Page 138 of Offside Devil

I spill into her, giving her absolutely everything I have.

Until I carry her to the shower and find a little more in my reserves.

“This is nice,” Mira says for the fourth time in the last hour. “I don’t want to leave.”

We’re walking along the canal. Aiden is riding his scooter ahead of us. There’s no one around, so for the first time in days, he’s more than twenty feet away from us. When I can’t make out the Spiderman decal on his helmet, that’s when it’s time to yell at him to circle back towards us.

“Are you thinking of leaving your apartment and folding chair furniture behind for Paradise Hills?” I tease.

Mira slaps my arm. “I wish, but no. Some of us have skills that don’t come with multimillion dollar contracts. Pouring lattes doesn’t pay for the lifestyle I deserve.”

She tries to pull ahead, but I spin her to face me. “What about now? I’m giving you what you deserve, aren’t I?”

She shrugs and her eyes settle somewhere over my shoulder. “Maybe I already had what I deserved. Maybe this is all extra.”

Before I can figure out what she’s talking about, a loud bang echoes over the hill to our left.

The trail is curving towards a large intersection. We’re the closest we’ve been to civilization in a week. It’s probably a car backfiring.

But Mira panics.

She yanks her hands away from me and whirls around like she’s expecting to see someone standing behind her with a chainsaw. She’s pale and her green eyes are wide.

She looks like she did the day I met her: terrified.

“Hey.” I reach for her arm and she flinches away. “It was nothing, Mira. Everything is okay.”

She stretches onto her tiptoes, her breathing erratic. “Can you see Aiden?”

“He stopped at the bench like we told him.” I can see his light-up sneakers dangling from the seat, swinging back and forth while he waits for us. I pull Mira into me. “Everything is fine. What happened?”

“Nothing.” She’s shaking her head like she’s trying to convince herself. “Nothing happened. It was—Everything is fine.”

“Bullshit.”

She whirls around, and there it is again. She’s scared.

Of me.

“Mira, what happened to you?”

I see her expression shift. Close up. “Nothing. I’m just jumpy after being at Camp Davis for the last few days. I’m fine.”

I don’t buy it for a second. There’s no “right” way to act after you’ve been attacked in a public bathroom, but Mira wasn’t in shock. When I saw her face, she looked fucking haunted.

Like she’d been in that position one too many times before.

Then she found Aiden in my hall closet and wanted to know if I put him there. As if there’s a precedent in her life of people locking little kids in closets.

The photographer surprising them at the trampoline park sucked and I hate that it happened, but Mira wasn’t just dealing with guilt afterward. She was horrified by that man.

All of that on top of the tight lid she keeps on her past… I know trauma when I see it. Someone hurt her, and I don’t know why she won’t tell me.

I reach for her slowly, squeezing her fingers. “You don’t have to be scared when you’re with me. I’ll take care of you.”

“I’m not scared.” She peels her hand out of mine and walks towards Aiden. “I can take care of myself.”

Yeah, I think to myself. That’s what I’m worried about.

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