“She wasn’t my type, but she was sweet. I started to trust again.” He blew a deep breath out of his nose, as if he was reminiscing on old times, and frowned. “But I wasn’t attracted to her. She was nice, cared about me, but … I didn’t love her. I couldn’t love her. Something inside of me wouldn’t let me.”
He clutched my knee, moonlight bouncing off his face. I watched him carefully, feeling so good myself, just hearing that Michael understood me. He had been through this before. He had felt how I felt, knew exactly how difficult it was to look in the mirror and feel nothing but hurt and pain.
“And then I met you,” he said, smiling. “Well … I had met you before, but when I saw you at the house with Mason, the way he treated you … I couldn’tnotshow you that there was something more.”
“You wanted to be my savior?”
“No,” he said. “I just didn’t want you to drown in a loveless relationship.”
My insides felt warm. “When did you know you were in love with me?”
The question took him by surprise. He raised his brows, eyes lighting up the entire car. “When did I know I was in love with you?” He contemplated for a few moments, then smiled. “It was one night we were at the hospital. We were eating dinner. It was raining outside. You were watching the raindrops roll down the window. You looked over at me with a soft smile, and I knew.”
He cupped my face gently and lifted it. “It’s going to take time … I know it is. But I’m not going anywhere. I promised you forever, and I mean forever.”
CHAPTER20
MIA
The next morning, my stomach felt like it was about to burst. I tore the blankets off of me and stumbled out of bed toward our bathroom, doubling over the toilet and grasping on to the seat.
Please, don’t be all that wine. Please, don’t be all the wine. Anything but that wine.
“Mia,” Michael said, his voice groggy with sleep. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”
I heaved into the toilet, nothing coming out. My stomach felt like it was twisting and turning, hurting more than it’d ever had hurt before. My fingers dug into the seat until they turned white.
Michael pulled my hair out of my face, crouching behind me and rubbing my back.
“Oh God,” I whispered, feeling something come up. “I think I ate or drank something bad last night.”
My mind flickered to that party last night, and I cursed myself. Maybe Linda had known we’d be there and told the cooks to fuck with me or something.
I wouldn’t put it past her.
I pushed my head into the toilet and let it come up. All that wine from last night hurled into the toilet, sloshing back and forth in the water.
“That wine,” I said, clutching my stomach. “Oh my God—”
He held my hair back tighter and stayed with me the entire time, rubbing my back as I puked my stomach out. Even when I finished, I felt like I needed to throw up more and more, but nothing would come out.
“You barely had any wine last night,” Michael said. “Three sips at the most.”
After sitting by the toilet for ten more minutes, I sat back and groaned. What the hell was that? Why’d I feel like I was about to puke up an entire—
“Let’s get you in the shower,” Michael said, turning on the shower until steam tumbled over the top of it.
I rested my head against the cupboard and moaned. The feeling of death was disappearing, so I hopped into the shower and hoped to God that it didn’t happen again today.
After my shower and brushing my teeth a good three times to get rid of that nasty taste of wine, I found Michael in our bedroom, peering in his dresser. He closed it a bit too quickly and smiled at me.
“Still want to go out to breakfast?” he asked me. “Or we can stay home, and I can make us something if you’re still feeling bad.”
“Yes, I want to go. I’m feeling better. I think I needed to get it out of my system.”
“Darrell’s?”
A grin broke out on my face. “Darrell’s.”
