I paused for a long moment and stuffed my hands into my pockets. “It’s not really my place to tell you about it. I’d rather you talk to Mia.” There was only so much I could say about it. I couldn’t speak on what Mia had gone through. Hell, I doubted she wanted to live through Mason’s torture again.
She sighed to herself and closed her eyes, a tear falling from her cheek. “My daughter deserves so much better than him.” When she reopened her eyes, she stared directly at me and wiped the tear with the back of her hand. “I don’t love the age gap between you and her, but I need her to be happy. Are you going to make her happy, or is this some fling? Because if it is, I’m going to kindly ask you to stop it right now before she gets hurt.”
“This isn’t a fling,” I said, pulling a chair next to her bed and sitting down in it. “I would do anything to see her happy. I told her from day one that she deserves someone better than Mason.”
After a few moments of silence, she nodded. “Good, because …” She grabbed my hand and squeezed. “I need to be honest with you …” There was a long pause, and I held my breath, unsure if I’d like this honesty right now. She sounded too weak and too sad for it to be anything good. She frowned. “I don’t know if I’ll survive this round of surgery.”
My gaze fell to the bed. I didn’t know what to say, and I didn’t know what I’d say to Mia if something happened to her mother.
Mia’s mother grabbed my chin and made me look back up at her. “Oh, don’t do that. I need you to be strong and to take care of my daughter because I know that I never will. I’ve been getting weaker and weaker. I’ve been trying to be optimistic around Mia, but … it’s difficult for me to do the simplest things anymore. If this surgery doesn’t kill me—”
“Don’t say that,” I said, shaking my head. “You’re going to survive. And when you do, I’ll send you and Mia on a relaxing vacation somewhere.” It was what they needed after all of this.
She smiled up at me. “Don’t get your hopes up. I’m being honest with you.” Her voice was quiet. “Save your money and take Mia somewhere nice. Make her happy. She deserves it after what her father and then Mason put her through. I can tell she’s worn out, but you make her happier than I’ve ever seen her. She has that spark in her eyes again.”
I opened my mouth to speak, to deny that she would die during surgery, but she shook her head.
“Please don’t argue with me. I don’t have the strength for it. All I ask is that you take care of her. She needs to be loved by a man. All she knows is hurt and betrayal.”
After a couple of moments, I nodded at her. I didn’t believe that she’d die. I didn’twantto believe it, but she was asking for me to love her daughter … something I already did.
“And, Michael, please don’t tell her we had this chat. I don’t want her to worry.”
CHAPTER33
MIA
Ididn’t have anywhere to go. I couldn’t go back to the hospital because I knew Mason would be waiting for me in the parking lot, looking for a fight. I couldn’t stay at Michael’s because I knew he and Melissa were about to get into the fight of the decade. So, I went to the one place I knew I’d be somewhat safe.
Serena’s apartment.
When I parked in front of the townhouse, I had stopped crying, but my eyes were bloodshot, my whole body hurt, and I just wanted someone to make me smile. The light turned on in her front window, and she peeked her head out from behind the curtain to see me.
A few moments later, she appeared at Michael’s passenger door. “Why do you have his—what’s wrong?” she asked, brows immediately furrowing.
I stormed out of the car, slammed the car door shut, and pulled her into a tight hug, resting my head on her shoulder. I didn’t know what to say, but Serena was the only person who seemed to accept this thing going on between Michael and me.
She cradled me for a moment, and then she pulled away and tugged me toward the family-owned ice cream shop around the corner called Sprinkling. “Tell me what happened over ice cream. That always makes things better.”
We walked toward Sprinkling, which was known for the sheer number of sprinkles that they smothered on all their ice cream.
After ordering, I slumped onto one of the wooden benches and licked some of the rainbow sprinkles off my vanilla ice cream. “Melissa knows about me and Michael,” I said to break the silence. I didn’t know if that was a good starting place to talk about the shit I had witnessed, but that was the only thing I could get myself to say.
Serena’s eyes widened. “She does? How’d she find out? What’d she say?”
My lips quivered, and I bit the damn ice cream, so I’d get brain-freeze instead of crying again. My two front teeth stung, and I leaned forward. “She was at the house when Michael and I came home. And she—”
Serena plastered a big smile on her face. “Did she see you two fucking?”
“No,” I said. “I actually caught her with Mason.”
Serena’s face went totally blank, and her cone almost slipped out of her hand. She choked on her ice cream, shook her head, and gave me the most confused expression of the damn century. “What’d you just say? She was with Mason?”
“Turns out, she’s been sleeping with him for months.”
She balled her hand into a fist, and her cone broke to pieces in her hand, the ice cream going everywhere. “Are you fucking serious?! She was fucking Mason, out of all fucking people.” She shook her head, a solemn expression crossing her face. “I … I … I’m sorry, Mia.”
But she had nothing to apologize for. It wasn’t her fault that our best friend was a no-good, betraying bitch who fucked people’s boyfriends and didn’t seem to have a problem with it. I bit my ice cream again, but this time, I was angry. I couldn’t believe she’d done this to me. Why would she hurt me like that? Did all our years of friendship mean nothing to her?
