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But I was never any good with emotions, and Mia was the only one who had made me feel so many things at once. It was too much. Too much, too fast. They were all hitting me now, pelting me like bullets from a firing squad. Anger, attraction, regret, pain, arousal, obsession, betrayal, possessiveness.
Love?
No.
I didn’t know. It was something I’d never felt before. I’d thought that weekend that maybe I loved her. I knew it was crazy, but it was the only thing that made sense of it all. Now, I just felt lost. But out of all of the emotions swirling inside me, anger burst through to the forefront.
“What are you doing here?” My tone wasn’t friendly, and judging by Alex’s angry face and Mia’s slight step backward, it was obvious.
She took a breath. Steadying herself, maybe.
“I wanted to come here to talk to you.”
I laughed, a humorless sound that echoed in the cold, quiet evening air.
“Why would you think I’d want to talk to you?”
Alex took a step back, to let us speak, but not far enough away to leave Mia on her own. And wasn’t that something? My sister was taking her side…
Mia’s face fell, but she quickly regained composure and nodded.
“That’s fair,” she said. “But I’d like to explain. Could we maybe go somewhere and talk please?”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.” I wanted to take back the words as soon as I said them.
Tears welled in the corners of her eyes but she blinked them away and they didn’t fall. Mia was strong as hell and I was a fucking asshole.
“I understand. But I still wanted to—”
“I don’t care, Mia. You made your choice when you disappeared. I don’t want to hear anything else you have to say. So if you came here for that,” I gestured to the street, to the town, around me, “sorry to break it to you, but it was a wasted trip.” I looked her up and down. Just one last time. And then I forced my legs to carry me down the street, back to where I came from.
My appetite was gone, my emotions were still hitting me from all sides, and I’d just destroyed the only person I ever wanted. I vaguely heard Alex calling me an asshole as I turned the corner, rushing as fast as I could to my truck in the hospital parking lot.
As soon as I reached it, I locked myself inside and gripped the wheel to keep from punching it. I counted to ten. I breathed in and out. I did all of those stupid fucking exercises the therapist my dad made me see after all the shit went down with my family. I didn’t know if any of it worked, because I still wanted to punch something.
I might have been a jerk to Mia, but it was better she not see me like this. I needed to get myself under control.
Fuck.
Mia had really come all this way to talk to me. Not a phone call or a text, but showing up here in Maine. That had to have meant something, right?
Shame at the way I’d just acted joined the roster of emotions flooding through my veins. I wasn’t sure how much more I could take. But I knew I needed to figure things out. Mia wanted to talk to me, and I couldn’t deny my curiosity at why she’d ghosted. The least I could do would be to hear her out. I doubted I could feel much worse than I did at this moment, anyway.
I’d calm myself down, and then I’d find her. Whatever game we were playing, it would end tonight.
five
Well that hadn’t gone at alllike I’d hoped. And now I was embarrassed, hurt, and even a little angry, an emotion I was rarely used to feeling. I knew that I’d hurt Drew by leaving the way I did, but I never imagined he’d be so cross with me. Cold and grumpy, sure. Standoffish? Of course.
But purposely mean? I didn’t think he had it in him. Not for me. At least not after what we’d shared together.
Visions of that time came back in full force as I walked into the cottage’s front door. It was an assault on my emotions, and I let it wash over me. The way Drew made love to me took center stage. He would never call it that, but that last time, I know that’s what it had been.
Drew was rough. He never denied it, tried to warn me away. But his coarse way of talking, of touching, was exactly what I’d secretly been craving. It was exactly what I wanted, what I needed.
And after he opened up to me about his family and their trauma, it was like a whole other side of him emerged. He was still rough, but there was a depth there that took over.
“Look at me, baby.”
