Second Chance at the Riverview Inn (Riverview Inn)

Of course she’d noticed, a dark miserable voice in his head said. She likes your music, she likes your band, she probably made note of everything you said and did.

Even as he thought it, he didn’t think it was true. And even if it was true, he didn’t really care.

He’d noticed the way she drank her coffee. Did that make him an asshole?

She said something in an unguarded moment. Stop trying to turn her into an asshole.

He reached a hand out into the cool air to take the coffee. His fingers were chilled and they burned against the warmth of the mug. “Thank you. That was nice of you.”

“You didn’t have to sleep out here.” Her eyes met his and the night was right there between them. “Just to avoid me.”

“I wasn’t avoiding you,” he said and took a sip. “That’s good coffee.”

“Danny gave me the history of every bean.”

“Sounds like Danny.” He shifted in the chair, pushing the blanket off his shoulders. “We should get on the road.”

“Is your real name Michael?”

Ah. She knew.

“Yep.”

“Your mom—Emmaline. She was in the first group of women at Haven House.”

He’d been waiting for this penny to drop. Had, in fact, forced the issue last night, giving her his mom’s name, but he still felt that internal flinch.

“Yeah,” was all he said.

“Where did the Sullivan come from?”

“My stepdad. Alex’s dad. After Haven House, Mom got cleaned up and they got married. He adopted me.”

“And Micah?”

“Mom’s pet name for me when I was a kid.”

She took a sip from her coffee, the steam rising up around her face. Her hair was back up in that bun and he was sucker punched with the memory of it down around her shoulders. How the ends curled over her breasts. Her nipples hidden and revealed.

He sighed and glanced away.

“Why didn’t you say something?”

He rolled his neck. “Because part of me wanted you and Jonah to recognize me, and when that didn’t happen, I don’t know, I felt a little stupid.”

“It’s not stupid. Nothing about this is stupid. What happened?”

“My mom picked me up from school. Alex would have been about five and we were living in this shitty trailer. Peter had money and a job and a house downtown, but he wouldn’t marry Mom unless she stopped drinking and got her shit together. There was a lot of fighting and I think she was scared that Peter would take Alex and so she applied to Haven House. She’d been trying to get clean before we went and I think Haven House might have saved her life.”

“Micah,” she sighed. “I’m so glad.”

“And you might have saved mine.” She looked astonished and embarrassed. He ran his fingers through the fringe of the blanket over his shoulders. “They took Mom into this building and your dad tried to distract me with stuff, and I refused to leave the building. I just sat there, waiting for her.”

“Wait. I remember that. You…were twelve. I’d been trying to imagine you as a young kid. But you were almost a teenager. I remember this. You sat there like a time bomb and we were so worried you were going to run away.”

He did not want it to matter that she remembered him. But something that had been tied up tight in his chest relaxed.

“I’d been about to,” he said.

“I sat with you—” She was watching him with those green, green eyes slightly narrowed, like she was working at pulling up the memories.

“You sat with me for hours.”

“We had Popsicles and we talked about…music. Micah!” She laughed and he smiled at her.

“Good to see you again, Helen.”

“Good to see you too, Michael.”

That name shouldn’t have meant anything. He hadn’t used it for years. It was the name his teachers called on the first day of school and he said “Call me Micah.” Michael was the name his stepdad used and just about no one else. But that name in her voice…it was powerful. A punch to the side of his head.

“It’s a little foolish to put so much importance on a week we spent in the Catskills,” he said, trying to deflect.

“I was ten when my stepdad came into my life,” she said. “Everything is really important at that age, especially kindness. And second chances.”

Suddenly deeply uncomfortable, he sighed and got to his feet. Revealing this truth between them only highlighted the other secret he was keeping.

The bigger lie he was telling.

“We should get on the road.” Get back to his life and the band and the tour.

“I’ll take you to White Plains today,” she said. “But it would be amazing if we could stop off at Haven House and the Riverview Inn.”

“Is this more blackmail?” he asked. “You need me to be in your bachelor sex auction?”

“No.” She laughed. “You can say no to this.”

He realized that she expected him to say no. In part because of what happened the previous night.