42. Cole
Cole
I knew the second I saw her face that something was wrong.
Callie went white in that auditorium, grabbed Oliver's hand, and bolted like the building was on fire.
I've spent enough years watching the people I care about to know when something's actually hurt them and I just stood there and let her walk out the door.
"You're doing the murder face," Ben said. He set three beers down and dropped into the chair across from me. We were in his place after close, the worm cooler humming in the corner.
"I'm not doing a face."
"You've been doing it since the parking lot. You're gonna curdle my beer." He slid one at me and one at the empty chair, and the door banged and Luke trudged in, hair shoved back, looking like a man who'd been losing an argument with himself the whole drive over.
He pulled a chair out to join us and just stared at it instead of sitting, like his ass didn’t deserve the comfort.
"She heard us," he said. "Didn't she. That's why she ran."
Neither of us answered.
Ben stopped messing with his beer and that permanent grin went off his face and that is how we knew it was bad.
"She bolted right after we were back there going at each other.
She wouldn't look at any of us." He shook his head.
"You do the math. She heard us snapping at each other like a couple of dogs over a bone. Over her."
"We weren't-" Luke started.
"We absolutely were." I cut him off, because somebody had to say it straight. "We were standing behind a cardboard snowdrift arguing over who got more of her time, like she's a parking spot. And she stood there and heard every word of it."
Luke winced and Ben put down his beer with a thud.
"I keep thinking about Noah." Both their heads came up.
"First time he met Oliver he came home and told me he'd made a friend who knew the real names of stars.
He's been so lonely. I've dragged that kid all over hell trying to be both parents and make him feel like he had a real family.
And then this woman's strange little boy looks at my strange little boy and decides their best friends.
" My throat went tight. "It’s like they’re becoming brothers.
I'd burn this town down for the way Oliver makes Noah laugh.
That's where I'm at. That's the whole thing for me. It’s not just Callie it’s everything that orbits her. I’ve never wanted anything like this. "
Luke finally sat down and wrapped both hands around the beer Ben had pulled out for him and didn't drink it.
"Michelle never asked me how I was," he said.
"Especially towards the end of our marriage before she cheated on me, I'd come home and there'd be this cold in the house, like I was taking up space somebody'd rather have empty.
" He shook his head. "Callie asked me if I was okay across a room full of screaming kids.
I wasn't even doing anything, I was just standing there, and she walked over and asked.
And I nearly came apart in front of forty parents over it.
" He laughed. " You don't know what that does to a man to be around her level of warmth when I spent years feeling like a houseguest in my own marriage. "
Ben was quiet too long. He turned his beer in a slow circle.
"She's the only woman I've ever met who's funnier than me.
You know how long I've waited for that? I say something stupid and she fires back something stupider and I about fall out of my chair.
" He shook his head. "She laughs at my dumb jokes and I laugh at hers and she's a complete disaster and she's sexy as hell and somehow it's all the same thing.
The whole package. I'm not interested in finding the parts I'd want to fix. There aren't any."
"So we're agreed," I said. "We're all signing up for total and complete chaos with this woman."
"Thoroughly," Luke said.
"She's crazy as hell," Ben said, the corner of his grin coming back. "And we're all crazy about her. Honestly, it's embarrassing. Three grown men. One of you cried about a child carrying a clipboard tonight."
"I did not cry about the clipboard-"
"You said, and I quote, I will simply take him."
"He filled out a request, Ben-"
"And that's the problem," I said, and they both shut up, because they knew I was about to add even more weight to the whole situation.
"It's not just her. If it was just her, one of us steps back.
We're grown. We've stepped back from women before.
" I turned the cold bottle in my hands. "But Noah's got Oliver and Emma and Beth and all of them are growing closer every day.
Those kids have a pack for the first time in their lives and she's in the middle of it, and the second one of us 'wins' her, that whole thing comes apart.
There's four kids attached to whatever we decide here.
We don't get to be selfish about it. And we have to be sure we don’t fuck up our kids lives as well as our own. "
Luke nodded. "We've never not shared anything. That's the insane part. Ben, you lived in my guest room for four months when Michelle and I split. Cole, you flew back from wherever you weren't allowed to tell us when my dad died and never said a word about what it cost you."
"I'm not talking about that."
"I know you're not. I'm just saying." Luke spread his hands. "Grief, money, a lawn mower, the worst years of our lives. If there are three men on this earth who could love the same woman and not let it-"
"It's us," Ben finished. "Well, damn. God help her, it's absolutely us."
We'd been acting like one of us had to win her, when the truth was none of us wanted to win anything if it meant the other two lost. We were already a unit. We'd just been too jealous to admit she'd become part of it.
"Then we don't make her choose," I said. "We go to her, all three, and we tell her the truth. We're hers however she'll have us. One of us, all of us, whatever she wants. She picks the shape of it. Not us."
"And we apologize," Luke said. "For tonight. For making her feel like a-"
"A cupcake getting split three ways," Ben said. "Yeah."
"Tomorrow," I said. "We find her tomorrow and we lay all of it out."
They both nodded, and Ben got up to grab another round, because apparently, we were celebrating now. Three idiots toasting a woman who had no idea we'd just decided to hand her our entire lives. But there was still something in my gut that was turning over.
"I didn't like how Beauford was looking at her," I said.
Ben stopped halfway to the cooler. Luke's head came up.
"Tonight, at the play. Before she ran." I'd been chewing on it all night and only now let it out.
"He watches her. He's always watching her, but tonight there was something.
He had that look. I've seen that look on men right before they decide they're owed something.
" My jaw clenched. "She brushes me off every time I try to bring it up.
Says it's nothing, says she handles him.
But a man like that, and her job hanging on his say-so… "
"You think being with us makes it worse for her," Luke said slowly. "The optics. If it got out."
"I think it could cost her everything." I made myself say the next part.
"And I think I don't care what it costs us.
If being with her blows up her whole life, we're there for the fallout.
The job, the gossip, that greasy son of a bitch, whatever comes.
She's spent her whole life being the only one holding the rope.
" I looked at the two men I'd trust with my son and my life.
"She doesn't hold it alone anymore. That's what we tell her tomorrow. "
"Tomorrow," Ben said, and handed me a fresh beer.
We drank to it. We had a plan. We were going to fix the whole thing first thing in the morning and start our lives with the woman who was the most chaotic, aggravating, sexy, tender-hearted disaster any of us had ever had the privilege of losing our minds over.