I pushed inside.
Mia’s head turned in my direction and her smile widened. She said something quickly to the two men and hurried over to me, coffee pot still in hand.
“Hey!” She went up on her toes and brushed a quick kiss across my mouth. “You didn’t say you were visiting.” She turned and started for the counter. The pot was set down. She dusted her hands and faced me once more. “I hope you’re not going to sit here with me until three.”
I hadn’t planned on it, but seeing her, I was severely tempted. It probably should have terrified me how little the idea of simply sitting there with her bothered me.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Just wanted to see you.”
She grinned beautifully before filling me a cup of coffee. It was placed in front of the stool I’d claimed the last time I was there.
“Well, you’re welcome to stay for as long as you want.” She watched me slide into the seat. “Did Nero make it home all right this morning? I asked him to stay, but you know … the rule.” She rolled her eyes at the word like it was the silliest thing she’d ever heard. The whole matter was too complicated. I didn’t have time to get into it with her, but her bringing up Nero and the previous night left the doors open for me to wedge my foot in.
“Yeah, he got in pretty late.” I pulled the mug over to me and wrapped my hands around the scalding ceramic. “He told me you guys hung out for a bit.”
Her head tilted to one side. “Do you mean at my place? Yeah, he came by for a bit.”
I shook my head, reaching for the sugar. “No, before that.”
To her credit, her features remained perfectly quizzical. “Yeah, I guess. For a bit.”
I concentrated on scooping sugar into my drink and stirring it before facing her once more. “What did you guys do?”
Mia shrugged. “Sat in the car, talked.”
I took a sip. “What about?”
A moment passed between us, a sliver of something that had our gazes clashing in a war neither of us knew how to resolve. It thrummed with a tension I couldn’t ever recall feeling between us. I really didn’t like it.
“You know,” she grabbed a nearby rag and rubbed it absently across the table between us, but her eyes never broke their lock with mine, “I don’t remember. It was raining, so I think it was mostly about that.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You just sat in the car and talked about rain?”
She jerked up a shoulder. “Not exclusively. Why? Did he say we talked about something specific?”
I took a sip of my drink, studying her face over the rim. Her poker face was incredible. If I hadn’t known Nero had blabbed everything, I never would have suspected that she was the one he’d blabbed to.
The mug was set down between us. “Did he mention what he was doing here?”
Her smile was unexpected and stunning. “He came to pick me up. He didn’t want me to walk home.” She rolled her eyes, still grinning like we were sharing some secret. “I told him I’d walked home a million times before. I was fine, but he insisted.”
I hummed softly. “Did he mention anyone?”
Mia blinked, smile dimming. “Like who?”
I shrugged. “Dunno. Anyone.”
She shook her head. “No.”
“No one?” I pressed harder, levelling the full force of my focus on her.
Rather than shift or avert her eyes as most people would have, Mia’s eyes narrowed. Her lips pursed into a disapproving frown. She stared hard into my face until I was the one who wanted to look away.
“If you have a question, shouldn’t you be talking to Nero?” she challenged hotly, arms folding over her uniform top. “He did a kind thing for me last night making sure I got home safely. I don’t know what else you want me to tell you, but I really don’t like being interrogated, Davien.”
With a disappointed shake of her head, she turned on her heels and started walking towards the kitchen door. I was out of my seat before her palm could flatten on the filthy barrier. I caught her arm and spun her to face me.
“That’s my girl,” I growled before claiming her mouth in a branding kiss that elicited a whimper from her that I devoured with a plunge of my tongue into the hot channel of her mouth. The fingers of one hand fisted into her hair, the other twisted into the back of her dress, just above the curve of her ass. She grabbed at me with small hands, but not to push away.
“Davien?” she panted around a beautifully bruised mouth. Dark, hungry eyes stared up at me, wide and confused. It took all my restraint not to toss her over my shoulder and take her somewhere to fuck senseless.
But I abstained from the gnawing urge with a final skim across her swollen lips.
“I’ll pick you up at three.”
“Wait.” She grabbed my arm before I could pull away. “What was that?”
I kissed her again, short and hard. “We’ll talk later. I promise.”
With a new skip to my step, I marched back in the direction of the diner doors. The two men Mia had been talking to when I’d arrived glanced up. Both gave me a thumbs up as I passed their table.
I didn’t go home, but I called Nero as I drove to the nearest grocery store. The phone was shoved against my ear as I exited the car and stepped through the open doorway.
“Yeah?”
I snatched up a basket and hooked the handles over my arm. “Just left Mia.”
“Yeah?” he said again with a large dose of desperation.
It was tempting to let him stew, especially for making the decision on his own to hurt her. That alone made me want to hang up and make him wait. It made me want to drive home and punch him in the face. That was the only reason I was stalking the aisles of some shitty shop. I probably could have called him in the car during the drive, but I was a pacer. I needed movement and space when I was as furious as I was.
“Dav?”
“Were you really going to kill her?” I asked instead, brain taking a whole other route on the call.
I heard the hesitation before Nero spoke. “I don’t know.”
“Were you?” I snarled out, fighting to keep my voice down. “If she hadn’t let you fuck her, would you have killed her?”
“You know it’s not that simple.”
“Tell me.” I stood in the middle of the cereal aisle, empty basket bumping into my hip, glaring unseeing at a cardboard cutout of some giant chicken in a cape. “You fucked up. You took her with you. You told her things you knew better than to tell anyone, even me. You made that call, but you were going to take her away because you’re a fucking idiot?”
“Dav—”
I hung up.
It was either that or pitch my phone across the store. It was shoved into my back pocket instead.
To keep from decapitating the bird, I grabbed the nearest box of some sugary flakes and stuffed them into the basket. I added a few different items from the next aisle, a sponge, a pair of rubber gloves. Things I was fairly certain we didn’t need, but the mindless task of focusing on something else helped take my thoughts off Nero and his betrayal because that was how it felt. His decision to just handle the matter without talking to me first didn’t just hurt. It pulverized something inside me.