Page 24

Josie is sitting at the picnic table outside the door when I arrive at Adair bright and early Monday morning. And I immediately have an answer to one of Mia’s questions—Josie didn’t know about the accident before, but she definitely knows now.

I stop at the bench she’s sitting at with a raised eyebrow. “Did you lose your key or something?” Biting her lip, she shakes her head. “If there’s a snake or something in there, Josie, you need to call Bryce because I don’t fuck with snakes.”

That at least earns me a small giggle, but then she’s setting a cup of coffee on the table and a bag with something that smells delicious next to it. She pushes it toward me. I drop my bag on the ground and slowly lower myself onto the bench. “So he told you.”

“I wish I would have known before,” she admits while I unwrap my sandwich. “You don’t have to worry. I’m not going to cry. I did that to Bryce over the weekend.”

I pause before I take a bite of my sandwich. “Are you sure? You were looking pretty cow-eyed when I walked up.”

She rolls her eyes, fiddling with a strand of her auburn hair. “I promise. ”

“You didn’t have to do this, Josie. You don’t owe me or anything like that,” I tell her as I reach for my coffee.

Her smile is bright, nearly blinding. “I know, but I want to remind you that you don’t have to do anything alone anymore.

I’m sorry your parents suck. You and Kat could talk about crappy dads together.

I’m sorry you felt like no one was there back then, but I want you to know we’re here now. All of us.”

Well, shit. I chew the bite of my sandwich, not trusting myself to say anything in response to that right away. “I’m assuming Bryce told you about his part in the whole thing.”

“He did.” She sighs. “But of course I think he downplayed it. He told me he did what he had to do, but I was talking to Mia about it, and we think he wasn’t telling us the whole truth. There were a lot of unexplained absences in that timeframe.”

“You talked to Mia about it?” I ask, surprised to have her telling me anything about herself.

Her gaze softens. “She feels guilty, Ronan. We both do. She’s happy you finally told her, which led to me finding out, but there’s still guilt there.

We don’t see you any differently or anything like that.

We have to come to terms with someone we care about being in that much pain, even if it was years ago. ”

“Mia doesn’t care about me, Josie. She’s made that loud and clear. Baking me bread and spending time with my dog doesn’t change that. Plus, I don’t want pity.”

“Oh, my god.” She groans, kicking her head back. “You two are the most annoying idiots I’ve ever known. And I’m dating Bryce—that should tell you something.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know you care for her,” Josie insists, her tone completely changing. “At least as a friend, but I suspect as more than a friend. And I think it’s always been that way with you. ”

“I never denied anything.” I shrug. “The problem isn’t me, though. It’s Mia and her ability to hold a grudge. A grudge over something I’m clueless about. I want to fix it, but she’s not exactly playing a fair game here.”

“That’s a sign she cares, Ronan. Look, you’re not the only one who’s had something traumatic happen in the years since you’ve seen one another. There’s a reason she took a significant pay cut and step back in her career to be here. She’s not going to let her guard down so easily again.”

“Well, I don’t think she’s going to let me in.”

“And I’m not telling you what happened to get her here, but it was bad.

” Josie looks over my shoulder, smile widening as she waves.

I turn to see Mia walking toward us. Her steps falter slightly when she sees me sitting there.

Josie’s getting up when I face forward. “All I’ll say is my boyfriend is a stubborn asshole for the people he loves. He doesn’t like to see them hurting.”

“Wait, what does—”

“Well,” she declares loudly, “I need to get home and go full gremlin mode. I’ll never publish a book if I don’t write it!”

“Did you seriously come here at seven o’clock in the morning to bring me coffee?” I question. “You hate mornings.”

“I sure do.” She grins. “Just remember this moment if you ever question how much I love you, friend!”

Shaking my head, I finish off my sandwich while Josie and Mia talk briefly. The footsteps behind me grow louder before a shadow falls over the table. Mia is taking her best friend’s spot. “How much do you want to bet she gets no writing done and is fast asleep within the hour?”

“Without a doubt,” I agree.

Mia looks tired as she rests her chin in her palm, squinting at me. It’s already starting to get hot out, and I wouldn’t normally choose to sit in the sun to drink my coffee, but there’s a peacefulness here I don’t want to break.

“You told me something really shitty the other day,” she says.

I ball up my trash and set it aside, focusing fully on her. “I did.”

“I don’t…This doesn’t mean we’re friends or everything is magically okay, Ronan.” She frowns. “I’m still mad about the past. I believe you when you say you don’t know what I’m talking about, but I do, and I’m not ready to talk to you about it.”

I press my lips into a thin line, trying to keep my frustrations at bay. She’s talking to me, at least that’s something. “I can’t fix it if I don’t know what it is.”

“I know.” She nods. “I just…I won’t hold that against you, okay?”

Resigned, I nod slowly. “What does this have to do with the shitty thing I told you the other day?”

“I want to share a shitty thing that happened to me.”

“This isn’t a competition, Mia. We don’t need to compare trauma.”

She looks startled at the idea. “That’s not what I want to do at all!”

Exhaustion is seeping into my bones. I’m tired of this back and forth with Mia that seems to never get us anywhere. “Then why tell me?”

“I can’t talk to you about what happened between us right now—”

“I know.” I groan, dropping my head into my hands. “I get it, Mia!”

“ But ,” she stresses, “that doesn’t mean I won’t ever want to talk about it. If I tell you my shitty thing, I’m hoping it’ll be proof to you that I’m working on being ready because there are only three people who know the whole story besides me, and that’s Josie, Bryce, and my therapist. ”

Hope and despair are weird feelings to have fighting against each other in the pit of my stomach.

On one hand, Mia just told me I could still get forgiveness and the chance to fix things, but she wants to share something that changed her forever.

And if there’s one thing I’m not sure I’d ever be able to handle, it’s seeing Mia’s heartbreak.

I know from experience that every time you tell a story like this, that’s exactly what happens.

She takes my silence as a prompt to continue. “Has Bryce ever told you about my ex? Her name is Bianca.”

“You know Bryce would never tell me about an ex unless it involved your safety,” I remind her.

“True.” She sighs. “All right, Bianca and I were together for a couple of years. I thought we were going to end up married. She came from money, her parents coddled her, and wanted to give her everything she wanted. You know that’s not my style, but she tried to change that.”

The story unfolds from there, how Bianca wanted to open a marketing firm with Mia but have her parents give them money to cover all the upfront costs and how offended she was when Mia didn’t want to take such a generous gift.

While Mia loves being able to help small business owners see their dreams come true, Bianca only wanted to make money for being on social media all the time—even I know that’s not all there is to marketing.

Mia had thought they’d figured it out and everything would be fine, until she came home one day to find all of Bianca’s stuff gone. A few moments later, she’d received a text message that declared their relationship done and a waste of time.

“Shit, Mia.” I frown, reaching out to squeeze her arm. She lets me, wiping angrily at the corners of her eyes. “That’s horrible. No one deserves to be walked out on like that. ”

“That’s not even the worst part.” She laughs bitterly.

“The worst part is that she decided ruining my trust wasn’t good enough; she wanted to ruin my career, too.

She moved forward with opening the firm, then proceeded to steal my clients from underneath me.

She ran my name through the mud. My reputation in Charlotte plummeted and the firm I worked for was ready to fire me rather than protect me.

Which further broke my heart because that action went against everything I thought they stood for. ”

The pieces of this puzzle, the explanation for what Mia’s doing here, slowly comes together. “And that’s why you’re here?”

She wipes her eyes again, nodding. “Bryce offered me a job. It was the chance to get away from it all, to start over surrounded by people I could trust. He pretends what he did wasn’t a big deal, but we all know it was.”

“He does have that tendency,” I reply thoughtfully.

She agrees before taking a deep breath. “So there’s my story and part of the reason why my already shaky trust issues have completely taken over. It’s part of the reason I’m not ready to face the past, Ronan.”

Shaking my head, I offer her a smile. “You don’t need to explain it to me, Mia. Take as long as you need. Maybe we can be friends, at least?”

She considers the words for a second, biting her lip. “See, friend is making warning bells go off in my head.”

Because she doesn’t trust me anymore. Whatever I did—whatever happened—added to her shaky foundation, and Bianca sent everything tumbling down. Where I had a chance before her ex, I now have to fight for my life because someone didn’t realize the good thing they had and destroyed it instead .

But I won’t pressure her. I won’t force her to make decisions she’s not ready to make. Not now; not ever. “All right, not friends. What would you call us?”

“What about frenemies?”

I snort at the word I haven’t heard since high school but can’t fight my smile when she holds her hand out to me. I shake it. I could still have some fun with this. “Fine, we’ll be frenemies. I think I’ll like this.”

Her brow arches. “Yeah?”

“Oh, yeah. I can still tease the hell out of you, but still know you like me just a little bit.”

She rolls her eyes, then squints up at me when I stand. “And why would you want to do that?”

I lean down until our noses are practically brushing. She takes in a sharp breath and her eyes flutter closed, which makes me smirk. “Because, Mia, you’re still hot as hell when you’re mad.”

Her hazel eyes snap open and lower into a glare as I pull back, laughing. “Grow up!”

“Oh, trust me.” I smirk at her, allowing my eyes to track down the amazing view I have before me. “I’m plenty grown up and you already know that.”

“Oh, my god.” She groans, exasperated. “You’re seriously annoying.”

“Sure,” I call over to her as I make my way to the door to unlock it. I hear her get up to follow me. “Pretend all you want, Mia, but I happen to know something important about how this situation will end.”

She stops a couple of feet from where I’m holding the door open for her, putting her hands on her hips. “Yeah, and what’s that?”

“The enemies—or frenemies—always become lovers in the end. ”

Her eyebrows shoot up her forehead, eyes going wide, and a faint blush coats her cheeks as she stomps inside. “I should have never come here this morning; I should go back to yesterday.”

“What was so great about yesterday?” I flip the lobby light on, turning to lock the door behind us since we’re not open yet.

“Well, yesterday I liked you. Yesterday I cared about you.”

The declaration has me spinning to look at her, a thick lump forming in my throat. “Oh, yeah?” She lets out an affirmative “mm-hmm.” “Well, what about today?”

“Today I’m back to finding you annoying as hell!”

My smile grows with each annoyed thump her feet make on the stairs as she heads to her office.

Seconds later, I hear the door close. Shaking my head, I head up the same stairs to get up to the gym for my workout.

When I reach the top, I have to cross through the common area to get to the gym, and she is peeking up at me out of the fringe that’s fallen in her face.

Her cheeks turn bright red when I give her a wink.

Yeah, frenemies can be fun.