“Can’t her mom drive them there? They can get a rideshare back.”
“And leave the car in the parking lot? And then she’s gonna be there by
herself while her mom’s in surgery. Don’t make me beg you. I need this.
Please.”
I stared at the ceiling in the dark. Fuck. I kicked out of my blankets.
“Why’d you drink so much if you knew you had to be somewhere early?” I
turned on the lamp on my nightstand and winced at the light.
“It got away from me. Look, I’ll pay you back. I’ll wash your car, dude,
I’ll do anything. It took me six weeks to get this girl to have coffee with me.
She might not even talk to me after this if I leave her hanging. I like her so
much, I can’t mess this up.”
I pulled a hoodie over my head. “You owe me big-time. I’m serious.”
He breathed a sigh of relief. “Hey, don’t tell her I’m hungover, okay?
I’m gonna say I have a migraine.”
“Whatever. Just text me the address.” I hung up on him.
I stood in the middle of my room momentarily, too irritated to move.
This crap would annoy me on a good day.
I hadn’t had a good day in a while.
All I wanted to do was sleep and be left alone. Mostly the second one.
The guys insisted on hauling me out of my house as much as humanly
possible—which I appreciated objectively because they were trying to help.
But this situation was Mike being Mike. And who the hell was he out
drinking with? God knows if the guys had gone anywhere last night, I
would have been kidnapped and thrown in the trunk.
I dragged myself to the bathroom to get cleaned up.
Twenty minutes later, I was pulling in front of a small building in a not-
so-great neighborhood. The Windsor Castle Apartments.
This place was the furthest thing from a castle I’d ever seen. The units
had bars on the windows. The walkway was cracked and bulging, and there
was a stained mattress on the curb out front next to a busted TV with rabbit-
ear antennas. I threw the car in park and steeled myself for human
interaction before I got out. The sun was barely up. Fucking Mike.
I did my best to keep my mood off my face and knocked on door 104.
After a moment, Larissa answered. She was in a gray hoodie, no makeup.
Her blond hair was in a ponytail, and her blue eyes were bloodshot.
She waited tables at Donna’s, Mike’s mom’s café. I’d seen her there a