14. Look at Me
LOOK AT ME
COLE
This isn’t her routine.
Something, or someone, has thrown her off her game, and yet she still doesn’t acknowledge me as she sits there with her knees tucked up to her chin. Her bare feet showcase hot-pink toenail polish on her delicate little toes.
She stopped wearing shoes in my home around week three, and I keep actively ignoring why that hits me in the chest like it should mean something.
Bare feet are just that.
Except with her, it feels intimate, and intimate feels right.
Dragging my gaze away from toes that on anyone else would repulse me, I focus on her laptop and open notebook. They sit at an angle that tells me she’s already been here working long enough that it’s turned sideways with her slanted scrawl so I can’t read it.
When she doesn’t look up, I move to the French press to make our coffee. There are too many things left unsaid between us, and that chasm is ripping open so fast I’m not sure how to stop the bleed.
It’s become our new normal, though I’m aware that normal isn’t the right word for us. Normal implies something settled. This is more like…a crumbling foundation. Everything’s structural until you hit the one wall you should have never touched and the entire building comes crashing down.
Perhaps Junie and I were always destined for the crash-landing.
“Q3 vendor reconciliation is about 60 percent clean,” she says instead of a greeting.
It pisses me off.
“Good morning to you too,” I bite back.
I bet my left nut she’s suppressing a smile—Viper loves snark—but she remains silent while I finish our coffee.
She doesn’t speak again until I place a mug in front of her. “I found another discrepancy in the Wilford account. It’s the third time in four months. Same vendor. Same nine-day lag.”
I should’ve gone for an Irish coffee this morning.
This is why I’ve needed her though—she fills in the gaps of my knowledge base, so I pull out the chair opposite her while ruminating on what her findings could mean.
Please find the proof I need because I’m not sure anyone will believe in my innocence without it.
Fuck. Even my subconscious is begging for her now.
I had every intention of keeping a professional distance from her, but the second my ass hits the chair, I slide it closer. Professional distance will never work for Junie and me, no matter how hard I try.
“Wilford’s the electrical contractor,” I say. “They invoice on completion, not on schedule. The lag is normal.” At least it should be.
She marks something in her notebook, and I lean forward.
“I’ll need the completion sign-offs to document it.”
Look at me.
The demand almost slips out, but I keep my jaw clenched tight. The need for her eyes on mine has moved beyond a simple want and morphed into an obsession that will royally fuck me sooner rather than later.
“Cole.” How she can imbue my name with so much sass is honestly shocking.
“They’re in the supplemental binder,” I grind out, not because I don’t want her to have the information, but because the internal war of want and need is entering its final battle, and good intentions are no longer in command. “Green tab.”
This fucking woman still doesn’t look up, but she nods. That quick, precise acknowledgment she uses when information has been filed and cross-referenced and is already being connected to four other things I haven’t thought of yet.
Look at me.
My emotions are taking over.
Fucking look at me.
I’ve watched her work for four weeks now, and I still find it slightly alarming how easily she compartmentalizes. It’s like watching someone run a diagnostic on a system they’ve never seen before and getting results faster than the engineers who built it.
She’s completely oblivious to the torment pitching my heart against my mind right now.
I never should have touched her.
I never should have opened my heart again because now I fucking know it only beats the correct rhythm when she’s near.
The need to stand, to pace, to get the hell out of here is so strong I can’t think straight.
Fucking Juniper Mercer doesn’t lift her head. She doesn’t address me in any way, shape, or form.
And perhaps that’s what finally breaks me.
I’m at her side before I’ve blinked.
I wrap my hands around the back of her chair before my next breath.
The muscles in my arms burn with tension as I wrench her chair back from the table, drop to my knees between her now open legs, and thrust my fingers into her hair as I tug her face toward mine.
Caught.
Her attention. Mine.
Her lips. Open.
Her breath. Delicious.
I get close enough to feel it—that breath, warm against my mouth, carrying every unsaid thing between us—and I stop.
My forehead finds hers. My hands are shaking, which she can feel because her own hands now cradle my forearms. But she’s not pushing me away, and she’s not pulling me closer. We’re just one inch away from the only honest thing I’ve said in six years.
I close my eyes.
Say it. Just say it. One sentence, and the whole building comes down.
I rise to my feet instead, taking her with me, and cross the kitchen to settle her on top of the island. I’m out of control, or my control has finally snapped.
Her shocked gasp adds fuel to the fire in my belly.
This new position puts us eye to eye. My arms bracket her hips. Her hands white-knuckle my forearms. My mouth’s a breath away from hers—and I still don’t fucking close the distance.
I can’t.
Not without it costing her something she doesn’t know she’s paying, but I’m weak for her, and I hate myself all over again for it.
My weakness is destroying us both.
“Cole.” My name from her lips at this proximity is a specific kind of torture. Her palms slide to my chest, a small pressure warning me to step back. “What are we doing?” she whispers.
I have no idea. That’s the honest answer. I know what I want. I’ve known what I want for years. What I don’t know is how to have it without it becoming a weapon someone else picks up.
“Will this be another thing we don’t talk about?” It’s the hurt in her tone that has my stomach dropping to my knees.
“I—” I what?
What do I say to that? All the reasons I can’t have her are still valid, even if they no longer feel like a death sentence.
The heat in her gaze slowly ices over.
I’ve fucked up again.
“The LLC,” she says, jumping down from the island and making her way back to the table on unsteady legs.
“Junie.” Fuck. I scrub a hand over my face. “I’m sorry.”
Her head snaps up, and the glare she shoots my way incinerates me on the spot. “Stop.”
My mouth snaps closed.
“You don’t get to keep doing this, Cole. Unless you have something to say to me about whatever the fuck happens between us when we’re alone, I don’t want to hear it. I’m not something you can hide away.” She glances down at the table. “Not anymore.”
I’m the biggest fucking prick on the planet. “You’ve never been a secret, Junie.”
She lifts her head, confrontation on the tip of her tongue. “Then what the fuck was that?” She points to the island.
Mistake is a lie I can no longer utter. “That’s…complicated.”
She snorts. “No shit, Sherlock. But only for you. Until you can simplify whatever’s happening in your head, don’t do that again. It’s not fair to me, and even I know I deserve better than…this.”
Just tell her. Tell her everything and put yourself out of your misery.
Is that fair to her though? To make her carry the weight of my decisions?
I don’t know how to have her without ruining her. But I’m standing here in my kitchen in broad daylight, my hands still warm from her skin, and I’m starting to understand that I don’t know how to not have her either.
“You told me to stay with the documented vendors. And I am.” Her voice gains strength as she slips back into work mode—the one space she’s always felt safe. Someday I’ll prove to her that she’s always been safe with me too.
Someday.
“But I found a payment pattern in the Q1 supplemental accounts that doesn’t—” She stops. Taps her pen once. “It doesn’t feel like the others. The others are…sloppy. This one is…neat.”
The word neat lands like a load test on an already compromised beam.
“Junie.” My mind scatters. “The county reviewer will ask for the documented vendor chain first.” The words come from my mouth on autopilot because my mind is miles away. “That’s the sequence. Everything else comes after we’ve established the clean baseline.”
“You keep saying that.”
“It’s true.”
Four seconds of silence. She counts them the same way I do—I can see her doing it with each tap of her pen.
“Fine.”
The word arrives like a giant red flag. Fine from Junie Mercer never means what you think it does. From her lips, in this moment, she’s choosing not to pursue it, but she’ll be back with her game plan in place, and when she comes, she’ll take no prisoners.
“Thank you,” I say. For the moment, we can’t talk about. For making me feel something again. For fixing my mess. For everything.
“Don’t thank me,” she snips. “I’m just following the sequence.” She picks up her pen again. “Nolan lands on Thursday.”
My coffee is suddenly the most interesting thing in the room.
“Are you nervous?” she asks.
“No.”
“You’re doing your jaw thing.”
I scoff, and it makes me sound like a teenager. “I don’t have a jaw thing.”
Her glare proves otherwise. “You grind your back teeth when you’re managing something you don’t want to talk about. You’ve been doing it since you were in eighth grade. It’s why you have two crowns now.”
I don’t ask how she knows about the crowns.
“He’s going to have questions,” I say, knowing we’re past the point of hiding the rising tension that grows between us with each passing day.
“He always has questions.” She’s typing now, purposefully keeping her gaze off me again. “We’ll give him the answers that are available, and the rest is nobody’s business.”
My gaze snaps to hers. The rest is nobody’s business. I scrutinize that statement, looking for the fail point, but can’t find one.
I open my mouth to give her…something…anything that tells her I’m trying here, but my phone buzzes against the table with an incoming email, and I see the sender before she looks up.
Natalie.
She’s a sliver under my fingernail.
I slide my finger up the screen.
The message is six sentences. Her name. Her title. Her company logo, centered at the top like a flag planted in a territory she stole.
Cole—Marcus had a good month. His team is optimistic about the new program. It appears Juniper isn’t faring so well on TikTok. It’s unfortunate for her, isn’t it? I trust you’re maintaining our arrangement even more thoughtfully now.
Below that is a picture of Junie and her mom together at the beach.
The blood drains from my head.
“Everything okay?” Junie asks as I delete the email and place my phone face down on the table.
“Yup.” It croaks past my lips, and her pen stops moving.
“Maintenance issue,” I say because that’s better than the alternative.
I can’t tell Junie the truth until I can protect the secrets that will break her.
And I’m about to throw myself to the fire to ensure that I do.
So, I look her in the eye and force myself to relax.
“Stanley filed another application for enhanced golf cart modifications. I need to figure out which committee handles vehicular aesthetics before he installs a siren.”
She frowns, then glances at my phone.
Did I not erase it quickly enough? My hatred for Natalie and the lies she’s backed me into has never felt so visceral. My patience for her bullshit, for the position she’s put me in with Junie again, is wearing thin.
I’m going to ruin Natalie Moore’s life like she’s done to mine, and then…I’m finally going after what I want.
“There’s a committee for that?” Junie asks.
“There’s a committee for everything. The question is always which one.”
Our conversation sounds normal to my ears, but the shredding of my heart is so loud, it’s hard to concentrate.
“And you hate all of them.” The crinkle of her eyes quiets some of the noise in my mind.
“I hate the ones that send me things in triplicate.” I smile back. It’s forced—she knows it. “Which is all of them.”
She laughs, diffusing some of the tension in the room. Like a window being opened in a space sealed shut for too many years.
She picks up the binder to her right, then she stands, her movements slow and deliberate.
Neither of us speaks.
In my periphery, she tugs the binder to her chest—protection, armor.
“Cole.”
“Hmm.”
“That…touch.” She’s still staring at the binder in her arms. “I don’t—” Her fingernails tap against the plastic in her arms. “I feel…”
“I know.” The admission is my final barrier cracking.
“I just—I need you to know that it…means something.” She says it like she’d read a legal document. Precise. Deliberate. “I can’t do—I mean, I can’t be…”
Slowly, I turn my head to face her but don’t move closer.
If I meet her in the space between us, I won’t be able to do the right thing.
But when the morning light catches the diamond on her left hand—Nana Mae’s ring, Arthur’s ring, the ring that won’t come off and the thing we’ve agreed by mutual silence means nothing and everything depending on who’s looking—it throws one small point of light across the table.
Connecting us even when I can’t reach for her.
“I’m trying,” I say. A quiet, heartfelt promise.
She exhales. It’s a slow, careful release meant to rebuild her walls that stand no chance against the power of us. “That’s almost as bad as fine, Cole.” Her words are coated in disappointment. “At some point, you’ll have to decide what’s important enough to act on.”
She escapes the kitchen, leaving behind a bomb of her own.
If only Junie understood that what’s important was never up for debate. It’s how to protect her and love her that I’ve never been able to find the solution for.