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“I…well…”
“Well?” she asks, with one arched eyebrow.
“I…I don’t have feelings for…him…anymore.”
She scoffs right in my face as though I’ve just said the most ridiculous thing she’s ever heard. “You don’t have feelings for him anymore,” she repeats, her eyes rolling dramatically. “You’ve had five years to practice that line, and it isn’t even remotely convincing.”
“It’s true.”
She sighs and shrugs. “Maybe it is. Time will tell.”Great.Now, I have another person who’s going to be watching me like a hawk. “Your son looks just like my brother. You realize that, right?”
“Weird coincidence.”
She scrunches up her nose. “You better hope your sister shares your delusional denial.”
I squirm in place, feeling completely put on the spot. “If you’re trying to make me feel bad, don’t bother. I already feel horrible. About all of this.”
“Which part, exactly?” Mila asks. “Lying to your sister? To your son? Forcing a good man to forgo raising his own child? Kidnapping my nephew? Or the part where you just up and left so you wouldn’t have to face the consequences of what you’d done?”
No one has ever said it quite likethatbefore. My cheeks are burning hot enough to burst into flame.
“All of it,” I finally croak. Rhetorical or not, her questions deserve an answer. “But I never intended to avoid the consequences. Only hurting my sister.”
“You keep saying that like it’s never going to happen.” She rolls her eyes again. “You keep acting like your sister’s a blind idiot. You and I both know she’s far from it.”
She’s brutal right now, and a weird, masochistic part of me actually likes it. I never had a best friend to verbally slap me with harsh truths; truth be told, I never let anyone get close enough to try.
“All I’m asking for,” I say carefully, “is some time. Please…just don’t tell her.” The stone in my gut says I have no right to ask her for anything. The fool in my heart says I have to try.
She glares at me. “Fucking hell, Taylor. How little do you think of me? Of course I’m not going to tell her. It’ll be way more painful to make you do it yourself.”
I’m torn between a laugh and a tear. I smile, but it fades away at the sight of the ferocious look in her eyes. “I’m sorry I left without saying goodbye. I just thought—”
“I’d tell my brother and stop you from leaving?” she asks.
“Well…yes.”
She sighs. “I can see why you might have thought that, but if you’d made up your mind…I would have tried to help you.”
“No way. You worship your brother.”
She throws me a glare. “I love my brother,” she corrects. “I look up to him, but I don’t worship him. I get it, though—you thought my loyalty to him would trump our friendship. Wait—Sorry. That’s silly of me, assuming we even had a friendship. Clearly, I was wrong.”
I frown. “Mila, that’s not—”
“I’ve been trapped before in a situation that I wanted to escape from.” She folds her arms and sighs. “I was desperate for a way out and nobody could see that. Not until I finally asked for help. My point is, I would have helped you if you told me that you wanted to leave. That you were determined to leave. And yeah, I would have appreciated a goodbye.”
“I’m sorry.” I smile sadly. “I understand if you’re mad at me, and I understand if you want to stay that way forever. But if you do want to forgive me… well, I’ll be here.”
“I may never get to that point.”
I nod. “I suppose I’ll just have to deal.”
Adam slaps the surface of the water, splashing it everywhere. Fed up, the crows flap away and squawk in irritation.
Mila turns her gaze to him and she softens almost instantaneously. “He’s beautiful,” she breathes.
“Yeah,” I murmur. “He is.”
