Chapter 16
CHAPTER 16
HANNAH GRACE
“ H ey, HG, Mom made me promise to bring you next time,” Zach says as soon as I open my car door Monday morning.
He has a bright smile and a tray full of coffees. Three of them.
For him. For me. And for Cole.
Now that Cole and I are on better terms, it makes me happy that Zach is going to accept him as well.
“Zach, hey! Guess I don’t need to ask how your holiday was. Did you have fun?” I shoulder my bag from the passenger seat and close my door before wrapping Zach in a hug.
Cole is silent as he steps out of the driver’s seat of my car. I’m sure Zach notices that not only are we in one car, but Cole is driving. But he doesn’t say anything.
“It’s family, so you know how that goes. But I feel like I got spoiled. Mom made all my favorites and sent me with enough leftovers for a week.”
“Awww, that’s so great.” I squeeze his arm before I release him.
“You really would like them,” he tells me. “And like I said, Mom really wants to meet you. She hated that you were alone on Thanksgiving.”
“I wasn’t alone. I had Cole.”
We had spent Thanksgiving morning cuddled on the couch watching the Thanksgiving Day parade and the afternoon alternating between football watching and making out before ordering Chinese food for dinner.
So far it was my favorite way to spend the holiday yet.
“Things seemed kind of…awkward…when I left on Tuesday. I wasn’t sure how well that would go,” he says and passes me my coffee.
“We—”
“Good morning, Zach. Welcome back.” Cole walks around the car, aviators in place as he greets Zach with a handshake.
Walks is probably the wrong word.
Because he doesn’t just walk.
Saunters? Strolls? Ambles?
This isn’t the time for a thesaurus.
No, Cole doesn’t just walk. He fucking swaggers.
Might have something to do with the morning shower you shared .
Heat fills my cheeks that I attempt to hide while taking a drink of my mocha.
Zach returns the handshake before handing Cole a cup.
“I wasn’t sure what you drank. Black coffee okay?”
If Cole is surprised, his facial expression doesn’t change. It’s like the two of them are engaged in some sort of weird poker game, convinced that neither of them can show any sort of expression.
“This is great, thanks. I don’t need a pound of sugar in my coffee like Hannah Grace,” he says.
“Don’t be talking about my mocha,” I mumble and take another drink, nearly spitting it out when he pokes my side. “Hey!”
Zach studies the two of us. Cole and I have spent the last five days in a bubble made for two. But at some point we probably should have discussed how we were going to act when we were around other people. Cole’s touching me is going to inspire questions. Questions I don’t have answers for. Things are too new, too unpredictable, for me to want to be open about what’s going on between us.
Even with Zach despite his best friend status.
I glare at Cole, hoping he understands before I start walking toward the school. Still engaged in their manly poker game of no expression, the two men follow me silently. I badge in, waiting next to the door until Zach badges as well and grabs the door. I’ve been lectured by both of them at different times in my life about opening my own door so let them work it out between them. Like some choreographed routine, it works out, and I find myself sandwiched between the two of them in the lobby.
An awkward sandwich since I need to talk to Cole, but without an audience.
“See you at lunch?” I ask Zach, aiming for nonchalant and coming across more as over-caffeinated goofball.
He eyes me like he doesn’t quite understand my multiple brands of crazy before he nods. “You brought lunch today?”
Since Cole has been around he usually goes out close to lunch and brings something back for us. But today he has plans to talk to Sydney and Sawyer, so I packed two lunches. One for him and his meeting and the other for me.
“Yeah.”
“Great. I’ll see you later?”
“Eat in my classroom today?” I ask.
“Okay.”
“See you at lunch.” I wave with my coffee cup in hand, nearly slinging my mocha out of the lid.
He lifts his cup in a salute before turning to head to the gym.
“Thanks for the coffee,” I call after him as he walks away.
I wait until he’s in his office before I turn to go and nod my head in the direction of my classroom.
“We should talk,” I say, closing the door.
“About what?” He leans against the bookshelf and takes a drink of his coffee.
“I…don’t want anyone to know about this—us—just yet.” It’s hard to say, made more so by the look on Cole’s face now that his aviators are off and I can see the hurt in his eyes.
Dammit, that was the last thing I wanted to do.
“Are you…having second thoughts?” he asks.
“What? No.” I rush to him, wrapping my arms around his neck and tugging his head down for a kiss.
He takes control almost immediately, dipping his tongue to dance with mine while his hands grip my hips.
Slowly, I build the self-control I need to step back.
“We’re at school,” I tell him.
“So we can teach each other a few things,” he says, waggling his brows.
“You’re a nut.”
I giggle and push against his chest.
“In all seriousness though, let me talk to Zach. I know he likes me. That he wants more. But?—”
“I was wondering if you had picked up on that,” he says.
“He’s made it pretty clear that he’d be open to more if I was. But I’ve never felt that way about him. Not the same way he felt about me. He’s my best friend. I don’t want to hurt him and this will. So I have to figure out the best way to tell him. About you. About us.”
His expression softens and he reaches out to cup my cheeks in his hands.
“I understand. As much as I want to shout from the rooftops about us, I love that you care enough about his feelings to talk to him about it. But I don’t want to be your secret forever, Honey Girl. I want to be able to do this”—he drops his head and slides his lips along mine in a kiss that’s over far too soon for my liking—“whenever I want.”
I rub my lips together and capture the residual tingles, almost wishing we could play hooky for the day.
“We probably need to set some ground rules for school.”
“About what?” His thumbs skim a spot behind my ear.
One I want him to explore later. With his lips.
“Kissing.”
One corner of his lips quirks into the signature panty-melting smile that has gotten me into trouble more times than I can count.
“Ms. Whittaker, are you talking about public displays of affection?”
In high school, we’d been joined at the hip, holding hands, sneaking kisses, and even finding out-of-the-way places if we wanted more than just a quick kiss, but that was when we were both students.
“We need to keep kissing to a minimum. And nothing during school hours. I need to be professional.”
He nods. “Which means I probably can’t do this.” His hands drop to my waist before sliding back to my ass.
“Cole.” I try to say his name as a warning, but the breathy quality belies the tone I need to make it serious.
“How about a goodbye kiss? We didn’t get one of those this morning,” he murmurs, backing us against a wall out of sight from the door.
“You got a lot more than a kiss this morning.”
“If I recall, so did you,” he counters.
I open my mouth to retort, but am cut off by his lips as they lay siege to mine. There’s no warm-up, no preamble, but we’ve never needed one. It’s always been zero to sixty between us. And time hasn’t changed that.
He tilts his head, deepening the kiss, and I moan and lace my arms around his neck to pull him closer. His hands squeeze my ass and I gasp, breaking the kiss.
My core throbs, my breasts ache, and the hard ridge pressing against my stomach through his pants makes the throb worse. But we have to stop.
He groans and drops his forehead to my shoulder for a deep breath before stepping back.
“Okay, professional. We can do this.”
I nod.
“We can.”
“What time does school let out?” he asks.
“Umm, 3:07. Why?”
“Professional ends at 3:08.”
“Cole!”
“Sorry. I just never thought making out in a classroom would be on my bucket list. But suddenly it is.”
“Same here,” I tell him with a wink. “But later.”
“I’m going to hold you to that.”
“I’m counting on it.”
??????
“Okay, HG, spill the tea,” Zach says, sitting at the spare chair in my classroom as we eat at the table I use for reading groups with the kids.
We’ve opted to eat in here—or it was my idea that he went along with anyway. This conversation is meant for Zach and me only. Not other people’s ears.
Cole is in his car for his phone call so it’s just the two of us.
“There’s no tea,” I tell him, my cheeks already heating to call me out as a liar.
“Uh-huh. Not only did you ride together, but you let him drive your car and that almost never happens. Plus your cheeks are as red as a fire engine. Why?”
“I…uh…it’s warm in here.”
He and I both recognize I’m lying, but he doesn’t press. Instead he grabs a pack of carrot sticks from his lunch bag with a small container of ranch dressing.
“You’re not going to push?” I ask.
He shrugs and snaps into the carrot, chewing as he considers a response.
“I figure you’ll tell me when you’re ready. You don’t hide stuff from me. It’s one of the reasons our friendship works.”
“You really are the best friend I’ve ever had,” I say, and wrap my arm around him in an awkward side hug.
It’s true.
While Cole and I were friends as kids, the introduction of puberty—of teenage hormones and everything that came with them—made our friendship difficult. At least until we admitted we liked each other.
Zach covers my hand with his and squeezes.
“And you’re mine.”
Clearing my throat, I use the excuse of taking a drink of my water to extricate my hand which he releases right away.
“So when I left on Tuesday night, you weren’t even acknowledging Cole. But this morning, you two seem more…comfortable is probably the best word…around each other.”
The bite of sandwich I’m swallowing sticks like glue in my throat, and I take another drink of water.
“Y-yeah,” I manage to croak out.
“So what happened?”
“We talked. About what happened.”
“About why he broke up with you.”
Zach has no idea about what happened with the first time Cole kissed me after we went bowling, so of course he’s going to assume that was what we talked about.
“What did he say? Did he have an excuse for why he broke up with you like that?” he asks.
“Mm-hmm. This stays between us, Zach. Okay?”
“Who am I going to tell?” He pulls a piece of turkey from a sandwich bag and takes a bite.
“It was so sad. His last deployment, his unit met a little boy. Everyone thought of him like a little brother. Until he ambushed them one day. One of the guys in Cole’s group was killed and a few more wounded. In the end, Cole…” Tears clog my throat and I try to swallow around the lump.
“Cole what?”
A tear I was fighting to hold back slips through and rolls down my cheek before I can wipe it away.
“Hannah Grace?”
Taking a deep breath, I wave away Zach’s concern.
“Sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize to me. Did he say something to you?” Tension radiates from his body.
I shake my head.
“No. Not at all. It’s…I could feel his pain when he told me the story.”
“You always were a softie,” he teases.
“Hakeem was ten. But holding a gun and intent on killing them. I tried to explain to Cole that he had no choice but to shoot when Hakeem turned the gun toward him. But he still feels guilt.”
“That’s understandable,” he says.
I take another deep breath and let it out, the lump releasing and making it easier to swallow again.
“Which part?”
“All of it. He didn’t have a choice. But I can understand that guilt too.”
“He didn’t deal well with his grief. And he didn’t think I was strong enough to help him work through it. So he broke up with me and tried to self-medicate with alcohol before his boss told him that he needed to make a different choice.”
“And he never reached out afterward? This couldn’t have been recent.”
“No.”
Would things have been different if he had? Maybe we wouldn’t have lost so much time.
“Why not?”
The alarm goes off on my phone, a reminder that I need to go pick up the kids from the lunchroom.
We clean up quickly while Zach’s question plays on repeat.
“He was afraid if he tried I would hate him. If not for breaking my heart then for what happened,” I say as we leave my classroom.
He huffs a laugh.
“Sounds like that guy doesn’t understand you very well, HG. Anyone who does knows you could never hate anyone.”
“I did hate him for a while after we broke up.”
But not really. Even then I didn’t hate him. He broke my heart and I was pissed. But Zach is right; hate isn’t in my nature.
So wouldn’t the man who’s known me longer realize that?