I clenched my jaw and pulled back just enough to search her face. The hesitation, the way she avoided my eyes, the edge of uncertainty in her tone—it was all there, plain as day. She wasn’t okay.
"Stop lying to me." My voice came out a little rougher than I intended, but I didn’t take it back. There was no reason to sugarcoat it. I could already feel her slipping, and I had no intention of letting her go without a fight.
She exhaled sharply, lifting our joined hands and staring at them like she was trying to find an answer in the spaces between our fingers. For a long moment, she didn’t say anything, and I could see the war happening behind her eyes. She was debating how much to give me, how much she could afford to say without giving too much of herself away.
Then, finally, she spoke. “We are okay, B. I promise. I just… there was a misunderstanding on my part, but I sorted it out.
Something about her words made my stomach tighten further. I narrowed my eyes. "What the hell does that mean?"
She swallowed, her fingers tightening around mine before she forced out, "I assumed something in our… togetherness… and it’s my fault I got upset."
Togetherness.
I let the word settle between us, the meaning sitting heavy and unspoken.
Enough of this. I reached for her shoulders, gently but firmly turning her toward me, forcing her to look at me instead of hiding behind half-truths and vague confessions. She had her walls up again, and I could practically hear them stacking back into place, one by one.
"Michelle, please be honest with me." My voice was calmer now, more steady, more sure. "You call it togetherness—" I made a show of finger-quoting it, watching as she rolled her eyes. "But we both know that’s code for relationship. So tell me why you’re looking at me differently than you did before we walked through that door."
Her nose scrunched slightly, like she was trying to suppress something—annoyance, frustration, maybe even guilt.
"You can tell?" she asked, almost reluctantly.
"Yes," I said without hesitation. "You had this look like I was the best thing, and I loved it. It made me inexplicably happy, but now it’s gone. Was it Logan?"
She immediately looked away.
A cold, ugly thought slithered into my mind before I could stop it.
Was she attracted to him?
I erased it immediately. It was absurd, ridiculous. Voicing it would only make things worse.
When she finally met my gaze again, there was something uncertain in her expression, something hesitant. "I’ve shared more with you than any other human," she admitted, voice low. "It was hard, and I don’t regret doing it. I trust you. But I assumed—again, my bad—that you would feel the same."
And just like that, everything clicked.
I had stopped Logan from talking about Mom.
And Michelle had taken it as a rejection.
She thought it meant I didn’t trust her the way she trusted me.
Damn it.
"Mitch… damn." I ran a hand down my face, exhaling sharply. "I get it now."
Her shoulders went rigid again. "Get what?" she asked, her voice carefully neutral.
"My mom."
She froze, the air between us thick with something fragile.
I could see the way her walls braced, like she was preparing for me to give her some half-assed explanation.
Instead, she blinked, forced a casual tone, and muttered, "It’s no big deal. Seriously, don’t worry. It’s not my business, and telling me something out of guilt is worse than saying nothing."
Then she moved.
