Can You Keep A Secret?

Chapter Twenty-Three

-Mikey's POV-

We'd spent the day in the studio, working out the changes we made for the show – We cut out a few songs, focused the dancing so that Rye wouldn't have to do any, and planned to sing I Wasn't Worried and Don't Hurt Yourself whilst sitting on stools. It was kind of beyond me as to why we were still planning on doing the show at all, but Rye seemed pretty persistent on us doing it.

He kept saying that he didn't want the fans to think anything was wrong, but I had a feeling that it stretched beyond that – He didn't want anyone to sense that anything was off with him.

I knew better than that, though, but I was possibly the only person he trusted to be witness to just how much it had affected him. It was crazy to me that he was so embarrassed by it all – He just didn't seem to understand that anyone else probably wouldn't even be able to be up and moving yet. In a way, he reminded me of Dwayne Johnson in Fast and Furious 7 when he ripped his cast off and went on to save his friend's lives, just because he decided that there were things to be done and there wasn't enough time to waste just sitting around and recovering.

He had me clean the bullet wound in the morning and patch it back up, considering that I sort of had experience with such things, after all my tattoos and all. It had been weird to see it – Like, maybe he could deny it away and make it seem like it had never happened, but here was proof. It reminded me of how closed I had been to losing him, and it made tears prick the back of my eyes, but I held the floor back, for his sake.

Other than the physical pain that it obviously put him in, I knew that it had made a deep emotional toll as well. All of last night, I felt him tossing and turning above me, and I wasn't sure that he had gotten any sleep at all.

To be honest, I didn't think that any of us were doing too well. When Liv came back home from the mall with Andy yesterday, she confessed to me that she'd had a panic attack – Once again, I felt disappointed in myself that I hadn't been there to help her. I think she could tell, because she had assured me that she ended up being okay, that Andy had helped her through it, that there had been no way to know that it was going to happen – But it shouldn't have been Andy, it should've been me. And anyone should've been able to tell that something could've happened – She'd gone through something really difficult. She wasn't going to be able to walk away from it as if it had never happened.

The thought had been nagging me all day, that I kept missing out on big, important things, that the ones I loved were suffering, and I had no idea what to do about it. All I knew was that I didn't want to be separated from Liv any longer – I was her boyfriend. I wanted to be her hero. I couldn't keep leaving other people to do the job for me.

I waited impatiently for her to finish up Facetiming her sister before speaking to her.

"Liv? I was thinking..."

"About what?" She asked, leaning backwards onto her hands.

"What if you didn't go to uni?" Confusion immediately clouded her face.

"Why wouldn't I?"

"Well, I don't know, I was just thinking, after everything that's happened recently..." I'd kind of been hoping that she would've immediately been on board with the idea.

"Mikey, I can take care of myself. I love you, but that is my future we're talking about."

"I mean, you said you couldn't really afford it anyways..."

"Yeah, I also said I was going to find a way to make it work, no matter what. Now more than ever, I know that I need to live for the moment, because how long you're alive isn't garmented. I need to do what I want to do, not just laze around all day once I'm faced with one problem. You know what? I can't believe we're even having this conversation right now." And with that, she got up and left the room, slamming the door on the way out. I was left feeling even worse than I did before.

A few minutes later, Andy followed her out – Someone else to save the day again.