Debra Driza - Mila 2.0 - Renegade

“I promise it has nothing to do with you,” I told him. “It’s all me.”

Groaning, he looked up at the sky. “I can’t believe you said that.” Then he dropped his head and skewered me with his gaze. “Look, if you’re not into me, just say so.”

I barked out a strangled laugh. “Actually, the problem is I like you way too much.”

Hunter tried to hide a smile, but wasn’t able to squash it before I could notice. “And how is that a problem exactly?”

I could stand here all day, ticking off the reasons. And I’d spent the last twenty-four hours batting them away like a persistent swarm of mosquitoes. But I’d made a decision. Being together wasn’t for the best. As much as I wanted to protect him, I couldn’t guarantee that I would be able to. Hunter’s safety mattered above everything.

Even the truth.

“It just is,” I said.

“Can’t you give me one day?” Hunter asked. “I need one day to show you that having me around is a good thing.”

“Hunter, I—”

“If you want me to go after that, I swear I won’t argue with you,” he went on.

I was so touched by how hard he was trying to persuade me that my throat locked up, refused to work for a minute.

One day. Hunter thought it was enough time, but I knew otherwise. Life could go from beautiful to ugly in a fraction of a second.

“Also, Tennessee is on my bucket list! You can’t deny a man the chance to check off something on his bucket list,” he added, his eyes wide and pleading, like he was scrambling for more excuses to give me.

There it was again. Laughter. Coming out of my synthetic belly, traveling out of my fake lungs, and then carrying on the wind. The corners of my lips turned up into a smile, and I was happy.

Legitimately, authentically happy.

How is that a problem exactly? Lately, happiness—even just a shred of it—had me buying into the lies I’d told. Not only to Hunter, but also to myself.

One more day. Everything will be fine.

“Okay, but I think you might need to revise that list,” I said, finally giving in. “It sounds kind of lame.”

Hunter smiled—the quirky, lopsided grin that hooked me back in Clearwater—and slipped an arm around me.

“I can’t think of anyone better to help me with it than you.”

I should have been panicked, or ready to attack at the slightest provocation. The way I’d felt when Mom and I were on the run. Today was no different from the day we tried to cross the border into Canada, or get on a plane to secretly fly out of the country.

But on the first leg of what Hunter dubbed “The Bio Daddy Road Trip,” all I could feel was relaxed. Ridiculously relaxed, given the circumstances.

Hunter insisted on taking the first turn at the wheel, and as he steered, we talked. Or rather, he talked, clearly a not-so-subtle but considerate attempt to keep my mind off my traumatic personal life. He talked about his manga collection, San Diego, the friends he’d left behind, more manga. How much he missed the ocean but not the traffic. How he hoped that he could take me with him to visit someday.

“You’d love it there. We could go to the beach, stay late, and have a bonfire. Then the next morning, we could drive up to the mountains and go for a hike. My friend’s dad has a cabin in Big Bear, so we could stay for free. It would be amazing,” he said with a sigh.

“Especially if we could read some manga while we were there,” I teased. “Seriously, though, it sounds amazing.”

And it did. Once I found Grady and put together the broken pieces of my past, then I had … nothing. No plans, no family, no idea of what my future would be like—only that I’d be constantly looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life. Even so, the fact that Hunter liked me enough to include me in his visions of the future … it meant everything to me.

I leaned over and pressed a kiss to his cheek before sliding back into my seat.

“Just because?” Hunter asked. With a sudden boyish grin, his fingers traced over the spot. So endearing that I was tempted to kiss him again.

“Just because,” I said.

Over the next few hours, I still kept a careful eye on the cars around us, and performed quick scans whenever we stopped. But that never seemed to prevent me from enjoying myself. Like when we pulled over for an impromptu Slurpee—

Me: “Why is there a tiny shovel on the end of the straw?”

Hunter: “What, they don’t have Slurpees in Philly? There’s always a tiny shovel on the end of the straw.”

Me: “So you don’t know either.”

Hunter: “Just drink your Slurpee.”

—or flicked water at each other while Hunter washed the bugs off the Jeep’s windshield. Times like these, I could almost forget the reason we were on the trip in the first place.

To pass the time, we played a game where we took turns naming animals in alphabetical order. As it turned out, Hunter liked to take a little creative license.

“Hare,” I said.

“Icky bird.”

I folded my arms. “You’re making that up.”

He shrugged, his face a picture of innocence. “Am not. They’re indigenous to Tibet, and they were named for the sound they make during mating rituals. Icky, icky, icky .”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Oh, no. I don’t kid about icky birds.”

“You could have just said ‘iguana,’ you know.”

“But then the icky bird would have felt slighted.”

“Okay, fine. I’ll let that one slide. We wouldn’t want to offend such a prestigious Tibetan avian species.”

He turned to grin at me. “Now you’re getting it.”

By the end of the game, we’d both done more laughing and fabricating than anything else.

“Wow, I haven’t played that since I was a kid,” Hunter said, once we’d finally settled down.

“Did your parents teach you?”

A pause. “No, my friends’ parents did on the way to soccer meets.” A lengthier pause, and then, “do you ever wish you had a brother? Or a sister?”

I stole a glance at his profile while he drove, but his eyes remained intent on the road.

Images flashed in my head. My face, only not mine, staring me down right before we had to race through an obstacle course designed by a madman. Her quizzical expression when I tried to talk about Mom. Her insistence that we were sisters of sorts. Sisters who competed to see if one would have her entire existence erased, with the push of a few buttons.

A chill wrapped around me like a night breeze. “No,” I said. “Not really. Why? Do you?”

A tiny muscle twitched in his jaw, a stiffness echoed in the way his shoulders squared against the seat back and the curl of his fingers on the wheel. He waited a tick, then deflated. “Yeah, I do. Mainly just to have someone to talk to at home. My parents come and go a lot, and they’re … well, let’s just say they’re all over the place with their attention. One minute they’re all in my business like I’m ten or something, but the other fifty-nine, they act like I’m forty and don’t need anything from them. Sometimes I pretend that I have a brother, and we make fun of how weird they are while we hole up in my room and watch really shitty TV.”

The tiny lump that had started forming in my throat grew in thickness, but I swallowed it away. I’d give anything to have Hunter’s dysfunctional little family.

At least he knew them. At least they were alive.

“Do you ever feel like that? Like you just wish you could rewrite history, somehow, to make it play out more in your favor?”

I reached across the seat and rested my hand lightly on his cheek. He leaned into my palm, and my heart swelled. “Every day,” I whispered. “I wish I could change the past, every single day.”