Pieces of Summer(12)

“Because of a certain someone else?” he pries.

Turning my head away, I get in my car and try not to think about anything at all. My head is killing me.





Chapter 13



CHASE



“What are you doing?” I ask Mika, staring at her like she’s lost her mind.

“Putting two blue dots on this wall to match the two blue dots on the other wall. It’s driving me crazy.”

My eyes dart to the other wall to see two small dots there. Hmmm. I haven’t ever noticed them before. I don’t know how she handles my house if something like that drives her crazy. But she never says a word about anything in there, and it’s disgusting.

“What are the two blue dots for?”

“I don’t know. I think someone wrote on it with an ink pen or something. It took forever to match the color and then measure out the exact placement.” She leans back, and her entire body relaxes. “Done.”

She hates things out of order, and she hates things not in sync. It’s one of her quirks that drives her family crazy, but I like it about her. It keeps things interesting. It’s also the reason I can’t fathom how she tolerates my home when we have to go there.

“Why the hell wouldn’t you just paint white over the two blue dots instead?”

She gives me a look like I’ve sprouted a second head.

“Because there’s no way to match the white up exactly with the other white. Time has changed it. I’d have to paint the entire room, of course.”

Of course.

Smiling, I pull her to me, brushing my lips against hers.

“Thank you for not making fun of me for being weird,” she murmurs against my lips, letting me hold her to me.

“Thank you for being weird,” I tell her, loving the smile she gets.

“I just hate the feeling of things being unfinished. You know? It felt like those two dots were waiting on two other dots to join them.”

“Yeah,” I tell her, agreeing, even though I personally would have never noticed the marks. “I know.”



Getting out of my own head, I drop my arm around Whit’s shoulders, but she barely acknowledges the action. I can’t say I blame her for being mad. I’ve been an asshole. She sure as hell hasn’t deserved it. And I still haven’t touched her the way she wants to be touched since Mika came back into town.

That changes tonight. Hopefully.

I’ve moved on, after all.

I left Mika so she could be the fucking princess she deserved to be. It’s not my fault she’s here now, but I can tell she doesn’t plan on staying. I can also tell—even if I was stupid enough to get sucked in again—that she doesn’t want anything at all to do with me.

The only thing that didn’t make sense was why she bought the bowling alley. At least until Whit finally said she asked Mika why she’d bought it on the first day she’d met her, and Mika said it was unfinished business or closure or something.

It makes sense. Mika can’t stand leaving anything unfinished, and we spent a lot of time planning out that bowling alley.

She came back to Hayden for closure. Maybe I need it too. We definitely don’t fit together. Never did. Mika writes murder/mystery; I ink skin all day. I love it. It’s exactly what I needed. I get to design and create, then I get trusted to permanently leave my mark on someone’s flesh. Mika tells the world stories.

She was supposed to heal the world.

Regardless, we don’t fit together now any better than we did then. I made the right decision by moving forward and giving her the freedom she deserved, not tethering her to my hell.

If anything, we’re more opposite than ever before. Whit is the right thing for me for right now, and I need to do better at being the right thing for her until this thing between us runs cold.

“You came to a carnival light show?” Blake’s voice has me spinning around, pulling Whit with me. She forces a smile for his sake, but I can tell it’s fake.

“Yeah. Whit loves these things. Figured I’d bring her.”

Whit’s stiffness ebbs ever so slightly after she hears that, and she slides her arm around my waist.

“What’re you doing here?” I ask him.

He shrugs. “Taking out a hot little number. I’ve had to fix her friend’s car twice. She came in the garage with him to get it the last time, and I hit her up about the light show. It’s weird. I swear I’ve seen her before, but I don’t know from where.”

“It’s summer,” Whit says tightly. “People come and go every summer. It’s possible she’s a seasonal.”

“Possibly. Still think I’d remember a girl who looks like her. Just her ass alone is memorable.”

Whit mocks a gag, slowly loosening up, and Blake chuckles while pocketing his hands.

“It’s seriously bugging the hell out of me as to where I’ve seen her before. And she even admitted I seemed familiar too.”

“You’ll figure it out,” Whit tells him.

“Weird thing is that she said she’d meet me when she met me, and wouldn’t set a time. Then she sent a text saying she was here, and I told her I’d meet her near the entrance.”

“Definitely weird,” I agree, shrugging… bored out of my mind.

“There she is,” he says, looking past me.

A slow smile curls his lips, and I turn around with Whit to see this girl he’s been going on about. My eyes immediately land on something that has my breath fogging up my throat, and my free fist clenches at my side as my other arm falls away from Whit.

Looking lost and uncertain, Mika is walking around in a small circle, glancing down at her phone. Her shorts are up to her ass, showing off her tan legs. Her shirt is loose and hanging down on one side, revealing her shoulder. And her hair is braided to one side as she nibbles her lip.

“Guess I better go get her before she bails. She looks nervous.”

Blake starts to walk by, and reflexively, I grab his arm and jerk him back.

“What the hell, man?”

“The fuck are you doing here with her?” I growl.

His eyebrows go up in confusion as I jerk him back harder, gripping his arm tightly.

“You know her or something?” he asks, confused.

“That’s Mika,” Whit says flatly from somewhere behind me.

“She related to you?” Blake goes on. “I’ve never seen you get so pissed before. What am I missing?”

“Why are you here with her?”

Blake looks down at my hand, then over at Mika, then back to me, and something in his eyes shifts. “Ah, fuck. She’s the one. Isn’t she?”

I’ve never fucking told him her name, or any of the story, but I did get drunk enough once to admit to him a summer girl had fucked my head up.

“Shit, man. I didn’t know,” he goes on.

My eyes shift over to Mika about the time she sees us, and confusion mars her face before her eyes turn to angry slits. She spins around and walks away, and I fight with myself not to go after her. Maybe she’ll fucking leave soon before I completely lose my mind.

“Ah, hell,” Blake groans. “You’ve really fucked up now.”

I let him go, cracking my neck to the side, and I watch as Mika pulls her keys out of her pocket, heading toward the parking lot.

“I don’t care if she’s pissed. She shouldn’t even be in Hayden. She has the entire fucking country she can go to. This is the one place she shouldn’t have ever come back to.”

Blake’s hand clasps my shoulder, and we both watch until Mika disappears from sight.

“I wasn’t saying you cared about pissing off Mika. But you should probably notice your girlfriend is missing at some point, otherwise you’re going to end up single.”

My eyes slowly flutter shut, and I take a long, regretful breath. He’s right. I just really fucked up. It’s shitty that I don’t even care.

Once again, Mika is in my head.





Chapter 14



MIKA



I almost feel hungover when I wake up. I’m not sure why I spent the night crying, but I did. Maybe it’s because I went to the carnival to make a friend and saw Blake and Chase were already friends. I felt like the idiot getting played. I should have known better than to think someone just wanted to get to know me.

You look so familiar… Asshole.

Clutching my aching head, I pull on a pair of exercise shorts with my free hand, awkwardly working them over my hips. Sluggishly, I head downstairs for coffee, since coffee is a good cure for crying hangovers.

Just as I stumble into the kitchen, a small breath leaves my lips as my jaw tries to unhinge. Why the hell is Whit in my kitchen?

She’s sipping coffee, regarding me intently as she sits at my bar.

I look around, making sure I didn’t accidentally sleepwalk into the wrong home last night. Nope. Definitely mine.

“Morning,” she says softly.

My eyes drop to the white T-shirt covering her body, and my eyebrow arches. That’s definitely Aidan’s shirt.

“We need to talk,” she tells me.

“I think I need coffee first,” I mumble, moving over to the blessed caffeine beast and hurriedly making a cup before we start swapping questions.

“Do I want to know why you’re in Aidan’s shirt?” I ask her, already dreading the answer. I can’t believe Aidan would do this. He’s hardcore against cheating, since he saw what having your heart broken did to me.