Page 116 of Girl, Forgotten (Andrea Oliver 2)

“Hold still.” Mike used the wet towels to gently wipe her face. “You do not wanna be posting pictures of yourself on social media right now.”

Andrea closed her eyes. The towel felt warm on her skin. He carefully blotted her forehead, then traced along the left side of her face. She felt the tension start to drain out of her body. She longed to press her forehead against his chest again.

“The judge’s husband,” Mike said. “It’s not looking good for him.”

Andrea’s eyes opened.

“He wasn’t in great shape to begin with.” Mike stroked gently down the other side of her face. “Is this okay?”

It hurt a little, but she told him, “Yeah.”

Mike gently dabbed around her mouth. Her bottom lip ached where it had been split open. Andrea figured that she deserved the pain.

He said, “There’s a difference between needing to be saved and asking somebody who cares about you for help.”

She couldn’t find the words to answer him.

Mike folded the towel to a fresh square. “How’s it going with Bible?”

“He—” Her throat rasped with a cough. “He’s a legend.”

Mike had moved down to her neck, almost grooming her like a cat. “Did he tell you he was my first partner when I joined WitSec?”

Andrea wasn’t surprised that Bible hadn’t shared the information, but she was surprised that he’d been in WitSec. “Does he know about …?”

“I never told him your status,” Mike said. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if he figured it out. He’s pretty damn smart.”

Bible was more than that. “He’s a damn wizard.”

Mike’s smile was strained. He didn’t want to talk about Catfish Bible. “For the record, only one of my sisters always needs to be bailed out. And I wait on my mom hand and foot because she’s worked hard all of her life and she’s earned it.”

Andrea forced herself not to look away from him. “I shouldn’t have said that. Any of it.”

“Do you think it’s true?”

She felt her head shaking. “No. I love your mom. And your sisters are great.”

Their gaze met for a second before Mike walked back to the sink. He wet a fresh paper towel. “I’ve never rescued you. Actually, if you think about what happened two years ago, you pretty much ran rings around me. I didn’t know which end was up.”

Andrea shook her head, because what she remembered most was feeling completely lost.

He said, “You went through a trauma, Andy. Anybody else would’ve given up. I’m in awe that you made it out alive.”

She felt tears spring into her eyes. She desperately wanted that to be true.

Mike walked back to the bed. He started to clean her hands, though she had already washed them. “I understood why you bailed on me. Things were bad. You needed time to figure out who you were, what you were going to do with your life. I wanted to give you that time. I knew you were worth the wait. But you never came back.”

Andrea tasted blood when she bit her lip.

“The rumors Bible was talking about—” Mike lightly held her hands. He was nervous. She had never seen him nervous before. “I was a mess when you disappeared. Everybody was teasing me about mooning over a girl, but the truth is, you kind of broke my heart.”

Andrea bit her lip harder. She had made such a huge, hurtful mistake.

“I mean—I didn’t pine for you or anything like that.” Mike tried to hide his vulnerability with one of his grins, but it lacked his usual cockiness. “Sure, I wrote some poetry, but I wasn’t wandering around aimlessly wailing your name.”

Andrea laughed, but only to let out some of the regret swelling inside of her chest.

He shrugged. “All I could do was throw myself into a bunch of meaningless sex.”