22. Center of Gravity
CENTER OF GRAVITY
COLE
I peel open my eyes, already knowing it’s somewhere close to six a.m.
My body’s been keeping this appointment for a decade and doesn’t care that the rest of my life shifted on its axis last night. My new center of gravity is currently asleep on my chest, with her hair in her mouth and one leg hooked over mine, breathing slowly against my sternum.
It’s making it unreasonably difficult to stay still.
Juniper Mercer.
In my bed.
Drooling on me.
Awake, my little Viper has her claws deployed, ready to strike at a moment’s notice.
In sleep, she’s at peace, calm, gentle in a way I’ve rarely ever seen.
So I fight to remain still.
The ceiling fan above us turns a slow quarter-revolution while a gull complains over the dunes.
The light behind the blinds is still the gray kind that hasn’t committed to being morning.
I used to hate this hour—the one that makes thoughts in my mind scream into the silence of my life—but today, I can’t muster up the energy to hate, well, anything.
It’s a strange sensation to get what you’ve always wanted and yet still want more.
For today though, this is good enough.
It’s a step in the right direction.
It’s also what motivates me like nothing before to put an end to the shackles of my past because I can finally envision the future, and now I’ll do anything to have it.
Good enough will never be good enough for Junie.
I love you, Junie. I’m just terrified of what loving me will cost you.
Those words should’ve remained in my head, but the events that led to them make me weak. I’d whispered them into her hair, needing her to know them, but I was unprepared for the fallout.
Junie’s breathing didn’t change with my admission, which means she either didn’t hear me or she did and decided mercy was the cheaper option at one in the morning. I don’t even know which fucking option I’m praying for.
Both have teeth.
She shifts in her sleep, muttering something unintelligible, and I grin—her sour disposition makes everything in my life feel lighter. Even in sleep, Junie finds something to complain about.
The leg hooked over mine tightens.
Her hand is fisted in the sheet that rests over my naked torso, and she pulls as though she’s worried I’ll go somewhere.
I won’t. And as soon as I fix this shit with everyone else in our lives, I’ll make sure she knows it.
I ease the strand of hair out of her mouth. She makes the small, annoyed sound of a woman who protests in her sleep on principle and burrows closer.
“Stop. Moving,” she says into my chest. Her eyes are still closed.
“I didn’t.” Not really. Ensuring she doesn’t end up with a hairball seems like the gentlemanly thing to do, even if what I did to her last night would be considered anything but gentlemanly.
My cock stirs to life, so I redirect my attention.
“You were thinking about it,” she mumbles.
“Thinking isn’t a crime, Viper.”
One eye cracks open. Bloodshot. Deeply suspicious. Sexy as fuck. She stares across the room, then at my bed as though she’s just realizing she’s not in her room. Then her curious expression lands on me.
She stares at me for the longest moment before closing her eyes again.
“Okay,” she grumbles with her normal amount of early morning irritation.
“Okay?” What the hell is she talking about?
“Not a dream. Confirmed. Processed. Calculating. Proceed.”
My chest does something I don’t have a word for. Crackling, maybe? Aching, definitely. Expanding, a certainty. I kiss the top of her head before my brain can tell me not to. The window for doing that without having to explain myself feels narrow, and I intend to use every inch of it.
She sighs against my chest.
I memorize how right it feels as we lie here.
I don’t even know how much time passes. Long enough that the light outside commits to a sunrise. Long enough that her breathing evens out again, and I’m not sure if she’s fallen back asleep or if she’s pretending, hoping to avoid discussing complications like the morning after or the walk of shame.
Though there’s no shame here. At least not for me.
It’s right. The most right thing in my entire fucking miserable excuse for a life.
I don’t say it outright, but it rumbles in my chest like a tidal wave.
For years, I’ve been dismantling my own wants one by one. You can’t miss what you don’t allow yourself to name. You can’t lose what you never let yourself have.
Turns out that system has limits, and this one has just expired.
By seven, I’ve managed to extract myself from the bed without waking her, which should qualify me for some kind of engineering commendation.
She sleeps like a woman who’s filed a grievance with gravity, for fuck’s sake.
Arms flung wide. Mouth open—with hair in it again, which, after twenty minutes of watching her breathe around it, apparently bothers me more than it bothers her.
The sheet is kicked down to her waist, not that I mind the stunning view, but I pull it up over her shoulder because if I stare at her bare back for another second, I will climb back into that bed and fulfill every dirty desire I’ve ever harbored for her.
Instead, I yank on a pair of sweatpants from my dresser, leave another pair along with a T-shirt for her on the edge of the bed, then pad down the hall, thankful that the house is still quiet.
Which means I’ve got maybe forty minutes before Nana Mae shows up and comes to conclusions I’m not prepared to discuss.
I move on autopilot, making coffee while last night flashes through my mind with a very explicit highlight reel that forces me to think of every unsexy thing I can imagine just to get my erection under control.
In hindsight, sweatpants after a night with Junie are a terrible idea, so I put all my focus into making two cups of coffee.
Hers with too much oat milk. Mine, black, like I’ve tried to make my heart, only to have her chip away at the char to find the bruised bits beneath.
Then I stand there, barefoot on my kitchen floor, staring at our two mugs sitting side by side as though they represent a future I could have—as soon as I remove the obstacles.
My phone buzzes on the counter next to them.
I don’t even look at it.
The rhythm of these buzzes, the cadence of this particular interruption that I’ve been receiving for six years, has never, in any universe, been good news. The phone can wait as long as it takes for us to drink the coffee I’m placing way too much significance on.
It buzzes again.
Fucking. Annoying.
I flip it face down without reading the notification and stir Junie’s mug to evenly distribute her sugar and milk.
Whatever the notification is will only make my day worse, and today is one of the best ones I’ve had in a decade. I’d like to keep it that way for at least as long as it takes for the woman upstairs to wake up and decide what happens next.
That is not, in the grand scheme of things, too much to ask.
But then it buzzes again.
And again.
And. A-fucking-gain.
I exhale through my nose, then flip the powder keg over.
The lock screen shows a preview from a number I recognize. I don’t open it. I don’t have to. Natalie doesn’t call unless she wants something specific, and she doesn’t text unless she wants it now.
Below that is a missed call from the same number.
Below that, the follow-up text I don’t intend to read, but the preview flashes again.
Don’t ignore me, Cole.
I flip the phone back over hard enough that I’d welcome a cracked screen. I should’ve gotten a new number years ago.
Nothing has changed.
That’s the part I can never get used to about Natalie—that she can reach into the middle of any moment that’s just beginning to feel real and press her thumb to it while nothing ever outwardly betrays what she’s done.
My morning is the same as it was five minutes ago. The same kitchen. The same coffee. The same woman upstairs.
The only person who feels the pinch is me.
I take a sip of my coffee, the bitter taste anchoring me to my plight.
Everything is coming to a head, and I haven’t told anyone.
This has been my pattern for six years. One I’ll have to break, and I’m going to break it before Natalie does it for me, but none of that can happen in the next ten minutes, and I’m not going to figure out my shit standing in my kitchen in goddamn sweatpants.
With a scowl, I pick the phone back up, delete the offending messages without opening them, and then toss it face down into the junk drawer with all the other shit I’m not ready to deal with yet.
My fists clench at my sides. The fear of not accomplishing the only goal that matters makes my teeth ache with the effort of holding all this shit inside.
“Cole?”
Mine.
Junie stands in the doorway in my clothes. Not the shirt I laid out for her, but the one I wore last night, and an irrational amount of pride pushes every other thought out of my head.
Her hair is a civil war on top of her head. There’s a crease running from the corner of her mouth all the way to her temple that she’s going to be furious about when she looks in the mirror, and my T-shirt is bunched in one fist that’s propped on her hip.
She is, by any measurable standard, a disaster—and the best thing I’ve ever seen. I have a sudden, concrete understanding of why men start wars for the women they love.
“Morning.” The word leaves my lips like a desire tasting its target for the first time.
Junie squints at me, then at the two mugs, before refocusing her suspicious glare my way.
Fucking. Perfect.
She’s perfect in her grumpy, jump-to-conclusions, spite-fueled manic energy.
And she’s mine.
Almost.
“Did you make coffee?” No one growls like Juniper Mercer on too little sleep.
I don’t even feel guilty for keeping her up all night. Not when I can still hear her orgasmic screams like my favorite playlist.
“I did.” I smile at her, unable to keep it inside.
“The good stuff?”
“I’m nearly thirty, Junie. I only make the good stuff. I even added the right amount of oat milk.”
She frowns, her arm outstretched but not yet taking her mug in her hands.
“Juniper.”
“What?” she snaps back.