Havoc:Mayhem Series #4(58)

"Sorry about that," Mike says. "No one seems to know where the hell we are."

"You should go," I say, nearly choking on the words.

"Huh?"

"You shouldn't call me anymore," I say with tears streaming down my cheeks.

"Hailey?"

"Go have fun, Mike. Be a rock star. Be happy."

"Baby, what the hell are you talking about?" I hold in a sob, and Mike  says, "Hailey, you're scaring the shit out of me. What's going on?"

"This just isn't working," I say with my whole heart shattering into  pieces. I think of Danica's ultimatum, the dreams I had before I moved  here, the dreams Mike has had since Adam and Shawn approached him in a  middle school cafeteria. I think of the faces of dozens of girls on the  Internet. I think of Danica and how pretty she looked in that wildflower  dress. I think of my brother back home and the way the words messed up  sounded in his voice. I think of my mom's hatbox and the thirteen  first-day-of-school photos inside it. I think of my broken desk and my  broken computer, and Danica's soup cans rolling across Mike's hardwood  floor. I think of him staring at his phone in front of a long line of  people, and me holding mine to my ear as someone honked at me to leave  my parking spot. "You deserve to be happy," I manage through the emotion  clouding my eyes. "I just want you to be happy."

"I am happy," Mike argues. "You make me happy."                       
       
           



       

I shake my head against the tears burning lines down my face. I should  have done this before he left. I shouldn't have hung out with him on his  bus. I shouldn't have played Deadzone with him late at night. I  shouldn't have stayed with him when he was sick. I shouldn't have let  him kiss me in the woods.

I never should have fallen in love with him at all.

He's been waiting for the girl he'll spend the rest of his life with, and now it's time for me to let him find her.

"I'm so sorry," I say, and I hang up the phone.





Chapter 47




I thought I'd fallen apart when Danica trashed my room and I believed my  time in this town was up, but nothing-nothing-compares to the way I  fall apart when I hang up on Mike. Phoenix whimpers at my feet as I cry  into my arms, my entire body racking with sobs that have been piling  inside of me for weeks.

Rowan was right when she said the last love is the one that counts. But I  was never meant to be Mike's last. Someday, he'll be married to a  beautiful wife, and she won't have the entire world standing between her  and loving him. She won't have vindictive cousins or ultimatums, and  she'll be able to give him the life he's always dreamt of. They'll have  beautiful kids and a beautiful house and a beautiful life-but I won't be  her. He'll barely remember me, even though I will never, ever forget  him.

There weren't sparks before Mike, and there won't be sparks after  Mike-because I carved my heart out of my chest the day I fell in love  with him, and now it's walking outside of my body, thousands of miles  away.

I have no heart left to give.

Instead, I have a gaping hole, and that emptiness inside me makes me cry  until my head is throbbing and my eyes are swollen. And through it all,  my phone rings and rings and rings. Within fifteen minutes, I have  twenty missed calls from Mike, nine missed calls from Rowan, twelve  missed calls from Dee, six from Kit. When Shawn starts calling me too, I  finally pull myself together enough to answer the phone.

"Hailey, what the hell is going on?" he asks. "Mike just left for the airport."

"The airport?" I ask, alarm overwhelming the rawness in my voice.

"Yeah. Look, I'm sorry, I don't know what's going on with you two, but .  . . Fuck, Hailey, I'm really sorry, but we have a huge show in Dublin  tomorrow. We fly out in the morning. He has to be here. You need to call  him. Can you please call him?"

"Okay," I agree, absorbing Shawn's panic.

"Thanks," he says, but I'm already hanging up the phone.

Mike answers even before the first ring stops sounding. "I'm coming home."

"Mike, don't." My voice breaks with the fresh tears filling my eyes. It  was hard enough doing this once, it's going to kill me to do it twice.

"I'm already in a cab, Hailey. I don't even have my suitcase. I have my  wallet and my passport and you're not talking me out of this, because  I'm not fucking losing you."

A sob steals the breath from my lungs, and Mike says, "Why are you doing this, baby? Just talk to me."

"I can't," I cry, pulling my knees to my chest in the corner of his  kitchen. Phoenix licks at my tears, but I hunch my shoulders and turn  away from her.

There are a million reasons why Mike is better off without me, but I  can't tell him the one reason, the one single reason, why I would be  better off without him. I can't tell him that Danica made me pick  between him and school, because then he'll know I'm just as bad as her.  She made me choose between money and love, and it should have been an  easy decision, but it wasn't.

"Yes, you can," Mike assures me. "You can tell me anything, Hailey. I  love you . . ." There's a pause, and then he says, "Baby . . . did you  cheat on me?"

"No!" I say as I wipe my fingers over my eyes. "Mike, no, I would never do that."

"Is this because we added extra tour dates?"

"No," I assure him through a runny nose and scratchy throat.

"Then what?"
                       
       
           



       
"I'm not worth this," I say through a new wave of tears. "You should've  tried that Indonesian candy with the guys. You should've seen how those  girls looked at you last week."

"What girls?"

"The ones outside your Perth show, at the front of the line. They posted a video on YouTube and-"

"Baby, you can't look at the stuff on the Internet. It'll drive you crazy."

I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to escape the pages of images I looked at  this morning. The girls in Australia, the girls in Malaysia and China  and Korea, the girls in the U.S.-years and years of girls. Girls taller  than me and curvier than me and, just . . . more than me. Smoother hair  and prettier clothes and a million other reasons why Mike should be with  them instead of me.

"Do you think I don't worry every day that you're going to meet someone  while I'm gone?" Mike asks, shocking me into opening my tear-filled  eyes. "We live in a college town, Hailey. You go to school every day  with frat guys and future CEOs. I'm terrified you're going to meet  someone better than me, smarter than me-"

I want to tell him that there's no one better than him, no one smarter than him.

"I've never taken a college class in my life," he says. "The only thing I know how to do is play the drums."

"I don't want a CEO," my small, broken voice assures him.

"Then tell me what you want, baby."

My heart aches as I think, I want to hold his hand in public. I want to  kiss him under the glow of my porch light. I want to cheer for him at  his shows. I want to love him without repercussion. I want to be with  him without Danica's shadow hanging over me. I want to be enough for  this beautiful man I don't deserve.

"You," I tell him, and Mike sighs.

"Even if I'm a drummer? Even if I have to tour?"

"Yes," I answer without needing to think about it, because drumming  isn't just a job to Mike. It's who he is. He's the drummer of The Last  Ones to Know, and I would never want him to be anyone different.

Mike lets out a breath of relief, but it does nothing to soften the  guilt hardening in the pit of my stomach. Yes, I want him. But wanting  him doesn't change the fact that I can't have him, not if Danica gets  her way. And Danica always gets her way.

"I know it's hard waiting," he says, "but I told you even before I left,  Hailey-I don't want anyone else. I only want you. I'm thankful every  day that I fell for the wrong girl, because it led me to the right one.  It was always meant to be you."

I shiver with the absence of his arms around me, and he says, "I know  you don't believe me when I tell you how special you are, but remember,  all it took was a red dress for over two thousand people to not be able  to take their eyes off of you."

"That's only because I was the star," I say, remembering the way I spun  around and around on the steel platform for Mike's music video.

"You were the star for a reason, Hailey," he says. "You're a light in the dark. And the only person who can't see that is you."

Mike's phone beeps, and he curses. "Shit. My phone is going dead."

I close my eyes, and more tears squeeze through my lashes.