I step away.
"Arrow." There's so much sadness in her eyes. "I need to say goodbye."
"What do you mean?"
"Make love to me one more time. I have to do something, and I . . . Please. Just let's take right now. This moment. Because when I . . . I have to do what's right, and you might never forgive me."
Those words are a fist to my heart. "I could forgive you anything, Mia."
"One more time. Please."
"No." I take another step back. "Talk to me first."
She squeezes her eyes shut. "I have to turn him in. I'm sure it was him and I have to . . ."
What's she talking about? What does she think she knows? "Who?"
"Coach."
One word that says she knows more than she should. "Mia-"
"Coach was on Deadman's Curve on New Year's Eve. Coach hit Nic and Brogan."
I should have told her the truth before. I should never have waited. But no choice seems right when each means someone gets hurt. Or worse. "Mia-"
"I have to turn him in. There's still blood under the car. Not deer blood. Human blood, Arrow. I climbed under there myself and took a sample to the lab at BHU. I got the call this morning. Coach told the police he hit a deer, but it's not deer blood. He did it, and I have to turn him in."
I shake my head, my mind running too fast and in too many directions. "You don't."
"Everybody's been talking. You've heard them. They've been running their mouths about my brother for months. They think this was Nic's fault."
Where do I start? "Slow down."
"I knew how you'd feel." She folds her arms and draws in a ragged breath. "That's why I wanted to say goodbye. I owe it to my brother. He'd cleaned up, and they all ran their mouths like he hadn't. I owe it to him and everything he did for my family. I need to tell the police who was responsible for what happened that night."
I want to pull her into my arms and hold her one last time. Because she was right when she burst in here. Everything changes after this. I could kiss her, hold her close, and taste her lips one last time before she hates me. I don't let myself. "It wasn't Coach."
"I'm sorry, Arrow. I know how important he is to you. But we're talking about my brother, and I just . . ." She starts pacing, her arms wrapped tight around herself.
I have to grip the bed to keep myself from wrapping her up in my arms, to keep from begging her to forget whatever it is she knows. It had to come out, I realize that now, but I wish it didn't have to happen like this. "It wasn't Coach," I repeat.
"I wish he hadn't covered it up. It was dark, and they were fighting in the road like freaking idiots. I have to do this for my brother. Everyone thinks he was involved in drugs again, but he wasn't. He was clean. I have to turn him in."
"Mia . . ."
She stops pacing and stares at me like I'm not hearing her. "I'm telling you there was blood under that car that doesn't belong to a deer. It's human blood. I had the lab at BHU test it." She puts her hands in mine, and I have to pull away, otherwise I might bring them to my mouth, kiss her fingers one by one, trail kisses up her arms and along her jaw.
"I don't want to let you go," I whisper. "Every time you're almost mine, I have to let you go."
She frowns at me, and I know I'm not making sense. "I'm not asking for your permission, but I'm hoping you can understand why I have to do this."
Her shirt's damp from when she was pressed against me, and she takes my hands again, squeezes my fingertips in her palms, so desperate for the permission she says she doesn't need.
"Coach wasn't driving the car," I say. "I know he wasn't the one driving that car."
"How would you know that? You were drunk with Trish. The pictures were all over Facebook. How would you even know . . ." Her flushed cheeks turn pale, and every ounce of blood that drains from her face makes me feel smaller, more powerless. "Arrow?"
"I wanted to tell you." Everything feels like an excuse now, and I don't know how I can explain the claustrophobic hell that is being trapped from doing the right thing. Regret has gotten me nowhere, but if I could wipe my existence from Mia's life to save her the pain I see on her face right now, I wouldn't hesitate.
She drops my hands and backs away. One step. Two. She tilts her head first to one side and then the other, and narrows her eyes. It's as if she's suddenly realized I'm not the man she thought I was. Instead I've been standing in front of her all this time and she's trying to comprehend how she never noticed that I'm a monster.
"I wanted to tell you, but I knew you'd want to go to the police." More excuses. There's no good way to say this. There's no way to soften its ugliness. "I knew how you felt about your brother's reputation. Coach was just trying to help me. He didn't want one horrible mistake to ruin my life, and I couldn't ruin his by confessing."
"How . . . It was Coach's car. You were . . ."
I sink to the side of my bed and hang my head. Worse than regret is looking back and still not seeing the right path. Everything after waking up parked in Coach's lawn felt so out of my control, and everything that mattered before I can't remember. "I'm so sorry. You can hate me. Please hate me. I hate myself."
She shakes her head and takes another step away from me. "You told me to let him go. You told me. How could you? For that I could hate you, Arrow."
It's a knife twisted in my gut, and all I can do is hand her another. "He wasn't Brogan anymore. He was trapped in that body, and you know he wouldn't have wanted that."
"I don't . . ." She meets my eyes and shakes her head as if she still can't quite bring me into focus. "Arrow?"
"I wanted to turn myself in." I shouldn't explain. I shouldn't try to excuse it. But this is Mia, and no one else matters. This is Mia, and I need her to understand. "I want to do it. Every. Fucking. Day. But I couldn't. Not without hurting Coach. He covered it up trying to protect me, and turning myself in would have ruined him."
"They're dead, Arrow." Her voice is shrill, nails on the chalkboard of my heart. "This isn't someone's football career or someone's chance at a scholarship. Two men are dead because of . . ." She lifts her eyes to mine.
I take the knife she's poised and shove it the rest of the way in. "Because of me. They're dead because of me."
She crumples to the floor. "No. You're wrong. You're protecting him. This cannot be the truth."
Nausea wraps me in its sweaty fists. I want to go to her, but I can't. I'm everything that's making her hurt right now. "Mia, every day I've woken up knowing I ended my best friend's life, that I killed the brother of the woman I love, and I couldn't even come clean about it. That's my hell. That's my punishment for taking those keys and driving when I had no business behind a wheel."
"You kept driving." She swipes at her wet cheeks as if she's angry with her tears. "I watched that car. It hit them and it skidded to a stop, and then it just kept driving. How could you do that?"
I never knew I could. "I don't know." God, it hurts. Showing her the worst of me. Watching her tremble on my bedroom floor and knowing I'm to blame.
I spent the whole spring semester sabotaging my own future, trying any way I could to make someone punish me for something, anything. Seeing Mia like this is the unnecessary reminder that I deserve so much worse than I got. "I don't remember anything. The worst fucking thing I've ever done, and I have no memory of it at all. I was drinking. I was with Trish. I was pissed at Brogan and pissed at you." I shake my head. Months later, the fragments from that night still form nothing but the fractured edges of a thousand-piece puzzle. "Everything happened so fast, and I don't even remember . . ."
She shakes her head, and I know I'm talking too fast, giving her too much to process. She looks at me. "You made love to me, Arrow."
I swallow. "I know."
"You were inside me with this disgusting secret."
"Yeah. I'm a piece of shit, Mia." I hang my head. I'm not strong enough to keep facing the hatred in her eyes. "I'm a piece of shit."
She grabs her pants off the ground, stands, and steps into them, yanking them up her legs. Shaking hands on the buttons, she turns to the door. "I have to go."
"If I could have figured out a way to turn myself in without Coach getting in trouble, I would have done it. You have to believe me."