Page 99 of Dirty Pool

Michel couldn’t get her face out of his head as he left her house that night he went to speak to her father. That pain staring back at him from where she stood at the other end of the hallway, and how he just knew it was reflected back in his eyes.

She’d been lying.

And yet, she still said what she said. She stayed with her father. He was quite aware that it was likely because she wasn’t being given a choice, but that didn’t change anything for Michel. It didn’t change the fact he couldn’t get her the hell out of there. Not to mention, he still hadn’t figured out a way for them to be together.

A whole month wasted.

Fucking useless.

“Michel, you’re not even listening to me, are you?”

Shit.

He gave the guy at the other end of the pool table a wave as if to silently ask for a minute before he went back to their game. Apparently, he couldn’t even hold a conversation and play a game of pool at the same time, lately. His head was just too full.

With his mistakes.

With his inabilities.

With her.

With too much.

“I’m listening,” Michel lied after he’d snatched up the phone, and took it off speaker to make the conversation a little more private. “I was just … busy.”

If his father heard that brief pause as Michel searched for another lie, Dante didn’t call him out on it. He was grateful.

“I thought maybe you were avoiding the question because you don’t want to come home for Christmas, and assumed I would be angry,” his father replied.

“I’m not coming home for Christmas, but I didn’t think you would be mad when I let you know. Besides, aren’t you and Ma coming up next month, anyway?”

Didn’t his mother say they were thinking of stopping in on their way to California in the New Year? How long did that give Michel before his father was in this city, realized the chaos happening all around his son, and yanked him out of Detroit?

A month … ish?

Fucking great.

“Michel, I am sure you can afford a week off school,” his father said. “I know they give you a month break, son.”

Dante wasn’t wrong.

His break started mid-December.

“I’m not coming home for Christmas,” Michel said, not offering any more information and refusing to argue further. “I have to catch up on things for school.”

Not entirely a lie.

He also wouldn’t be studying.

Michel was not leaving this goddamn city unless Gabbie was going with him, or she couldn’t. He really didn’t want to consider the reasons that would make it impossible for her to come with him if he found an out for them both, but he knew it was still a possibility. Nonetheless, it didn’t change his opinion or decision. He was going to be here until the very end, and he would not be leaving without her.

Simple as that.

He still couldn’t explain it to his father.

“Fine,” Dante murmured, bringing him back to the conversation. “I’m starting to think you love Detroit more than you love your own family considering you’ve only come home all of one time since you moved there.”

“I hate this city and most of the people in it.”