Page 13 of Made Man

“Mira?”

I startle backwards. Alex strides right up to stand beside me, smiling at Wyatt likehe’sthe interloper.

“Alex Anderson,” he says, sticking his hand out.

Wyatt immediately shakes his hand, his country club manners still ingrained. “Wyatt Foster.”

“So how do you know our Mira?” Alex asks, wrapping an arm around my waist and pulling me close.

My body tenses, shouting that he’s not the right one, but neither is the businessman in front of me with Wyatt’s face and Wyatt’s dad’s fashion sense. He’s a civilian. We might belong together, but he doesn’t belong in my world any more now than he did when we were kids.

When Wyatt saw behind the curtain, he ran, and like Mom always says, it was for the best. People are who they are. You can’t wish them into being someone or something else.

I want to be mad, but I can’t be. I have to watch him go. Again.

I force myself to relax and snuggle into Alex’s side.

“We’re old friends,” Wyatt says, his eyes locked on mine.

“Were,” I say, clutching my old hurt tightly to my chest. I can’t let it go now. I need it to get through this next part.

“Oh,” Alex says, all laden with meaning, like he has any clue what’s happening here. I’m staring down a part of me I haven’t seen in eight years, and forcing myself to be mad that he’s stillupright and functioning, directing fucking analytics, when he should be as broken as my ability to trust and feel and be happy.

“You left,” I remind Wyatt—and myself. It’s a fact and an accusation and still—after all this time—a shock, like I’m the hero in the movie driving away from the scene of the shootout who looks down and sees blood seeping through his white shirt.

Wyatt left me—and if he thought of me a hundred times a day like I thought of him—there’s still nothing he can say to that. Nothing has changed. Nothing is different.

Wyatt keeps his eyes locked on mine, blazing with a feeling I can’t understand, until I drop my gaze to the gummy, black floor, dusted with the glitter from a hundred cheap, cardboard snowflakes.

“Let’s get out of here,” I mumble to Alex.

“Yeah, sure, absolutely,” he says. “How about we go to the upstairs VIP? My buddy said come up and see him when we got here.”

“Sounds good.” I look at Wyatt one last time and cock my head, pretending my lips aren’t quivering and my stomach isn’t bottoming out. “Are we done here, Wyatt? You don’t have anything else to say?”

I wait.

Because I’ll always wait for him. Just a little longer.

Alex is the one who calls it, gently guiding me away. I don’t look back, and Wyatt doesn’t stop me.

History repeats.

I’m hardly paying attention as Alex leads me around the bar and down a hallway lined with stacked boxes of booze. The stairs to VIP are in the employees only area?

Hold up.

Alex’s hand wraps around mine like a vise as he shoves open an exit door.

“Where are we going?” I ask numbly as he drags me out onto a metal fire escape overlooking an empty alley and a windowless industrial building.

Oh, no. Oh, shit.

My body takes over. I pitch my weight backwards and jerk my arm away, but his grip is too strong, and he has momentum as well as at least fifty pounds on me.

I grasp futilely for the handle on the exit door as it slowly swings closed on an empty hallway.

Where are my men?

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