that summer when he came home from boarding school. He’d still been like a little brother to her. That hadn’t changed until the summer after high school. That summer was the best three months of his life. She’d just graduated college and was home again to stay. She said they’d get an apartment right off GSU’s campus. They didn’t though. She left. Gone back to Michigan, practically a thousand goddamn miles away from him.
“What?” she asked. MJ hadn’t realized he’d been staring at her.
“Nothing.” He turned his face back out the window and took a deep breath. Nothing. Nothing would ever be like that summer again. He’d never been so close to having a home with someone he loved. She offered it up like a dream and tore it away like his worst nightmare come true.
He wished she’d talk about something—anything—instead of leaving him sitting there brooding in silence.
“How’s baseball?” she asked.
That wasn’t what he wanted to talk about. “Over.”
“When does practice start for next season?”
“It doesn’t.” She needed to stop asking him personal questions. It only led to things he didn’t want to discuss.
She stopped at a red light. “What are you talking about?” Her fingers gripped the wheel tighter, like she was preparing to hear him say something terrible.
She knew him too well.
“Got kicked off the team for fighting.” MJ propped his elbow in the window and leaned his head on his hand. He studied her face, but it didn’t budge. Stone-faced Mads. It was the expression he hated the most. The one that said he’d pushed her right over the edge, and she’d erected a mental wall between them.
He wanted to kick that fucking wall down and never see it again. How many times could she shut him out? It must’ve been the Jack Daniel’s that made him grab her wrist. “Don’t do that.”
She jerked her arm away. “Do what?”
The light turned green, and she slammed her foot down on the accelerator making his head snap back against the seat. Her hair blew wild around her face. He wanted to reach over and ball it in his hands.
“Do what?” she repeated.
“Doesn’t matter.” MJ stared straight ahead and let the lights from the other cars on the road blur and double in his drunken vision.
For the rest of the drive back to the Rocha Estate, Maddie tried to force the words out that she should’ve said over a year ago.
I’m sorry.
What did those words mean anyway? They couldn’t take back what she’d done. They couldn’t make MJ forgive her. Why bother saying them when they were meaningless?
She couldn’t change the past. Leaving was the only option she’d been given. She had to protect him from getting hurt. Maddie knew hurt all too well, and she’d always stand between MJ and pain if she could.
She’d never let him feel the twinge of fiery anguish that hit her in the heart every time her mother was mentioned. Every time she fingered the smooth silver angel pendant crammed in the very back of her jewelry box that her mom left behind. Over the past sixteen years, Maddie had relived the day her mom left a million times in her head.
The pain was still raw even after all the time that had passed. Driving down the road so many years later, it still felt like her mom had walked out on her only yesterday.
“Watch it!” MJ shouted and grabbed the wheel. “You almost hit that light post.”
“I did not! You’re so drunk, you can’t even see straight. Let go!”
He let his hand drop to his lap. Sitting beside her, MJ was painfully close. She could almost feel his body heat pulsing off his skin into hers. Or maybe she imagined it. Manifested it because it was what she wanted to feel so badly. Being so close to him and not being able to reach out and touch him drove her crazy.
But it shouldn’t. Not anymore.
Maddie glanced at MJ out of the corner of her eye. When had he become so cynical? Had she done that to him? Caused him to be so jaded and cold?
That fucking Old Man was going to pay if she couldn’t figure out how to reach MJ, how to bridge the gaping hole between them that she’d ripped open when Enzo made her leave the Rocha Estate.
She pulled into the long driveway and parked in front of the garage. MJ had his car door open before her foot was off the brake. “Thanks for the ride.”
She scrambled out