14. Cooper
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
cooper
Sam runs her fingers softly over his chest, tracing invisible lines along his skin. They’ve been quiet for a few minutes, recovering. One of her legs rests casually over his hips. Their limbs entangle. He keeps her close, holding her around the shoulders as if at any moment she might run away. Hopefully, she lacks the energy for it.
Cooper, at least, is completely spent.
When he described her as a tornado on that first day, he had no idea how accurate the choice of words would be. The woman is lethal. Two rounds with her and he’s toast. He might not survive a third—but he’s definitely tempted to try.
I can think of far worse ways to go.
“Hey, Coop?”
The hesitancy in her voice stirs concern. “Yeah, darlin’?”
He shifts enough to look down at her. She turns and settles her chin on her folded hands to meet his gaze.
“Our original rules are sort of null at this point, right?”
“I’d say we did a pretty thorough job of tossing them out the window.”
“Right. So… Can I ask you something? Personal, I mean. Before we go our separate ways.”
A heavy thud ricochets across his chest. The fact that she’s lying in his arms already thinking about goodbye cuts like a knife, especially when he’s been lying here marveling at how maddeningly content he feels. But he knows her well enough to know that saying any of that aloud will just trigger her flight response. She doesn’t afford him many peeks behind her walls. He has to take any glimpse he can.
“Ask away.”
“When your mom was sick…”
His heart seizes at the lead-in, but he keeps his face blank, trying not to let the ache show. He doesn’t want to scare her off.
“Did you tell her you were scared? Or did you put on a brave face? Did you feel like no matter how upset you got or how weak you felt or how helpless you were, she could never, ever know? Like everything else was out of your control, but this one little thing as simple as smiling even when you wanted to scream was all you had to offer?”
He can tell by her tone his answer holds more meaning than she’s trying to let on, so he thinks it over for a moment, choosing his words carefully.
“Yes and no,” he finally tells her. “There were times when I had to be strong, had to hide my feelings. When she didn’t recognize me or thought I was a nurse or she was in some other place where I couldn’t follow, it helped if I stayed neutral until the episode passed. So even if it felt like it was killing me, I stayed calm and collected. I kept my emotions under control so they wouldn’t confuse her or make her spiral any further. But when she was lucid, when she was present in this time and knew I was her son, then no. I didn’t try to hide anything. I wouldn’t have been able to even if I tried. My mother could always read me like a book. We cried together. We laughed through the tears. She gave me a good smack on the side of the head if required. I think it helped her to be the strong one sometimes, to not only be comforted but to be the one doing the comforting, to feel like even in that somewhat broken state she was still needed.”
He watches her retreat inward, vision clouding until she’s no longer with him but back in her memories somewhere. A shadow passes over her eyes. Frown lines etch into her brow. He brushes his thumb over her shoulder blade, drawing her back.
“Why are you asking me?”
She swallows, licks her lips.
Come on, Sam. Give me something. Give me one little piece of you.
“Who was sick?” he presses, and as soon as he says it, something clicks. Conversations with Sam. Conversations with her sister. The hints and the half-truths merge to paint a picture. It all becomes clear. “It was Emily, wasn’t it? Emily got sick.”
She looks at him sharply.
Fear cuts across her eyes, but there’s something else playing deep in those golden depths, softening the blade—relief.
Still, she remains frozen in his arms. He pulls her closer, as if he can force all the heat beneath his skin to melt into hers.
“You can tell me,” he murmurs.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not my story to tell.”
“Bullshit.”
“Coop—”
“Bull. Shit,” he repeats, prompting a glare. But the fire igniting in her eyes only prods him on. “Of course it’s your story. You think my mom dying wasn’t part of my story? Sure, she was the one who was sick. But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t affected. It changed every facet of my life. I’m not asking what Emily had or has or what her diagnosis is. I’m asking about you. How you felt. What you went through. What you’re clearly still going through.”
“She asked me to keep it a secret,” Sam whispers, her voice torn. “All of it.”
“Well, that’s a fucked-up thing to ask of another person.”
“It was a small price to pay.”
“For what? For her health? Because the two aren’t related.”
“No.” Sam shakes her head sadly. “For everything she gave up for me.”
Cooper frowns. He’s not following, and it’s frustrating as hell because for the first time since he met her, he feels so close to understanding her. So fucking close. But he just can’t quite get there.
“Help me out here,” he eventually pleads. “Please.”
She waits a moment, licks her lips, and then sighs softly in surrender.
“Em got sick the summer before we were supposed to leave for college,” Sam explains slowly, each word a revelation pulled from some deeply buried spot. The more she speaks, the more quickly the words come, an avalanche waiting god only knows how long to be unleashed. “We were supposed to move to New York together, me at NYU and her at FIT following her dream to design jewelry. But instead, she…well, she found out she had a tumor. We both still went to New York, but Em went for treatment, not school. While I was out drinking, making friends, going to classes, doing all the stuff we were supposed to be doing together, she was meeting with doctors and having surgery and getting chemo. And I felt so guilty, but she wanted me to be having fun so badly, I couldn’t show her how awful I really felt. I didn’t want her to think she was ruining anything for me, because I knew that was how she would see it. So every time I went to sit with her in that fucking clinic, I’d make her laugh with crazy stories of wild nights out. I didn’t tell her how I cried myself to sleep every night worrying what in the world I would do without her. I didn’t tell her how miserable I was. I couldn’t admit how much I just wanted to quit. But then she got better, and we all went home for Christmas, and I thought maybe it would be a fresh start, but it—it wasn’t.”
She takes an uneven breath.
“Jake came to the house over Christmas. He wanted to see Emily. He wanted to give her some stupid note. And I wouldn’t let him in the door. I was still so pissed at him for leaving her the way he did. Hell, I still am. So while she was back in the kitchen getting us ice cream, I practically shoved him off the front porch. The love of my sister’s life came to make amends, and instead of getting out of his way, I lied through my teeth. I told him Em sent me out. That she didn’t want to see him. That she hated him. If I’d just let him talk to her, if I’d put my own anger aside, they might have gotten back together that very night. Six years of my sister’s life, wasted because I thought I knew what was better for her than she did, and that’s not even the worst part.”
She closes her eyes as if trying to hide from the memories. He runs his hand up her arm and to the back of her head to massage her scalp. She leans into his touch. He offers what little comfort he can, not pushing but not retreating either, giving her time to find the words to continue.
“My parents aren’t rich,” she explains into the silence. Just like that, he knows where the story is going. “We took out loans even before Em got sick, and then after… Let’s just say cancer treatment in the United States isn’t cheap. She never explicitly told me, but I knew, when she told me she was transferring back home to a local art school, I knew. My parents couldn’t afford for us to both follow our dreams. I wanted to tell her I hated New York, that I wanted to come home to Georgia too if that’s where she was, but the look in her eyes, Cooper. She was acting so strong for me. I just couldn’t find the words to explain that I’d been lying, that everything she thought she was doing to make me happy was slowly breaking me instead. So she moved home, and I went back to New York, and that was that. She gave up FIT. She gave up the school and the connections that could have launched her career. She gave up her dreams. She sacrificed everything for me, and I just stood there and let her because I was too afraid of hurting her feelings to be honest. I mean, how pathetic is that? How fucking weak? How—”
“Hey.” He brushes away the tear cascading slowly down her cheek. “You did what you thought was right.”
“No.” She shakes her head sadly and takes a deep breath, sucking all her emotion back in. He watches in real time as she cuts the connection to her heart and jumps right back into the hard persona she wears as a shield. “I did what was easy. Instead of having a difficult conversation, I just went with what she said to appease her. And by the time the reality of what happened really sank in, it was too late. She’d already dropped out and transferred. She lost her dreams and the love of her life in one fell swoop all because of me, so I did the only thing I could do to earn back the loyalty I’d so deeply betrayed. I made two promises to myself. One, that Em would never know how depressed I really felt. And two, that money would never hold either of us back again. I researched lucrative careers, figured out which one fit me best, and worked my ass off to make it in a city that seemed to want to eat me alive.”
“Investment banking,” he states with sudden clarity. “That’s why you do it.”
She doesn’t respond. Instead, she slides over until she’s straddling him and presses her lips to the center of his chest. But his mind is spinning.
“And that’s why you made our deal,” he continues as she works her way up his sternum. “That’s why you’re so determined to help her business. You think you need to make amends.”
Sam licks the tendon in his neck, then sucks gently on his skin. She glides her hands up his arms and slowly circles her hips. Heat barrels through his bloodstream. He knows exactly what she’s doing. Of course he knows.
“But that’s not what Emily would want.”
She flinches. It’s the smallest little hitch before she’s right back to peppering kisses along his jawbone. But he feels it.
“She’d want you to be happy,” Cooper presses, fighting the instinctual pull of her seduction as her hand drifts south. “I haven’t known her very long, but I know her well enough to know that much. She wants you to be happy more than anything.”
“I am happy.”
Liar , he thinks, but he keeps it to himself, because he knows it’ll only make her run.
She digs her teeth into his earlobe and tugs with a silent dare as she wraps her hand around him. “But I can think of something that would make me happier, cowboy.”
So can I.
He keeps that to himself too. She’s not ready to know the new plan coming together in his mind—the one to keep her. Now that she’s in his arms, he doesn’t want to let her go. Fuck the rules. Fuck the consequences. He’s never met anyone who challenged him so thoroughly, who made him want to stay in one place so long. He doesn’t want the morning to come. He wants to stay here in this room, in this night, wrapped up in these little revelations as long as humanly possible. Longer. Until he’s seen every part of her she has to give, and even then, he’s not sure it will be enough.
A salty droplet stings his tongue.
Sam buries her face against his neck, but he knows the taste of a tear. He doesn’t ask. He doesn’t need to. She doesn’t explain, perhaps because she’s hiding, but he hopes it’s something else. He hopes it’s because she understands that with him, she doesn’t have to.
Cooper sits up.
He dips his hands beneath her thighs and stands, taking her with him. She wraps her arms around his neck, hugging him close, in passion or for comfort he’s not sure, but he’ll take either one. He kicks open the bathroom door and turns on the shower, all while holding her. Her mouth finds his neck. His lips brush her shoulder. When the water warms, he steps them both beneath it then places her feet on the tiles before he drops to his knees. Her head arches back into the spray, erasing the evidence of her tears as he kisses his way down her stomach. He wants to take away her pain. He wants to ease the ache. And if he can’t do that with words yet, then he’ll do it the only way she’ll allow. So he lifts one of her legs over his shoulder, grips her by the hips, and makes her cry in a better way, not stopping until the sounds of her pleas echo across the shower as her fingers dig into his skin and she forgets everything but the sound of his name on her lips.
When they’re done and dry and back in bed, he holds her. She drifts off to sleep in his arms but he keeps his gaze on the window, his eyes peeled toward dawn. He’s got this feeling as though if he relaxes for one moment, if he surrenders even for a second, she’ll slip away.
And that’s exactly what she does.
One moment, it’s dark and she’s there. One moment, she’s his.
Then the sun is up and she’s gone.