Chapter 8 - Cole
I wake up with the sun and realize that I’m still wrapped around Sofia. My dick is hard, her body is so fucking warm, bare, and her neck is marked with hickeys since I couldn’t resist making her mine in some way.
Easing out of bed, I look at her. Beautiful, vivacious, as active a participant as I was last night. But the longer I watch her, the more off I feel. This isn’t how it was supposed to happen. It wasn’t supposed to happen at all.
I want her again, want to cuddle her, hold her, but want to push her away at the same time. I want to tell her this will never happen again. I’m betraying my wife’s memory. I’m not fit to protect her. I’m not ...
Shaking my head, I grab my clothes, even though they’re still damp. I pull on my jeans, my clothes, and head back to the house. Ronnie doesn’t bring anything up which means I must look like a mess.
A shower, then breakfast. I just have to get into the normal routine. I have to keep things right and level for my son. That’s all that matters. I have to protect him. I can’t get distracted again. I need to keep a level head, need to keep everything calm, keep everything normal.
Which is ruined the second he asks to check on Sofia when he comes out for breakfast. I want to tell him no, but he brings it up again and again until I relent.
As I’ve come to expect, Sofia is outside. Usually she works on the garden in the mornings, then reads outside until it gets too hot. Today though, she’s on a tablet, looking at something intensely. When she sits, she jumps slightly. I feel bad for half a second, but that feeling spreads.
All I can hope is that it doesn’t show on my face.
“Sofia!” Liam yells.
She smiles at him and welcomes his hug, but looks at me with a mix of hurt and desire before focusing on him. I hate seeing how hurt she is. I hate seeing her this confused and twisted up. I hate knowing that I could fix it, but I feel guilty for wanting to.
I’m not ready for the way I feel. I’m not ready for wanting her, for liking her, for anything that’s on my mind. Not that it’s pushing a single fucking thought away when Liam insists that she stay close to us, so I can save her if needed.
I swallow uncomfortably. “I have work to do.”
“I’ll watch him,” she says as if it’s that easy, as if she’ll protect him.
Something about her gaze says she will. The hurt clears from her eyes and she puts on a smile for Liam, offering to play games. He’s a kid, he doesn’t know exactly what’s going on, but he can read into things – not into her apparently.
Or maybe I just pay more attention.
Either way, the next three days are pure torment.
I dream of Sofia, of her crying and whimpering, trying to reach out to me as I walk away even though I think I’m walking towards her.
During the day, it’s not any better. She gives me that confused, questioning look with an undercurrent of hurt and desire anytime we see each other and Liam isn’t letting ‘space’ happen.
He invites her to every dinner every night and she turns him down gently, but tonight she doesn’t.
She comes over and after I cook, I walk away.
I don’t need to confuse the girl more. I don’t need to see more hurt in her eyes, I don’t need to see her pain, her suffering, her accusations.
I can’t keep seeing the pain on her face and continue to do nothing about it, but I don’t have a clue what to do about it.
I can’t promise her that I’m going to be all in. I can’t give her the ecstasy and normal life she wants. There’s so much I just don’t know how to provide her. She deserves better and not giving her anything is better than pretending I have more to offer.
I give them an hour and a half for dinner, but then hear Sofia.
I move towards the doorway and find her reading Liam’s favorite bedtime story.
The one about the dinosaur. Her voice is a soft lullaby, wonderful and entrancing.
She doesn’t trip over a word, seems to measure it out so it’s like a song.
It’s so comforting that I’m drawn in, moving closer despite telling my feet to do the opposite.
Liam’s breathing goes even and he doesn’t try to interrupt.
Doesn’t point anything out, just settles in against her side.
He’s past picture books, but this one is special to him.
I watch, totally ensnared, oddly comforted by the fact that she’s so comfortable with him holding her braid in one hand as he snores against her chest. She runs her hand through his hair and rests her cheek against his head as she finishes the last page.
I shouldn’t like this view. I shouldn’t like having Sofia here and reading to my son. I shouldn’t enjoy the fact that he’s as wrapped up in her as I am. The way she gently runs her fingers through her hair, how she moves to restart reading when he stirs, all of it tears me up. I want her.
Giving her everything, everything I have to give and giving my son her, letting myself believe she’ll stay, that she’ll be here ... not to mention the emotions I don’t want to feel ripple through me, building on one another until they’re going to sweep away my logic.
Sofia looks up at me, bites her bottom lip, and sets the book down. She looks down at Liam and her decision is made. She’s not moving. She’d rather sleep right there than disturb him and I see that on her face as obviously as I feel my own indecision.
After another moment, a silent war between us – her wanting to stay with him, me not knowing what to do with her – I pick up my son, adjusting him in my arms without waking him, then carry him upstairs.
If she stays, if she stays on that couch, I can try to explain or I can tell her it’s time she finds a place of her own.
Because I can’t keep shouldering the weight of her accusing, pained looks and my son’s desire to bring her deeper into our family.
It’s too much for me to stand, especially when I know how she tastes, when I know that I’m her first. I already feel bound to her in a way that messes with my mind.
Allowing this to continue is only going to make things worse.
Letting her go, accepting she could be with someone else, that they might try to own her, to use her, to fucking touch her ... it makes me just as insane. What the hell am I supposed to do?