Chapter 15
SIENNA
“Sienna, what are you doing here?” Micah steps onto his cement porch, dressed in black jeans and a red flannel that I wish I could soak in and study how good it looks on him, but I can’t.
I can’t because I haven’t spoken to him in over a week, and he’s not responding to my text messages or calls.
He’s completely ghosted me, except he can’t fully because we live in a small town, and it can’t go on like this forever.
“You can’t be here.”
Those words are like a sucker-punch because I’ve felt the shift. The pull away from me, and it shouldn’t hurt this much, but it does because I’ve allowed myself hope.
I’ve permitted myself to think into the future, and that should’ve been my first stop.
“What’s going on?” I press because I have a right to know, to some extent. “You’re flirting with me at the Maple however, I still think he’s trying to push me away to protect me and not because he doesn’t want this.
“You’re going to need to try a lot harder than that,” I challenge back, balling my fingers into fists at my sides for strength, courage, and a bit of armor in case he tries to cut deeper than he already has.
His blue eyes tug over to meet mine, and there’s a level of defiance in those beautiful irises that makes me suddenly scared for my emotional life.
“Why are you trying to make this hard?” he retorts levelly. “I just said I was done.”
“Because of your ex and my job. However, I told you I was ready for the storm.”
“I was trying to be nice.”
The hair on my arms begin to rise because, speaking of storm, I can feel something forming that I’m certain I’m not ready for when it comes to him.
Not his ex.
Not my job or Principal Simpson.
I didn’t build myself up for that.
“Micah,” I begin, feeling my heart race faster. “I won’t be a burden—”
“You already are,” he reprimands with a glare so unwarranted and cruel that I feel my body curl into itself. “You show up here, uninvited. I haven’t spoken to you in over a week, so I would’ve assumed, with you being a teacher and all, that you knew how to read the room.”
My lips part in equal parts shock and the will to want to refute that fact, but he’s right.
Micah, technically, doesn’t owe me anything, and we were never in a relationship, just the beginning stages of one.
I just didn’t think he’d do this.
I’m not one to keep going back and forth on something over and over again, nor do I beg for someone to be with me if I’m not good enough for their time, but…this feels different.
“I thought you didn’t ghost, sweetheart,” I choke, wanting it to come out more forceful and confident. “You show up.”
But everything about this hurts.
Meanwhile, Micah’s nostrils flare, but one little tip of his chin and I know he’s not going to give me what I want.
And that’s a recant of everything he just said because he can’t let me go.
He doesn’t want to let me go.
“Don’t mock me,” he lightly chides. “Shit’s happened since then.”
“What kind of—”
“Sienna,” he clips out, an indication that he’s losing his patience. “Please…leave, baby.”
Have some self-respect.
Leave, Sienna.
“Is that…your final answer?”
I can’t believe I’m asking the question, but I can’t seem to get myself off his porch.
And I also can’t seem to let this go.
“Yeah,” Micah drones. “It is. Happy?”
Happy.
Right.
Wow…I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am. I thought he was different, and I convinced myself otherwise.
I’ve had shitty boyfriends in the past, but none that have been so damn blunt in their responses. They’d lead me on until I couldn’t ignore what was right in front of me.
Micah, however, knows what he’s willing to do and not do.
“Are you sure?” I press because—my God, I suck at this. “I don’t have to—”
“Get off my porch, Sienna.”
And then he steps back and slams the door in my face with an unforgiving thud.
It’s so loud in my ears that my body jolts like I just suffered through a car accident.
“Good luck with everything,” my stupid brain decides to still say through the giant lump in my throat, even though he can’t hear me.
Slowly, I start to pivot, feeling the world tilt on its axis. I feel like I can sense his eyes burning on the back of my head as I go.
But that’d be impossible since he slammed the door in my face.
I don’t want to see him ever again; it’s the only thought that keeps me walking down his driveway and to my car.
So any parent-teacher conferences we need to have can be exactly how he wanted them before.
Through email.