Page 19

Mia has been avoiding me more than usual.

Which is saying something because her normal level of avoidance is pretending like I’m dead.

But this is different, because when she’s not avoiding me, I keep finding her watching me with an unreadable look on her face, like I’m a puzzle she’s trying to solve.

It’s a look I’ve seen her make before, but to have it directed at me specifically is unnerving.

“Is everything okay with Mia?”

Carter looks up from his stopwatch to glance over at where she’s pointedly not looking at me now and shrugs. “I think so. She’s been normal with me.”

“Well, that’s not something I can measure up with, is it?” He frowns at me. “Come on, Carter, you know she hates me. Normal for you would be a miracle for me.”

“All I know is that she and Josie crashed at our house the other night for a girl’s night. She was fine in the morning—maybe a little quiet, but overall fine.”

Frowning, I glance back at Mia, only to find her no longer there, and looked back to Carter. “All right, thanks, man.”

He nods, already turning his focus back to the stopwatch and the kids in the water before I walk away. Emmie is supposed to be here in about half an hour for her next private lesson, and I have some prep to do, anyway.

When I enter the lobby, Josie smiles at me, and I know she’s probably the only person with answers. “Hey, Josie.” I lean against the counter, grinning down at her. “Is there anything going on with Mia I should know about?”

Her smile falters and I worry she’s not going to tell me anything. Neither one of them is ever willing to betray the other, which is something I find admirable, but don’t see how it could matter in this situation. It’s not like she’d be betraying her trust too badly.

Still, I don’t want to force her to tell me something she’s not comfortable sharing. I stand straighter. “Never mind. It’s not a big deal; I was worried.”

“She didn’t know you are the founder and president of Operation Fly.

” I lean back against the counter, frowning slightly.

“Kat and I were talking about it the other night when we were hanging out. She overheard and asked about it. Honestly, I thought she knew the whole time and didn’t want to talk about it because of whatever happened between you two. ”

There are a lot of things Mia doesn’t know, but despite Bryce’s comment when I first saw Emmie, I didn’t think this was one of them. “She really didn’t know?”

“I know, right?” Josie replies. “She was always the one doing research on things we should support, and she dug deep, making sure it was something we believed in. The only thing I can think of is that it was gaining traction as we were making our exit.”

Or she somehow knew it was me behind it and chose not to support it. “Maybe.”

Josie must sense my uncertainty because she’s shaking her head. “She really didn’t know, Ronan. Trust me, Mia can keep a lot of things concealed, but she cannot lie to me when I ask her something. She has a tell.”

“A tell?” I don’t want to use the information against Mia, but if I knew what her tell was, I could figure out if she’s being truthful about Omaha not being the real issue. “What kind of tell?”

“Absolutely not.” And just like that, Josie was back to being the defensive best friend. “I am not telling you that. She considers it a sign of weakness.”

And the last thing Mia wants to do is let her guard down around me. “That’s fair. Thanks for the information, Josie.”

Her grin is back in place. “No problem.”

Every time I talk to Josie, their friendship makes more and more sense to me.

Mia’s seen as the badass who’s unafraid of anything, but there’s a spark of that in Josie, too.

The way she can bounce from a stone wall of protection to openly happy and warm can be startling.

She might be underestimated, but she can easily hold her own.

As I’m heading up the stairs to my office, I pass Mia. She pointedly doesn’t look at me, which isn’t surprising. The part of me that’s always tempted to push her buttons—see how long we can go before I push her too far—wants to make a comment, but I refrain.

She comes to a stop a couple of steps ahead of me, hazel eyes narrowing in such a glare that there’s no green to be seen, only the thick dark ring surrounding it. “Let me guess, Josie told you?”

I slow to a stop, keeping a careful distance between us. “Told me what?”

“Don’t play innocent, Ronan. You know what I’m talking about.”

“I do, but I don’t see why you’re making a big deal out of it.” Maybe if I go easy on her, it’ll help ease the weird tension between us. “You didn’t know I run a national charity, and now you do. It’s not that big of a deal. I made sure to keep my name out of it as much as possible.”

“But that’s what I don’t get,” she snaps. “I know you, Ronan, you love the spotlight. Why wouldn’t you want your name all over it?”

Something in me snaps—something that’s been brewing from the moment I walked into this place. “You do know me, Mia! You’re choosing to pretend you don’t by parroting the bullshit the media spread about me. Every media outlet but you.”

“Well, I’ve learned I’m blind to people sometimes.

” She crosses her arms over her chest and in the V-neck maroon T-shirt she’s wearing, it’s hard to ignore the way it accentuates her breasts.

I fight to keep my gaze from drifting down, but I can’t stop the quick peek, which makes a shriek leave Mia’s mouth. “Are you shitting me right now, Ronan?”

“I’m sorry!” I say immediately, hands up in a defensive manner. It doesn’t matter how attracted I still am to her, I shouldn’t have objectified her like that. “I didn’t mean to!”

“All you care about is the way a woman looks. And even then, it varies in the moment. What you wanted one day could be the next day’s trash.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I drop my hands, my anger rising. “You know that’s not true!”

“No, I thought that wasn’t true, but then the real you came out and I realized I was tricked.”

“So this is about what happened in Omaha!”

She flinches away from me, and I really wish Josie had told me what her tell is because that right there tells me I’m right.

“Stop bringing up Omaha! It has nothing to do with Omaha! I don’t want to be around you anymore.

” She closes the distance between us, pushing me out of the way. “Why can’t you get— ”

What happens next happens so quickly it’ll probably always be a blur in my mind.

She hits the edge of the stair wrong and tumbles.

I reach out to catch her before she goes down.

Then, it’s like we’re in our early twenties again.

Mia, in my arms, my gaze locked with the most beautiful hazel eyes I’ve ever seen, and everything shifts.

Those kids had no idea what was about to happen to them. They had no idea how many times their hearts would break and stubbornly come back together. They had no idea they would end up here, hating one another for something only one of them is aware of. Those kids—

The angle is awkward when Mia reaches around my neck and yanks me down into a heated kiss. I freeze for the briefest second, the reality of what’s happening coming into focus.

But then I move my hands on the small of her back. I gently pull her up until we’re both standing. I can feel her start to pull away, but I can’t let that happen. I can’t lose this moment. I pull her closer, taking control of the kiss. I feel her melt against me.

Maybe we stand there for seconds or years, but it’s a connection I don’t want to lose. Having her in my arms makes me feel like I’m standing in the eye of a hurricane as it all crashes around me. Everything outside of us is chaos, but we are beautifully still.

The moment Mia realizes what she’s doing is evident. Every part of her tenses in my arms, and I immediately loosen my grip to make sure she knows she can pull away. She allows herself another second, and in that second, I feel nothing but hope.

That hope shatters when she pushes me back against the railing. Our lips separate and both of us breathe heavily.

Her glare is back. “We are never doing that again. Do you understand me?”

I hold my hands up in surrender. “You kissed me.”

“ Never again. ”

She jogs down the rest of the stairs, swinging the exit door open, and letting it slam shut. In the middle of an empty stairwell, I’m left in stunned silence. I press a finger against my lip, the ghost of her lips still pressed against mine.

I make the decision then and there to do whatever I can to fix this.

Because if I fix it, then there’s a chance it’ll happen again. And again. And again.

“I’m coming!” I call out to whoever is on the other side of my door, knocking away. Lezak is happily trotting along at my heels. I pull the door open to see Bryce standing on the other end. My brow arches. “Hey, man, what are you doing here?”

Bryce holds up a six-pack of beer, looking like a sad puppy. “I’m officially pathetic, man. My girlfriend is hanging out with her best friend, and my best friend is hanging out with his girlfriend.”

I step back, opening the door wider. “Wow, I’m not even the second choice.”

Bryce steps into the house, handing me a beer out of the pack before heading straight for the couch. Lezak has found a new person to shadow. Neither one of us says anything, but I follow him, collapsing onto the couch beside him.

Twisting the cap off his bottle, he raises a brow at the one I set on the table. “Are we not drinking tonight?”

“You can go for it,” I tell him, shifting the placement of my leg. “I took some painkillers earlier; my leg was acting up. I can drink on them, but it never ends well. I can drive you home if you need to drink more than one. ”