Don’t Deny Me: Part Three by Megan Hart Page B

wasn’t that.
    What she’d said to her sister still felt true. Mick was never going feel about her the way she felt about him. The question was, what was Alice going to do about it.
    For now, she thought, she was going to finish unpacking and doing her laundry. The rest would come later, because that was how life worked. Shit happened. You got through it. Sometimes it was easy, sometimes it was hard, she thought grimly, but one way or another, you did it.
    She hadn’t noticed her phone’s buzzing until she came out of the laundry room and found it on the kitchen table. Several missed texts from Mick. A call that had come in only a minute or so ago. Before she could even listen to the voice mail, her doorbell rang.
    She knew it was him before she opened the door. Talk about déjà vu. What she had not expected was the look of despair on Mick’s face when he came through the doorway.
    “What’s going on?” he demanded. “Is there someone else?”
    “What?” Shocked, Alice took a step back, then another. He followed her into the kitchen, where she drew a glass of water to help calm her stomach.
    “What’s his name. Bob? Bill? That asshole you were seeing when we got back together. Is it him?”
    A flash of guilt poked her, but Alice hadn’t done more than exchange a few texts with Bill in months. The guilt lasted only seconds, replaced by a thin anger. “What the hell are you talking about? There is nobody else!”
    Mick, breathing hard, a little wild-eyed, ran a hand through his hair and whirled on her. “Then what the hell is going on with you?”
    “You. You’re what’s going on with me.” The words popped out of her before she could stop them, but once they were out, she didn’t even want to take them back.
    Mick visibly deflated. “… What? What are you talking about?”
    “This isn’t working, Mick.”
    There. She’d said it. Out loud, to him, no taking it back. Just as she’d hopped on a train months ago at Bernie’s house, now Alice was once more taking a ride. Only this time it was no slow-moving locomotive but the bullet train, no stops. Only one destination.
    End of the line.
    “I don’t understand,” he said.
    Alice swallowed hard and shook her head. “Some things just don’t work. Us. This. Second chances. Things don’t change—”
    “Everything’s changed.” He threw out his hands, then curled them into helpless fists. “I answer your calls and your texts. I’m there for you when you need me, I would never leave you sitting the way I did that other time. And I never blamed you for hating me over that, Alice, believe me, I know what an asshole I was, but even murder has a statute of limitations. How much more do I have to prove to you that things are different?”
    “But they’re not,” Alice said, voice hard. “Not really.”
    “How can you say that? I’ve done everything for you. Everything.” To her horror, his breath hitched. Mick sank into a kitchen chair and put his head in his hands for a second before giving her a look of naked confusion. “What more do you need from me?”
    She blinked at him, not sure if she should be furious or desperate or numb. “What do you mean, everything?”
    “I try to take care of you,” Mick said in a low voice. “The best way I can. Obviously, it’s not enough for you, and if that’s the case, I don’t know what more I can do.”
    She thought of coffee made the way she liked it. Of the closet door he’d fixed. Faucet he’d repaired. Tires, rotated. Alice forced away a sob, thinking of the myriad ways Mick had taken care of her. Of all the things he’d done … but all the things he’d never said.
    Before she could say anything, Mick stood. “I showed up at your door and told you that I love you and I want to be with you, that I’d do anything to prove it—”
    Finally, at this, she lost it. “Love me? You showed up at my door, all right, but you didn’t say you
loved
me. You said you wanted me. ‘I
want
you more