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I licked my lips. “Are you an alcoholic, Mike?”

“What—babe, no!”

“You said you had a migraine when you left. When you tell me you have a migraine, is it really a migraine? Don’t lie to me.”

But he didn’t have to. I could see the answer on his face.

The truth spilled out like red wine on a white carpet.

That’s how many times in the last ten months he’d drank so much he couldn’t function?

This had been going on since the beginning—the day my mom was in the hospital, the day I’d been lost in the park with Chris, all the times he didn’t answer his phone in the morning. While Chris had been out there, clearing snow off my car—that’s what this was? He was hungover?

I was horrified. I felt catfished. Lied to by omission. And Mike had lied, right to my face.

He lied the way Dad lied.

“Mike, I don’t think I can do this with you…”

Panic ripped across his expression. “Babe, what—No! Just give me a chance to make this right—”

“I can’t.”

“You’re gonna break up with me? For this? I can stop whenever. It’s not a big deal. I fucked up, I admit it. It’ll never happen again—”

“You lied to me,” I said. “And if it wasn’t a big deal, you wouldn’t have hidden it. You have a problem, Mike.”

“I don’t. I can stop whenever I want. You’ve seen me do it. Please,” he begged. “Just don’t leave.”

He cracked on the last word.

I’d never seen him cry. I’d never seen him break his happy, charming facade. A little piece of me shattered.

I put my face in my hands. “You know what I grew up with,” I whispered.

“I know.”

“I cannot do the secrecy and the self-destruction. I can’t do it.”

“Larissa, just let me fix it. I can fix it.”

I peered at him, weary. “How? I feel like I don’t even know you—”

“I fucked up. I was just trying to deal with stuff on my own. I just get in my head. I was anxious about you moving in—”

“Then why’d you ask me?!”

“It’s not that,” he said. “I want you to be with me. It’s like… it’s like I’m so scared you’re gonna fucking leave—”

I threw my hands up. “Why would I leave?”

“Because I’m not good enough for you!” He looked at me with tears in his eyes. “I’ve got nothing. I barely have a job, I’m not smart like the other guys. My brain won’t shut up, I’m trying to read this book for you, and I can’t even pay attention. I’m trying and I can’t…”

“Mike…”

“You have all these ideas and I know you’re gonna be something and I’m not, and you’re gonna leave me.”

“You have Tony! You’re a plumber, Mike. What do you mean you barely have a job?”