Chapter Twenty-Five
Rowan
The sound of the nail biting into the wood usually soothes me, but today it does little to ease the sinking feeling in my gut.
Millie isn’t answering. I was hoping when I showed up to the job site this morning that she would be waiting and there would be some reasonable excuse for her not returning my texts or calls for the past three days.
Like maybe her phone fell into a toilet and it’s sitting in a rice bag drying out. Or maybe it got run over by a car and she’s waiting for a replacement.
But as the morning drags on, it’s becoming more and more clear that Millie isn’t going to show and that she’s most likely avoiding my phone calls.
Which really, really freaking sucks because I’ve come to realize just how much I like Millie St. James.
I was lying to myself before. All that stuff about just wanting to be friends was a weak excuse to run and hide from the feelings that have been brewing in my chest since the moment I saw her and she offered me that dang water bottle.
Finally admitting the truth has been liberating in a sense, but mostly scary as hell. I feel like I’ve already screwed this up so bad that I won’t ever have the chance to make it out of the friendship zone I put myself in.
And at this point, I feel like I’ve screwed that up too. I put the nail gun down and reach into my pocket, pulling out my phone. No texts, no calls.
Not for the first time, I start to worry that maybe something has happened to her. Maybe she’s sick or—my eyes slam shut at the intrusive thought. Fuck, what if it’s something with her heart?
Those thoughts are the ones that freak me out the most because I don’t know what to do with them. Do I reach out to her parents? Stop by her house? I told myself if she didn’t show this morning that I would go over to her place and figure out what’s going on, one way or another.
If she’s ghosted me, that’s going to be a tough pill to swallow, but nothing will compare to the feeling of her not being okay.
That’s something I can’t stomach, or even really entertain the thought for long, because it literally makes me sick.
I turn and start to pull the tool belt off, determined to make sure she’s okay. I’m stopped short by the most beautiful voice I think I’ve ever heard.
“Leaving so soon? I just got here.”
My head snaps up to see Millie standing in the half-finished doorway, a tool belt of her own hanging from her fingertips.
“Oh, thank fuck.” The relief in my voice has the smile on her face slowly fading.
“What’s wrong?”
I swallow thickly, my relief palpable. I feel stuck to the floor, my feet unmoving though I want to go and scoop her up, breathe in her unique scent, feel her skin beneath my fingers. I want to make sure she’s okay, that she’s not sick, that she’s healthy and really standing in front of me.
But I don’t do any of that. I stand frozen, staring at the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, wishing more than anything that I could kiss her.
She tilts her head, watching me. “Rowan?”
I finally blink, scared that her standing in the doorway was just an illusion and if I blinked she would be gone. “Yes?”
She giggles before coming further into the room and right up to me. She reaches forward, her petite and elegant hand touches my forehead. “No fever, so you must not be sick.”
When I don’t say anything, her hand travels down my cheek and across my mouth. I want to dart my tongue out to taste her, but by some miracle refrain. “Have you gone mute on me?” Her eyes are alight with amusement. The corner of her mouth perks up with a smirk.
“You’re here.”
“Ah, he speaks.” Her hand finally leaves me. I miss the contact instantly, so I reach for her, and when my hand makes contact with hers, she smiles.
“Seriously, Rowan. You’re weirding me out. What’s up?” She gives my hand a reassuring squeeze before letting go and stepping back. My heart pings at the distance she puts between us.
“I was worried,” I finally answer.
“Worried?” The smile drops off her face, and she takes another step back, consciously putting distance between us this time.
“I thought I really fucked up this time.”
“What?” she asks on a breathless chuckle.
“Maybe you changed your mind and didn’t want to be friends anymore?”
She’s already shaking her head. “What are you talking about? I know I’m late, but I had something I had to do beforehand—”
She trails off as she watches my face. She must see the relief coursing through every inch of my body. She doesn’t hate me.
“Rowan, I promise I’m not avoiding you. I just had to do something first.”
“What about all the texts? I called—” Now it’s my turn to trail off. I feel like such a pussy, but I want so badly to understand what’s going on in that head of hers that I don’t care what it makes me look like.
Her eyebrows pinch together. “You called?”
I shift my feet and cross my arms, feeling more vulnerable than I have in a long time. “Couple times.”
Her hand goes into her pocket and she pulls her phone out. She immediately starts shaking her head, “There’s nothing here.” She turns the phone around to face me. I have to lean down and forward a little to get a clear view. And she’s right. Not one freaking missed call.
Now I feel like I’m going crazy. I know I called her. It’s my turn to pull my phone out, and I go to my call history just like she did. Right there. Five separate calls between our salsa dance lesson and this morning.
Desperate much?
A little.
Do I give a shit? Nope.
I turn my phone so she now has a clear view.
“Oh! How is that possible?” she asks, surprise and confusion flitting across her face.
I look down at my phone, trying to come up with a reasonable explanation. “Maybe you didn’t have service? But the calls rang all the way through to your voicemail.” I remember that part very distinctly, my stomach sinking with every ring.
“Try again,” she demands, like she’s mad for me. Her face is a mask of concentration.
I do what she asks and hit the call button under her name. It starts ringing, and I lean over to see her screen. Nothing happens. It doesn’t light up with an incoming call, no noise, nada.
What in the hell?
It reaches her voicemail, which is just a generic you have reached and then the number.
“That’s not my voicemail, Rowan,” she says as she comes closer.
I look down at the phone; Daredevil very clearly listed as the contact name, and it even has the picture I took of her at the hockey game we went to together. Her head turned towards me, wavy curls flowing down her back as she smiled brightly at the camera.
“But this is your number.” My eyebrows pull together. I’m even more confused than I was before.
“But that’s not my voicemail.” She clicks away on her phone for a second before her very distinct, very pretty voice comes over the speaker. Hi, this is Millie. I can’t get to the phone right now, but drop me a message and I’ll get back to you. Or not.
I chuckle at the last part. It’s sweet and direct with just enough sass. It fits Millie to a T.
“Then what the hell is going on?”
“I don’t know. Can I take a look?”
“By all means.” I shove the phone in her direction, more than willing for her to try to figure it out because I know I haven’t touched her contact info. There’s no way it’s wrong.
“This isn’t my number.”
“What?!” I ask with a little too much outrage because—how is that possible?
She turns the phone around and holds it up to my face. “That’s not my number.”
“Then who the hell’s is it? And how did it get in there?” I’m completely stumped.
She shrugs one shoulder, “Did someone have your phone?”
“That fucker.” I lean my head back and groan. Beau asked to use my phone after practice a couple of nights ago. Said his was dead and he needed to call his dad really quick. I didn’t think anything of it.
“What? Who was it?” Millie leans in to try to see my screen.
“Beau,” I practically growl. I’m going to kill him.
If my guess is correct, he just put his number up under Millie’s contact info, so I’ve probably been texting and calling his ass this whole time. To test my theory, I pull up what’s supposed to be Millie’s text thread.
Me: Beau you fucker.
It doesn’t take him more than a few seconds to respond.
Millie: Hahaha, took you long enough.
I’m vibrating with the need to punch him square in the face, which I plan on doing as soon as I see his stupid face.
Me: Why the fuck would you do that?!?!
Millie: You needed a good kick in your ass after the other night at the party. Leaving her like that. You’re welcome.
His response has my blood boiling, but not because I think he’s wrong. No, because even in my fury-filled state, I can acknowledge it was wrong to not go after her. What I’m pissed about is him taking it upon himself to enact street justice.
Millie starts to giggle, and when I look up at her, murder still in my eyes with how pissed I am at Beau, she laughs even harder.
When I continue to glare, she lifts one shoulder and says, “He’s kind of right.”
My eyes practically bug out of my head. “I almost had a heart attack this morning thinking something happened to you.”
My statement sobers her some, but she still has a sweet smile on her face. “I’m not saying what he did was right or cool, but I can see where he’s coming from.”
“He’s supposed to be my friend.”
“He is,” she answers simply before going over and picking up her own nail gun to use.
I look down at my phone and quickly type out to Beau that we will talk about this later. Because we definitely will, and it will most likely involve physical violence.
Then I go to edit her contact info. “What’s your number, Daredevil?”
She prattles it off without hesitation. I commit the number to memory as I type it in and save it. This shit’s never happening to me again.
One, Beau Coleman is never touching my phone again, and two, if anything ever happens to my phone, Millie St. James is the only number I’ll have memorized.