Chapter 1 Cole #3
“He died immediately,” the coroner said, like that made it easier.
The first officer on scene, a kid who kept fidgeting with his hat, called it rotten luck.
It was rotten, all right. But luck had nothing to do with it.
It wasn’t the kid’s fault. But I still told him to fuck all the way off because no way would my methodical, careful-to-a-fault dad have skipped a safety check.
“A tragedy,” Sheriff Willard had said, tone flat as day-old coffee.
That was when I knew. Baywood didn’t want me digging, and Cole’s family didn’t want me near their son.
Between the whispers, the pity, and the stares that told me I’d never belong, I wasn’t just grieving, I was being pushed out.
Staying meant putting Cole in the crosshairs of whatever killed my dad.
So I left Baywood soon after that. Not because I wanted to, but because every road pointed me out. I couldn’t stand the rot leaking from its every pore.
Now I’m back, but I’m not the same kid who believed in fairness and doing things the “right” way. That version of me died when I watched them zip Dad’s body into a bag.
Baywood killed him. And if I’m not careful, it’ll kill me the same way.
COLE
I thought I’d never make it, but eventually I spot Noah and Caspian. Noah’s nodding off on a picnic blanket, clutching his small plastic T-Rex. It’s survived both extinction and a four-year-old. Now that’s resilience.
“Sorry, so many people wanted to catch up,” I say, crouching to zip Noah’s hoodie. “And then, well… Earl.”
Caspian smiles, calm and reassuring like always.
With his soft brown eyes, perfectly-behaved hair, and the tall, broad-shouldered build of an ex-quarterback, he looks like he was designed to be universally liked.
If Baywood needed a poster boy for dependability, Caspian would be it.
He’s the guy who shows up on time, remembers your coffee order, and folds Noah’s laundry when I forget.
I’ve wished, more than once, that I could fall for someone like him.
Someone easy-going. Safe. But I’ve only ever wanted Xaden.
Even after he tossed me aside like a souvenir from a forgotten vacation.
“It was the same for us,” Caspian says. “By the way, Steve tried to give Noah a t-shirt that says Ban Harold . Noah told him, and I quote: ‘It looks much too vulgar for me.’ Any chance that came from your mom?”
“Oh, yeah. Just last week she asked if I only shop at Vulgar and Garish.”
I lift Noah while Caspian folds the blanket. Then he pulls us into a half-hug.
“You were so good tonight. One Last Kiss sounded amazing live. The whole of Baywood must weep with envy that I get to drive you home.”
“As they should,” I say. “I have a laminated backstage pass.”
Caspian chuckles, and we start toward the car.
It’s easy with him. Always has been. He never pushes, never asks me to be more than I am. Sometimes I think he’s the only reason that’s kept me from unraveling completely. For a fleeting moment, I feel… okay. Tired, yes. Heart still aching, yes. But happy for the love and friendship I still have.
Then the happiness evaporates like mist off the lake.
Because standing in our path, impossibly real, is Xaden Bailey.
XADEN
We’ve been scanning the crowd for Mike for almost half an hour when I see him.
Not Mike. Cole.
The hit of emotion is instant vertigo. The world tilts; I stay rooted.
Lean frame. Boyish features. Snug jeans.
Still soft where it counts, sharp where it matters.
The last of the golden sunlight makes him look almost unreal.
A lake breeze stirs his curls, and my hands ache with the memory of holding them. Of touching him.
I force my eyes away, but they betray me, dragging back to him like gravity.
When the first shock fades, my brain starts connecting dots: the little boy must be Lizzie’s son that Cole adopted in a dramatic Hudson family plot twist. That story I’d heard.
But Cole dating Caspian Stone? A goddamn wrecking ball.
Stone, a polished former football hero, has never had to fight for anything in his life outside the field. And now he has Cole. My Cole.
I look at them, heart pounding: Caspian folding the blanket. Cole lifting the kid. Their bodies slotting into a half-hug, easy, practiced, like it’s happened a hundred times before. Cole leans into it, casual, comfortable, smiling.
It’s not a kiss. But it might as well be. My fists clench. I want… No. It doesn’t matter. Not anymore. Still, the image sears into me. Caspian touching Cole’s back with one hand like it’s his right. Cole looking up at him with that small, private smile that used to be mine.
Torn but reluctant to look away I just stand there, imagining how fast Caspian must have run to Cole after I left. All in the name of “comforting a friend.” And look at them now.
I bet the Hudsons got over their discomfort with Cole’s queerness when a trust-fund kid with a good family name picked him up for a date.
When I stayed for dinner, the meal came with a side of subtle insults about knowing your place.
Dessert was a rundown of Caspian’s endless achievements.
Probably still is. Yes, I’m bitter. Sue me.
“Let’s go,” I say to JJ. “Mike’s not here. The place is closing up.”
Ronnie belches and wanders behind the bushes, tossing a crushed beer can, while JJ lights up another cigarette.
My chest feels tight. Walls closing in.
Please don’t come this way. Please don’t come this way. Please—
They come this way.
COLE
I spot Xaden too late. My brain short-circuits, and my heart tries to escape through my mouth.
Ever since Caspian texted that he saw Xaden, I’ve been mentally preparing for the collision.
What a fool I was. As if anything could prepare me for this.
He still looks like the world’s sweetest danger but there’s more of him now.
More height. More stubble. More shoulders.
Eyes: unreadable. Hair: messier. The magnetic pull telling me to stop fighting and just go to him?
Still there. It takes everything in me not to close the distance, not to give in like gravity demands.
Xaden looks straight at me, and I look right back, though it’s killing me.
Seeing him is killing me. I hate him. Scratch that. I don’t. But God knows I’ve tried.
Caspian glances between us. “I’ll get the car,” he murmurs, scooping up both the blanket and Noah, and vanishing like the saint he is.
Then it’s just me and Xaden. Or it feels like it. The festival is still moving around us — food stalls, drunk dads, kids with balloons — but the noise has gone muffled. My pulse sounds unnaturally loud in my ears. Our eyes stay locked, the air between us buzzing with static.
In my peripheral vision, I see the guy next to Xaden; glaring, mean. Another emerges from the bushes, zipping up his pants. Charming. Must be the Beavis and Butt-Head Caspian saw earlier. They look at me like I’m dinner, their stares crawling over me. My skin goes cold even as my chest burns.
Xaden stands there between us, steady, and I can’t tell if he’s shielding me or letting them enjoy the view. I want to believe it’s the former.
“You happened to be in the neighborhood?” My voice is brittle.
“Working,” he says. Just that. No apology, no explanation. His voice sounds deeper. Rougher. It scrapes at the bottom of my stomach, reminding me of its power to calm me down or set me on fire with one word.
“On your disappearing act, perhaps?” I ask. Childish, I know, but I’m looking at someone who told me he’d love me forever and then left.
His jaw ticks, eyes darken. I know that look; annoyance and frustration. I used to read him like he was my favorite book. Now, he’s nothing but a ghost story.
His friends are blatantly staring at me, nasty and obscene.
My stomach twists.
Suddenly I’m livid at him. “Look at all these cars just waiting to be stolen. Or do you prefer robbing old ladies?” I almost spit the words out, crossing my arms like that could help me fight the pull.
It doesn’t. It only makes me more aware of the way my chest feels tight, like I’m holding myself together with duct tape.
I despise myself for being this weak. For remembering exactly how he used to taste when I kissed him. For wanting to kiss him again. For wanting him to hold me.
He keeps looking at me. Steadily, like he’s not even ashamed of his new life.
His silence is unnerving. Infuriating. Is it an intimidation technique he learned from a cellmate?
Or is it just him, daring me to break first?
Either way, it’s working. Because the truth is I don’t just want him to answer.
I want him to snap, to yell at me, to kiss me.
More than anything I want to wipe that calm off his face. With my mouth.
So how ruined does that make me?
“Go back to your friends and have a nice life,” I retort, losing my cool. As if I had it in the first place.
Something raw flashes in his eyes, hot and sharp. “You go back to Caspian,” he scowls, saying the name like it’s poison.
A realization hits. Xaden thinks I’m with Caspian now.
I could correct him. I don’t.
Instead, I walk away before I do something reckless, like proving him wrong by kissing him in the middle of the damn parking lot.
So that went well.
XADEN
Please, Cole. I force the words down my throat and turn my head. I don’t want to witness him walking to the waiting arms of Caspian Stone.
What I want is to grab him, shake him, kiss him until he remembers what we were. Until he admits what I still saw in his eyes.
But more than anything I want to shield him against the danger I’ve dragged back into Baywood. And that includes me. So, despite my body aching to protect and ruin him in the same breath, I let him walk away from me like I was never anything at all.