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Havoc:Mayhem Series #4(26)

By:Jamie Shaw


"Okay," I say to assuage the guilt I realize he feels. He thinks Danica  kicked me out for something he did. He thinks I'm innocent in this.

"Danica is mad at me," he tries to assure me. "Not you."

I sigh.

"You're cousins. She can't stay mad forever. She'll probably feel terrible for what she did, and she'll beg you to forgive her."

I don't tell him he's wrong, even though he is. Danica's conscience died  sometime during puberty, and now she does whatever she wants without  guilt or remorse. I'm sure there's already a missed voice mail from my  uncle waiting on my phone. He'll ask me to call him, and I will-but  Danica will have already cried to him, and my silent tears won't mean a  thing.

"Okay?" Mike asks, pulling away to search my eyes. "No more talk about leaving."

I can't help the tear that spills silently down my cheek, or the one  that follows it when the pad of Mike's thumb wipes the first one away. I  nod in agreement, because I don't want to talk about it.

Danica isn't going to change her mind. I'll have no choice but to move back home.

Even if Mike doesn't want me to. Even if I don't want to either.

There's nothing left to talk about.





Chapter 19




It's late by the time we arrive back at Mike's house. Since I was in no  emotional state to drive, he helped me into the passenger seat of his  truck, and sometime during the long, silent drive, I collected the  pieces of myself.

By the time my feet hit the gravel of his driveway, my last tear has  long since dried against my cheek, and inside, I help myself to his  linen closet. I sort through stacked sheets, blankets, and towels I  washed and folded myself just this morning, and Mike ventures off to  find us something to eat.

"You're not making this easy!" he shouts from the kitchen as I shake a navy bedsheet out and let it settle on the couch.

"Just find some cereal and beer," I yell back, knowing that his freezer  might as well be a meat locker. When I peeked in there last night, it  looked like a Tetris game of supreme pizzas and meatball Hot Pockets.

Mike pokes his head out of the kitchen, and I stop unfolding sheets.

"What?"

"Did you seriously just suggest we have cereal and beer for dinner?"

"Oh," I start, remembering that he's still recovering from his cold. "You're right. We should probably find you some soup or-"

"No," Mike says, the corners of his mouth tipping up. "I feel better. I'm starved."

"What is it then?" I ask, and he shakes his head, still smiling.

"You."

He disappears back into the kitchen, and something that feels an awful  lot like fuzzy baby caterpillars rolls around in my belly as I continue  making up the couch for the night. By the time Mike joins me in the  living room, with two bowls of Lucky Charms and two Guinesses, I've  tucked and straightened and fluffed myself a bed that I can't wait to  forget about this hellish day in.

Mike sits down next to me and hands me a bowl of cereal. "You know you're not sleeping on the couch, right?"

"Huh?" I ask through a mouthful of colorful marshmallows. I hold the  bowl under my chin and try to keep milk from spilling out of my mouth.

"I'll take the couch. You can sleep in my bed."

I shake my head and swallow what I'm guessing is no fewer than twenty  hearts, stars, and horseshoes. "No way. You're still recovering. I'm  fine on the couch."

"Hailey," Mike says, setting his cereal on the coffee table and picking  up a beer instead, "there's no way in hell I'm sleeping in that big  comfortable bed while you're out here on the couch."                       
       
           



       

"It's a comfortable couch . . ."

"Which is why I'm taking it."

I furrow my brow at him, but his expression remains  uncompromising-unblinking eyes over a straight-lined mouth. "It's enough  that you're letting me stay here, Mike."

"No, it's not. I'm not the asshole that's going to make a lady sleep on his couch."

I snort at the idea of me being a lady. "So this is sexism," I accuse with a scowl.

"Call it what you want," Mike says, smirking as he steals a red heart from my bowl. "You're still sleeping in my bed."

I force myself to glare at him in spite of the warmth flooding my  cheeks, but he continues smiling at me, and my heart skips rope behind  my ribs. I ignore the double-dutch jumping and try to remain pragmatic-I  want the couch, he wants the couch, but we both can't sleep on the  couch. And even if we could, that would be stupid.

"Look, we're both grown adults," I say before I can overthink what I'm  about to suggest next. "If you're really not going to let me sleep on  the couch, we can share the bed."

"Fine," Mike immediately agrees.

"Fine," I echo while my brain screams, OH MY FLIPPING GOD! Did you  seriously just agree to sleep with Mike?! In his bed! Together?!  Together!!! In his bed! What?! What the hell happened to staying on the  wagon?!

"How are those Lucky Charms?" Mike asks, and my shell-shocked gaze drops  down to my soggy oats. My mind is still screaming that I just made a  huge mistake, that sleeping in his bed is only going to reignite my  stupid sparks, that it's wrong, that it's going to make Danica hate me  more than she already does, that she'll never know, that I'll know, that  she's my cousin, that she never deserved him, that he's single now,  that he's a rock star, that he doesn't like me as anything more than a  friend, that none of this should matter, that I- "Hailey?" Mike asks.

"Huh?" I squeak.

"What's on your mind?"

What should be on my mind is my education, my uncle, my tuition, my  future. But the real answer is Mike's bed, and I am most definitely  never ever sharing that information with him. "Your music video," I  rattle, frantically changing the subject from beds to literally anything  else. "Will you still let Danica be in it?"

"After she treated you like she did?" Mike all but growls. His fingers  stop tapping against the neck of his beer, coiling tightly around it  instead. "Not a chance in hell."

I take a big gulp of Guinness to calm my nerves. It doesn't go with  Lucky Charms-not that any beer really could-but whatever, it's beer.  "Are you nervous?"

"About Danica?"

"About the video." I crisscross my legs under me, thinking that the  video seems a safe enough topic. No big bed, no angry Danica, no  butterfly-winged sparks. "Have you ever made one before?"

"We made one in high school once," Mike says. "But it was just a stupid kid thing. Nothing like this."

"So? Are you nervous?"

"Nah. No one pays attention to the drummer." He takes another sip and  slides forward on the overstuffed couch so that he's sitting on the  edge. "All I have to do is sit in the background doing this." He holds  his beer with a curled pinky as he plays the lamest air drums ever, and I  chuckle.

"Just this, huh?" I set my bottle on the coffee table to mock his  movements, and his mouth stretches into a big grin. "Maybe I should be a  drummer," I tease. "This is easy."

"You think so?" Amusement fills his voice as I strike an invisible cymbal.

"I mean, I don't want to brag-" I let my toes drop to the floor so I can  throw in some foot pedal work while I continue banging on my  make-believe drum kit, "but I think I'm probably better than you."

Mike watches me act like an idiot for a while, takes one last swig of  his beer, and suddenly rises to his feet. My air drumming freezes as I  sit motionless on the couch staring way, way up at him. "Come on then,"  he says, holding a hand down for me.                       
       
           



       

"Come where?"

"My drums, Keith Moon. Let's see what you've got."



On a stool in front of a massive set of polished black drums, my palms  sweat around two smooth drumsticks and my feet dangle off the floor.  "You're sure you want me to embarrass you like this?" I taunt with  forced bravado, and Mike smiles wide at the challenge.

"I can't wait."

"But you'll never be able to unsee this," I bargain. "You'll spend the  rest of your life like, ‘Wow, what's the point? I'll never be as good of  a drummer as Hailey Harper.'"

Mike laughs, his brown eyes glittering with anticipation, and I swallow  hard. My grasp on the drumsticks tightens, and I wonder which drum to  hit first. One of the big foot ones with The Last Ones to Know logos on  them? One of the deep ones at my sides? One of the shallow drums in  front of me? Dear God, there are so many drums.