Mac typed on his phone and waited before it lit up the dark. “They’re staying. Said they’ll get home on their own.”
“Good. You coming with?”
“Where we headed?”
“I need to see Danika.”
“Chance”—Mac sounded dismayed, his voice filled with disapproval—“stay out of it.”
I jerked my head toward him as I kept moving. “I can’t.” I sighed. “I can’t, okay?”
I clicked the remote, and my truck unlocked with an audible pop. Hopping in, I jammed the key into the ignition and revved the engine to life as Mac buckled his seat belt and rolled down his window.
“It isn’t your place, man,” he said, and I knew he was right.
I had a hard rule after this past summer to stay out of other people’s relationships, but this felt too personal. How am I supposed to ignore what I just saw? How can I justify Danika being cheated on and my knowing about it and saying nothing?
“She doesn’t deserve to be cheated on.”
“No one ‘deserves’ to be cheated on.” Mac air-quoted the word, and I cracked my neck as my anger lowered to a simmer.
“You know what I mean. She deserves better. Someone who can keep it in his fucking pants and not blatantly cheat where anyone could see him doing it.”
“Maybe he wanted to get caught?” Mac suggested, and I practically laughed.
“Well, I caught him!”
“Okay, listen.” Mac used his reasonable tone, and I knew he was about to suggest something I was either going to agree with or want to throttle him for saying. “Think about this for a second, okay?”
“I’ve thought about it,” I argued as I made a right and headed toward Danika’s apartment complex.
“Yeah, you’ve thought about it for all of two seconds,” he huffed out like I was some kind of idiot. “Do you even know how this will go down?”
I glanced at him briefly. “What are you talking about?”
“Say you tell her. We go over there right now, you tell her, and she doesn’t believe you. Wants proof. Thinks you’re lying.”
“I’m not a liar,” I bit back. “And you saw him too.”
“Yeah, I did,” he agreed before rolling his window partway up. “But I’m playing devil’s advocate here, Carter. People don’t always like hearing the truth. Especially when it hurts. They fight back. They place blame. They get defensive and mad at the wrong people,” he explained, and I groaned as I stopped at a red light.
“Yeah, yeah. They shoot the messenger. I get it.”
“You just don’t care?”
“I just don’t care,” I repeated, perfectly calm. “It’s the right thing to do,” I added before my own words felt like rocks in my throat.
The light turned green, and I pressed on the gas pedal as I started questioning myself. It was the right thing to do, but I thought I’d done the right thing last summer, too, and I’d gotten my ass handed to me instead.
I made one last right turn, and we were pulling into Danika’s complex.
“Is she even home?” Mac asked.
“I’m not sure. But, hey,” I started, wanting to give Mac a heads-up about Danika’s roommate, “you hooked up with her roommate at the beginning of the semester.”
“And?”
“Just reminding you, I guess,” I said because I wasn’t sure what the hell my point was. I just didn’t want there to be any more awkwardness than there was already going to be.
“Okay. Thanks.”
We walked toward the double doors, and I searched the box for Danika’s last name before finding it and pressing the button.
It rang four times before someone answered, “Hello?”
“Danika?” I asked even though I knew it wasn’t her. The voice lacked any kind of accent.
“Chance?” the female voice asked and I had no idea how she knew it was me from just my voice. “Hold on a sec,” she said before the line crackled and went dead.
I looked through the doors and saw Sunny round a corner and come into view.
“Ah, I remember her,” Mac said with a grin as Sunny reached us and popped one of the doors open.
If I didn’t know any better, I would think he was interested in her.
“Hey, guys,” she said before looking Mac up and down. “Figured it was easier if I came out. Just in case someone else needed the comm system to get in. What’s up?” Sunny was playing it cool, and Mac noticed.
“Is Danika here?”
“No. She left this morning for New York.” Sunny focused on me, finding something there as she asked, “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah. I just wanted to see her,” I said, leaving out the rest of the reason why we’d stopped by so late, unannounced.
“At eleven thirty. On a Wednesday night? After you two haven’t talked in weeks, you just wanted to see her?”
Damn. Sunny knew every detail about what was going on between Danika and me. It was a little unnerving even though it shouldn’t have been surprising. Girls tended to tell each other everything. At least, that was what my little sister always said.
“I actually wanted to talk to her about some things,” I added, hoping it would get Sunny to ease up a little.
“Well, like I said, she’s already gone.”
The way Sunny had said that she was gone caused nerves to race through me, and unwanted thoughts filled my head.
What if she moved back home for good and will be finishing up school there?
“She’s coming back though, right?”
A soft giggle escaped. “Of course she’s coming back. But not until the semester’s about to start.”
“I guess I’ll see her next semester then,” I said even though I had no idea if I would or not.
By the time she came back to campus, baseball would be in full swing, and my days and nights would be packed with little time for anything—or anyone—else.
“Maybe don’t wait that long, eh?” she suggested, and before I could ask her to elaborate, she looked at Mac before walking through the door and disappearing out of view down the hall.
“Probably a good thing she wasn’t here,” Mac said as we turned and headed toward my truck.
“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” I agreed, to his surprise.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Sort of feels like a sign, her not being here.”
I decided that there was a reason Danika was gone when I came to tell her the truth. Maybe it was divine intervention stopping me from making a mistake. Maybe fate knew something I didn’t. Maybe Mac had been right in all the things he said on the drive over here.
All I knew was that if I was supposed to tell her, she would have been home to hear it. And she wasn’t.
Back in New York
Danika
Sunny called to let me know that Chance had come by the apartment. She practically burst my eardrums with her squealing, and I could barely make out what she was trying to say.
“He said he wanted to talk to you,” she breathed into the phone.
“Anything else?” I asked because my interest was definitely piqued.