“She does, Mike. She said—”
“She’s hurt,” he interrupts. “She’s angry. She wants someone to blame.” I stare up at him, and he says, “She knows you better than that, Hailey. Anyone who knows you knows that you would never do that.”
I’m not sure I believe him. I remember the fury in her eyes when she burst into my room like she was going to rip my heart out of my chest with nothing but fingernails and teeth.
“She knows I would never do that either,” Mike adds when he sees the doubt on my face. “She’ll cool down. You’ll see. Tomorrow, all of this will blow over.”
The basset hound finally manages to hop up far enough to crawl onto our laps, its heavy head a comforting weight on the tops of my thighs. I scratch it behind the ears and say, “I don’t think so.”
Mike scratches the dog’s rump, and it kicks its leg, in heaven. “Either way, you’re coming home with me tonight, Hailey. You’re not sleeping in a kennel.”
“Okay,” I say to assuage the guilt I realize he feels. He thinks Danica kicked me out for something he did. He thinks I’m innocent in this.
“Danica is mad at me,” he tries to assure me. “Not you.”
I sigh.
“You’re cousins. She can’t stay mad forever. She’ll probably feel terrible for what she did, and she’ll beg you to forgive her.”
I don’t tell him he’s wrong, even though he is. Danica’s conscience died sometime during puberty, and now she does whatever she wants without guilt or remorse. I’m sure there’s already a missed voice mail from my uncle waiting on my phone. He’ll ask me to call him, and I will—but Danica will have already cried to him, and my silent tears won’t mean a thing.
“Okay?” Mike asks, pulling away to search my eyes. “No more talk about leaving.”
I can’t help the tear that spills silently down my cheek, or the one that follows it when the pad of Mike’s thumb wipes the first one away. I nod in agreement, because I don’t want to talk about it.
Danica isn’t going to change her mind. I’ll have no choice but to move back home.
Even if Mike doesn’t want me to. Even if I don’t want to either.
There’s nothing left to talk about.
Chapter 19
It’s late by the time we arrive back at Mike’s house. Since I was in no emotional state to drive, he helped me into the passenger seat of his truck, and sometime during the long, silent drive, I collected the pieces of myself.
By the time my feet hit the gravel of his driveway, my last tear has long since dried against my cheek, and inside, I help myself to his linen closet. I sort through stacked sheets, blankets, and towels I washed and folded myself just this morning, and Mike ventures off to find us something to eat.
“You’re not making this easy!” he shouts from the kitchen as I shake a navy bedsheet out and let it settle on the couch.
“Just find some cereal and beer,” I yell back, knowing that his freezer might as well be a meat locker. When I peeked in there last night, it looked like a Tetris game of supreme pizzas and meatball Hot Pockets.
Mike pokes his head out of the kitchen, and I stop unfolding sheets.
“What?”
“Did you seriously just suggest we have cereal and beer for dinner?”
“Oh,” I start, remembering that he’s still recovering from his cold. “You’re right. We should probably find you some soup or—”
“No,” Mike says, the corners of his mouth tipping up. “I feel better. I’m starved.”
“What is it then?” I ask, and he shakes his head, still smiling.
“You.”
He disappears back into the kitchen, and something that feels an awful lot like fuzzy baby caterpillars rolls around in my belly as I continue making up the couch for the night. By the time Mike joins me in the living room, with two bowls of Lucky Charms and two Guinesses, I’ve tucked and straightened and fluffed myself a bed that I can’t wait to forget about this hellish day in.
Mike sits down next to me and hands me a bowl of cereal. “You know you’re not sleeping on the couch, right?”
“Huh?” I ask through a mouthful of colorful marshmallows. I hold the bowl under my chin and try to keep milk from spilling out of my mouth.
“I’ll take the couch. You can sleep in my bed.”
I shake my head and swallow what I’m guessing is no fewer than twenty hearts, stars, and horseshoes. “No way. You’re still recovering. I’m fine on the couch.”
“Hailey,” Mike says, setting his cereal on the coffee table and picking up a beer instead, “there’s no way in hell I’m sleeping in that big comfortable bed while you’re out here on the couch.”
“It’s a comfortable couch . . .”
“Which is why I’m taking it.”
I furrow my brow at him, but his expression remains uncompromising—unblinking eyes over a straight-lined mouth. “It’s enough that you’re letting me stay here, Mike.”
“No, it’s not. I’m not the asshole that’s going to make a lady sleep on his couch.”
I snort at the idea of me being a lady. “So this is sexism,” I accuse with a scowl.
“Call it what you want,” Mike says, smirking as he steals a red heart from my bowl. “You’re still sleeping in my bed.”
I force myself to glare at him in spite of the warmth flooding my cheeks, but he continues smiling at me, and my heart skips rope behind my ribs. I ignore the double-dutch jumping and try to remain pragmatic—I want the couch, he wants the couch, but we both can’t sleep on the couch. And even if we could, that would be stupid.
“Look, we’re both grown adults,” I say before I can overthink what I’m about to suggest next. “If you’re really not going to let me sleep on the couch, we can share the bed.”
“Fine,” Mike immediately agrees.
“Fine,” I echo while my brain screams, OH MY FLIPPING GOD! Did you seriously just agree to sleep with Mike?! In his bed! Together?! Together!!! In his bed! What?! What the hell happened to staying on the wagon?!
“How are those Lucky Charms?” Mike asks, and my shell-shocked gaze drops down to my soggy oats. My mind is still screaming that I just made a huge mistake, that sleeping in his bed is only going to reignite my stupid sparks, that it’s wrong, that it’s going to make Danica hate me more than she already does, that she’ll never know, that I’ll know, that she’s my cousin, that she never deserved him, that he’s single now, that he’s a rock star, that he doesn’t like me as anything more than a friend, that none of this should matter, that I— “Hailey?” Mike asks.
“Huh?” I squeak.
“What’s on your mind?”
What should be on my mind is my education, my uncle, my tuition, my future. But the real answer is Mike’s bed, and I am most definitely never ever sharing that information with him. “Your music video,” I rattle, frantically changing the subject from beds to literally anything else. “Will you still let Danica be in it?”