The moment I stepped beneath the hot, steaming water, I tipped my head back and allowed it to hit my face. It wasn’t a fix, by any means, but it did make me feel semi-alive again.
Fifteen minutes later, all the grime from the night before gone, I emerged from the bathroom. As I entered my room, I was surprised to find Raven sitting on my bed, worrying her hands in her lap.
Memories of the night before rushed in, and I was reminded of all the hurtful things I’d said. A heaviness settled in my chest, and I closed the door behind me to gain some privacy. Then with caution I joined her, sitting down next to her on my bed.
Raven didn’t deserve what I had said to her. I opened my mouth to tell her that I was a terrible friend and that I couldn’t apologize enough, but she spoke first, and I was floored.
“You have feelings for him.” It wasn’t a question. “And before you try to deny it, you should just save it, because I know you, Maddison. Last night, that version of you, it’s not the one that I’ve spent my life loving as a sister. You were so hateful, and I know why now.”
I lifted my gaze and looked at Raven, unable to form the words that were rolling around in my mind.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” She turned to face me and took my hand in hers. “All the times I went on and on, saying all those things that, had I just known, I never would have said. All you had to do was tell me that you felt something for him.”
“I didn’t know.” Not until I saw him with someone else. Or imagined him with someone else. Honestly, that was all it took.
We sat in silence for a few minutes.
“I’m sorry I was so awful to you.” Tears filled my eyes as I tried my best to blink them away. “I was confused and maybe a little embarrassed.”
“Why?”
“Because I shouldn’t be having these feeling for him. He isn’t just some guy, Raven. He is my cousin.”
“No, he’s not.” It’s then she shifted completely around to face me, forcing me to look at her. “His adoptive mother is your stepfather’s sister. That doesn’t mean the two of you can’t be together.”
“It’s—”
“Not impossible,” she finished for me, and I knew better than to argue with her. “I think you two need to talk this out. You owe it to yourselves. Who cares what I feel?”
“I care.” It was my turn to force her to look at me. “I love you entirely too much to let any guy come between us.” I ignored the feelings inside of me, the ones screaming but this is Mike. “I know you like him, and honestly, now it just doesn’t feel right for me to act on what I feel.”
“It’s okay,” Raven assured me, but I could see the hesitation in her eyes, the way she forced a smile, doing her best to appear unaffected.
“I just want to forget about the whole thing, okay?” Raven slowly nodded in agreement. “All of it.” I waited for her to agree once more, and then we hugged it out like we always did. And I did this all while fighting off the larger-than-life lump that had formed in my chest.
Chapter Seventeen
Mike
“You gonna fill me in on what’s going on with you and Maddison?”
I tried my best not to react when Rhett handed me the quart of oil, and I hovered it over my engine, slowly pouring it into the funnel. I knew it was coming; it was just a matter of time. After last night, the way Maddison acted and then the way Colt found us when he showed up to get her, I knew that shit would spread like wildfire. Our family didn’t keep things quiet. It was in their nature to share and share and keep sharing until everyone knew the details of every situation.
“Or do I need to guess?”
“Nothing’s going on,” I said, not even glancing in his direction. “What the hell is with you and your need for gossip? You grow a vagina when you decided to settle down or what?”
“My ass there ain’t nothing going on.” He chuckled. “I was there, and even AJ agreed there was something definitely there. First at Gramps’s place in the field and then again last night at the bar. You two had this crazy connection shifting between ya, much different than the one you’ve always had before. A tension, some uncoiled pull, hell, I have no fucking clue, but it’s there.”
“Like I said, it’s nothing.”
“I don’t buy it,” he continued, making me feel even more unsettled. “The two of you need to get your shit figured out, though.”
“There isn’t anything to figure out.”
“You may be able to pull the blinders on other people, but that ain’t gonna work with me, Mike. I know the two of you entirely too well. There’s something there and ignoring it won’t make it go away. This seeing other people, ignoring one another when the two of you are close, it’s gonna explode, and when it does…”
I lifted my gaze to find him shaking his head and chose to ignore it. I didn’t have an answer, because there had never been any awkwardness between Maddison and me. Everything had always been so easy, and I honestly didn’t know how to handle it now that it wasn’t.
“Okay, then,” Rhett said, and I felt a little relieved that he was agreeing to let it go. That was until he started again. “You should know, though, that your mother was already on the phone with mine this morning, after she’d gotten off the phone with
