Page 80 of Robbin’ the Rich

"It's nothing."

Neither of them believed me. I wasn’t ready to tell them about Micah. Everything had been so good, and it was still so new. I wasn’t ready to let anyone in and make things more complicated. Not yet.

Tucked my phone back into my pocket and ignored their questions for the rest of dinner. Mom still managed to get in three more before I escaped.

By the time I left my parents' house, it was already after nine on a weeknight. For normal people, that probably wasn't a big deal. For Micah, who woke up at five thirty in the morning to spend his days surrounded by middle schoolers and somehow remained cheerful about it, that was past bedtime.

I sat in my car for a moment before pulling out of the driveway, glancing down at my phone again.

Micah: Dress warm.

That had been his entire response after I'd asked what he was up to. No explanation. No clues. Just a mysterious instruction and a promise to pick me up in twenty minutes. The man was annoyingly committed to surprises.

By the time I got back to my apartment, I found myself moving faster than I normally would. I changed into comfortable clothes, pulled on my favorite oversized hoodie.

Dinner with my parents had left me feeling restless. I loved them. God, I loved them. They'd spent my entire life supporting me, cheering me on, and showing up whenever I needed them. That was what made the church issue so frustrating. If they had been terrible people, it would have been easy. Instead, they were good people making a choice I couldn't understand. The conversation had left me carrying around a sense of frustration that I couldn't quite shake.

Then Micah texted. And somehow it had loosened immediately.

A knock sounded at my door a few minutes later.

I opened it to find Micah standing in the hallway, hands shoved into the pockets of a dark jacket, blond hair slightly windblown from the cold. He smiled the moment he saw me, and something warm settled low in my chest.

There should probably be laws against smiles like that. "You look cozy."

"You were specific."

"I had reasons."

"Good reasons?"

"You’ll see."

My eyes narrowed on him, but all he did was smile.

A few minutes later we were in his car heading out of town. The streets of Briar Glenn gradually gave way to dark stretches of road lined with bare trees and harvested fields. The town lights faded behind us while music played softly through the speakers.

At some point, our hands found each other. Neither of us made a big deal about it. We simply laced our fingers together across the center console as naturally as breathing. I found myself smiling as I stared out the window.

"So, any chance of you telling me where we are going?"

Micah's voice was warm with amusement. “Nope. That is not how surprises work.”

He squeezed my hand. The car filled with comfortable silence again.

Outside, the darkness stretched around us. Inside, the car felt warm and safe.

I'd spent so much of my life waiting for the other shoe to drop. The expectation that people were something other than who they presented themselves to be was always present. People disappointed me. Micah didn’t seem to do that. A little over a month wasn't supposed to be enough time for someone to become this important. And yet every time I looked at him, every time he smiled at me, every time I found myself reaching for my phone because I wanted to tell him something, the feeling grew a little stronger. Maybe there wasn't a timetable for these things.

I glanced over at him. He was focused on the road but could sense me and absentmindedly rubbed his thumb across the back of my hand.

There was a word that had been rattling around in my head for the past couple days. Honestly, it may have happened when he gave me that Coke when I was hung over.

That thought alone made me giggle.

“What’s up?” Micah asked, looking over at me as we made our way down a back country road.

“Nothing, just thought of something Belle said.”