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“What else would you do?” Mitch asked. Panic filled his voice, and I knew I wasn’t the only one who had noticed it.
“Harvard is another option. I haven’t ruled it out.”
Gasping, my mother clutched her chest. “Oh, Michelle, you’d be so far from all of us, and I’m sure Mitch and Skylar would be disappointed if you moved that far away.”
A darkness filled Michelle’s eyes as she glanced over to Mitch. “Well, we know Skylar would be disappointed.”
“Michelle,” Mitch said as he slowly stood, “please, will you talk to me outside?”
Scooting her chair out, she placed her napkin on the plate and turned to my parents. “Thank you so much for the invitation to dinner. I seemed to have lost my appetite. Happy Thanksgiving, y’all.”
And, like that, Michelle turned to leave.
Skylar jumped up. “Michelle, wait.”
Mitch quickly rounded the table and followed Michelle out of the house.
When Skylar went to follow, my mother stood and said, “No, Skylar. Let him go after her. This is for them to work out.”
Skylar slowly sat back down, and we exchanged looks. Neither one of us had any idea of how this was going to go. The only thing we could do was hope that my mother’s attempts at throwing Mitch and Michelle in the same room worked.
But I had a strange feeling it was going to end up causing more harm than good.
CHAPTER FORTY
* * *
Mitch
MY HEART HADN’T stopped pounding in my chest since the moment Michelle walked into the room.
“Michelle, please wait.”
She lifted her hand as she made her way down the sidewalk. “I don’t have anything to say to you, Mitch.”
“Please! Just give me five minutes. Please.”
When she stopped, hope filled my chest. Dragging in a deep breath, I walked up to her. The smell of her perfume wrapped around my body, giving me that familiar warmth I’d been longing for.
Turning, she glanced at her Apple watch and said, “Your five minutes starts now.”
I nodded. I had no fucking clue what to say to her. “How have you been?”
Her brow lifted. “I’ve been okay. What about you? Dating Lexi?”
“No. I’m not seeing anyone. Are you?”
She looked away. “No.”
Relief hit me, and I couldn’t help but lift one corner of my mouth. “I know you said before that my apology meant nothing to you.”
Her eyes swung back to mine.
“But I wanted you to know, not a second has gone by that I don’t regret what I did to you. To us. I was stupid and foolish, and I acted like a complete asshole.”
“I can’t argue with you on that.”
“Michelle, I miss you.”
Her eyes glassed over. “You miss me because you can’t have me, Mitch.”
“That’s not it.”
“Really? So, how do I know, if we got back together, you wouldn’t get bored again and go searching for something a little more…exciting? After all, you said it yourself; the last few years with me weren’t any fun.”
Thrusting my hand through my hair, I said, “Damn it, Michelle. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I was confused. I was fucking scared.”
“Scared? Of me?”
“Yes! No! Of where our relationship was going. What if we moved in together and we ended up hating each other? What if we found out, six months down the road, that we had nothing in common and ended up like your parents?”
Her mouth fell open. I knew it was a low blow to bring her parents into the picture. Michelle always wondered why her parents stayed together. They slept in separate rooms and never talked to each other. They seemed to stay together for only one thing.
Money.
“You never even gave us a chance to make it together Mitch! You had us failing before we even started. So, you freaked out with the commitment end of it. Why was I good enough to date for two years in high school?”
My hands scrubbed down my face. “This isn’t high school anymore. Everything got real and fast.”
She shook her head. “I get it. Life was changing in a big way for both of us. But you should have been honest with me. If you needed time to figure things out, you should have told me, Mitch. A simple, Hey, I’m confused about these feelings I’m having.”
The moment I saw her tears, a sharp pain hit me square in the chest.
“You shouldn’t have done what you did. You destroyed my heart.”
I walked up to her and took her hands in mine. “I know I shouldn’t have, and if I could take back time…” Closing my eyes, I dragged in a deep breath and blew it out as I tried to steady my voice. “If there were any way I could change what I did, take back my actions, I would do it in a heartbeat. Do you believe me?”
Her chin trembled as she looked into my eyes. Her face was soaked with tears. Reaching up, I wiped her tears away.
