At a pub called O’Malley’s in the middle of town, Mike blocked out both the joyous strains of Christmas music blaring from the jukebox and the overall sense of merriment surrounding him.

Instead, he was spending his Christmas Eve staring into the bottom of a lukewarm beer he’d been nursing for an hour. A position he’d been in far too often since the morning he’d come home from Ashley’s to find his jacket and Kaitlin’s note on his coffee table.

Even now, four days later, the memory of it made the bile rise in his throat. At first, he’d convinced himself he was relieved. He’d been about to make a big mistake and start talking about commitment. Hell, she’d probably just saved him the trouble of an awkward talk when he realized he’d been wrong. He’d tried to bury himself in the reno at his grandmother’s again and forget about her, but his heart just wasn’t in it.

So he’d turned to the bike shop, putting Honey’s house on hold until he could get his head on straight. He’d been useless there too, though. And, after screwing up the paint job on a custom Fat Boy Lo, his buddy and employee Reese had begged him to take a couple days off.

Now he was here. Again. On his second pint of cheap beer, wondering why something that used to seem like fun now felt hollow.

So yeah, maybe Kitty had been more than just a hookup. She was the girl next door. The girl he’d known since he was ten years old. But what really tore him apart more than anything was the fucking note.

He knocked back the dregs of his beer and set his glass back on the bar with a clack.

Eighteen years ago, before he and Rick moved into his grandmother’s house permanently, his mom had brought them over to Honey’s to visit. Not unusual. She’d drop them off for Honey to babysit them before going out on the town, or on a date with some guy, sometimes for days at a time. Hell, sometimes they’d have to stay there for weeks at a time if she got evicted from her apartment, or had a breakup with whatever guy was beating up on her at the time.

She’d come back to get them, head hanging low, a couple new bruises on her arms, maybe a chipped tooth or a black eye. But she’d always come back for them.

This time was different though.

This time, she wasn’t coming back.

The next morning they awoke to find Grandma Honey in the living room crying. She held a piece of paper in her hand that she crumpled up as soon as they walked in.

She wouldn’t tell them what was wrong or what it said, but a week later while Grandma was out getting groceries, Mike snuck into her room. In her nightstand under a stack of junk mail, he found the wadded up note and read it.

It was something he’d regretted seeing every day of his life.

Please take care of little Rick and Michael. I’m no good for them.

Strange how this whole thing with Kitty brought him full circle. He’d run out on her to help a friend so she wouldn’t stay in an abusive situation like the ones his mother always found herself in. And then walked back into the house to find a note.

A fucking note.

Right or wrong, it had torn open an ancient wound that had scabbed over but never truly healed. How could she walk away so easily? With no explanation. No chance to let him explain. Just empty words and a jacket that, for some reason, he had worn today, in spite of the heat.

“Michael Blade?” a woman’s voice murmured from behind him.

He whipped around in his stool, his pulse rocketing for a second until he saw who it was. He recognized the pretty blonde, but couldn’t put a name to the face.

“Hey. Good to see you, ummm…”

The girl laughed, “You don’t remember me? Tiffany. Tiffany Wallace.”

Now he recognized her. They’d dated for a short time – actually, dated was a bit generous; they screwed for like a week – right after he graduated high school. She had just moved into town and they’d hooked up at a club in town. He thought she had moved away awhile ago.

“Oh yeah,” he said, trying to muster a shred of enthusiasm. “How are you, Tiffany? Long time no see.”

“I’m great! Just in town through the New Year. You look, like, really good Mikey. Like…really good,” she said, eyeing him up and down, her gaze lingering on his biceps.

“Thanks, Tiff. You look great, too,” he said with as polite of a smile as he could manage given the fact that he wanted nothing more than for her to leave.

She paused for a moment, twirling a long lock of golden hair.

“Say, Mike,” her tone was laced with seduction, “I don’t have to meet up with the family until later tonight. You wanna maybe get out of here? Catch up a little.” She added a not so subtle wink that would’ve had the Mike of just a couple weeks ago cocked, locked and ready to fire.

She was beautiful. No doubt about it. Her hourglass figure and soft blonde hair were the things dreams were made of. She had long, tan legs that made the distance from her red, six-inch heels to the bottom of her short, black dress seem like miles. Maybe getting out of here and “catching up” would help him take his mind off of Kitty.

Kitty.

He thought back to their last night together, and shook his head slowly.

“I’m sorry, Tiffany. I’m not interested,” he finally said.

“Not interested?” she asked with a harsh laugh that made her look a lot less pretty than she’d been a moment before. “Since when is Michael Blade not interested in sex?”

“Since now, with you,” he replied, more annoyed with himself than her, for exactly the same reason. Since when wasn’t he interested in sex?

Since Kitty. How had his redheaded neighbor burrowed so deeply under his thick skin so fast? And how the hell was he going to get her out?

But Tiffany was unaware of his internal struggle and leaned in, one hand cocked on her hip.

“Um, excuse me?” Tiffany’s cheeks turned beet red. “You’re a real asshole, Blade--”

“Woah, woah!” a second, female voice chimed in, cutting her off before things got even uglier.

Mike looked up to see Kitty’s high school friend, Cheri, standing there holding both hands up like a ref in a boxing ring.

“No means no, okay, toots,” she muttered to Tiffany, and jabbed a finger toward the door. “Now hit the bricks.”

Tiffany looked like she was about to argue, but the fierce expression in Cheri’s laser green eyes made her think twice.

“Whatever,” she mumbled, and then tottered off on her too-high heels toward the exit.

“What are you doing here, Cheri?” Mike asked, suddenly feeling like he’d aged ten years in the past few days. He’d never been very close with Cheri and seeing her now only reminded him of Kitty.

“Last I checked, it was the only place with decent wings in town. Sit. I’ll buy you a beer,” she said with a gentle smile that seemed so out of character compared to her usual, brash self.

He dropped back down in his stool at the bar. Cheri took the seat next to him and ordered two pints from the bartender.

“I appreciate it,” Mike said, “but seriously, tell me why you’re here?”

“Fine,” Cheri sighed. “I was doing some last minute holiday shopping, saw your bike in the parking lot and thought I’d stick my nose where it didn’t belong. Look, Mike. Kaitlin and I are best friends. She told me everything.”

He would love to know what her version of “everything” was, but he wasn’t about to ask.

“I don’t know what she told you, but she decided not to stick around so--”

“She told me that part. That she left when you didn’t come back that night. She also told me you left to meet another woman without explanation. An ex, no less.”

When she said it, brows raised like that, it did sound bad. He clenched his pint glass in one hand and shook his head.

“Some shit went down and it wasn’t my place to tell her someone else’s business like that. I was going to tell her when I got back, once I cleared it with Ashley, but she was gone.”

With nothing but a kiss-off note and his old leather jacket left behind, he reminded himself, clinging to the last remnants of anger because it hurt less than what was behind it.

Cheri nodded, tapping out a staccato beat on the bar and nodding. “Yep, that’s pretty much how she told it, without the Ashley details of course. And to be honest, I thought she was right to leave. You don’t exactly have the reputation of being a stand up, one-woman guy.”

He wanted to argue but knew he couldn’t. She was right. And still…

“She could’ve waited. And she didn’t have to leave town, for god’s sake,” he muttered under his breath.

“As I was saying, I thought she was right to leave. Until I ran into Ashley today at the grocery store. She told me what happened, Mike. She told me Chad was hitting her and you went in and beat his ass. Even convinced her to go down and file a police report.” Cheri leaned in and took his arm in one hand, her penetrating gaze seeming to look into his very soul. “Why didn’t you call Kaitlin? Why didn’t you at least try to go after her and tell her what happened?”

Mike looked down at the fading, mottled bruises on his knuckles.

“Because she walked away like it meant nothing to her. She promised she would wait until I got home and then she left. I figured it would be better for both of us to get on with my life. Try to make sure it would eventually mean nothing to me, too.”

“Yeah?” she asked with a smirk. “How’s that working out for you so far?”

He thought about lying but then shrugged. Fuck it. What difference did it make now?

“She’s all I think about.”

“I remember the story about your mom, too, Mike. And I get why trusting might be hard for you, but have you ever thought of it from Kaitlin’s perspective? Sure, her dad didn’t walk out on them until she was grown, but he might as well have. He had a mistress for years. A whole other family, in fact. And her mother was alone and sad and bitter her whole life. All Kait ever wanted was someone she could trust.”

The words washed over him like a bucket of ice water, sending a chill through him. “And then the second she decided to try and trust me, I left in the middle of the night without explaining,” he finished for her.

Why hadn’t he seen it before? It made so much sense. He’d been so caught up in his own tangled feelings and so afraid of letting his guard down, he hadn’t realized what Kaitlin was risking on her end.

A tiny flame of hope flickered in his heart.

“So what do I do? Would she even talk to me now?”

“Here’s a tip. She’s actually going to her mom’s house tonight. She forgot some of her clothes there.”

He threw a twenty on the table to pay his tab and launched himself to his feet.

He’d dropped the ball once, but he wasn’t about to do it again.

“Thanks Cheri. I mean it. I owe you huge.”

She laughed and shook her head. “No you don’t. When I saw you in here drinking at one in the afternoon, all doom-and-gloom, I figured you were just as tore up as her. You telling off Bimbo Barbie was just the icing on the cake. You had a slam-dunk with that girl and you refused. Looks like bad boy Mike has changed after all.” She clipped him lightly on the shoulder. “Treat my friend right, and we’re even.”

He grabbed his jacket and strode from the bar, a man on a mission. If there was a way to win Kitty back, he was going to find it, or die trying. He had one stop to make, and then it was back to old neighborhood.

Back to Kitty, if she’d have him.