesn’t know what to do with that. He shifts forward to sit beside me, and I open my arms. He finds his spot against my chest, relaxing into me, and I wrap the blanket around him.
My chin lands on top of his head while I rub his back, and he makes a sound that would be the human equivalent of a purr. And fuck. I’ve had a terrible day.
A terrible month, really.
But I missed him.
I missed him so bad that right now, with him warm against my chest, I know that leaving him was the biggest mistake of my life.
“Alex?” Mike says after a long silence, twisting our fingers together.
“Hm?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t—” He stops with a frustrated noise, closing his hand around mine. “I can’t sit here and pretend I don’t know.”
I frown in confusion. “Pretend you don’t know what?” That there’s something wrong with me? That I’m not the person you thought I was? That I can’t give you what you need? My brain throws out every possible answer to that except the one he gives me.
“I found out what happened to you,” he says, slowly. “In high school.”
I drop his hand. My arm loosens around him. It’s involuntary. A reaction to hearing the thing I feared the most.
