31. Cole
Chapter 31
Cole
T he four of us were tangled up across the mattress in the dim light, fully bare, limbs everywhere, half under blankets and half on top. Annie was tucked up against Colton, her legs partly intertwined with mine behind her. Xavi was stretched out halfway down her front, his head tucked right up near her thighs like he could roll over and use his mouth if he wanted. Colton and I were both on our backs, looking up at the ceiling, our hands occasionally crossing paths as we both drew circles on Annie’s side.
Annie giggled, soft and sleepy and absolutely adorable, and the sound triggered a round of laughter from the rest of us like dominoes falling in a line. All of this, every bit of it, was absurd, and we weren’t above recognizing that.
“You know…” Annie mumbled, her words a little quiet from being pushed into the side of Colton’s chest. “We’re going to have to start thinking of names once we know what we’re dealing with.”
“Hockey names,” Xavi said immediately, turning his head a little to look up at us. “Obvious solution. We can all agree on that.”
“By all , do you mean you, Cole, and Colton? Because it’s a no from me,” Annie said, already laughing.
“Wait, wait, wait, he’s got a point. Hear me out,” Colton chimed in, holding up a hand like he was about to deliver gospel in church. “ Stick Miller. ”
Annie snorted. “Absolutely not. And you don’t just get to decide that it’s taking your last name!”
“Ooh,” Xavi cooed, sitting up just enough to grin wickedly at her. “What about Netta? Like net, but, I don’t know, feminine.”
I wheezed, my body shaking with a round of laughter. “That’s awful.”
“Or Puck,” Colton added. “Just Puck. One syllable. Iconic.”
“Puck Miller sounds like a cartoon raccoon that lives in a trash can and terrorizes the neighborhood,” I said, covering my mouth like it could keep the chuckles at bay.
Annie reached back to me, smacking my chest playfully. “Don’t join him on the Miller front!”
“All right, all right,” I laughed. “What about normal names? Ava? Riley? Liam?”
She hummed as she mulled them over. “Not awful.”
“Those are boring ,” Xavi groaned. “There’s no spice there. No chaos.”
“You’re not naming our baby Chaos,” I deadpanned.
“I didn’t say Chaos!” he argued. “You know, actually, when I was little, I swore I’d name my daughter after my first-grade teacher.”
Annie lifted her head a little to look down at him, raising a single brow. “Really?”
“Yep,” he said, popping the P dramatically. “Miss Echeverría. She used to give me extra glue sticks and let me stay in from recess to draw. I was absolutely smitten. First crush.”
Annie snorted. “That’s actually adorable.”
“Still can’t spell her name, though,” Xav added, and I couldn’t help but laugh again, rolling over onto my side to bury my face into the pillow to try to contain it. “So I guess that’s out the window. Gotta be something easy to spell. Knowing me, I’ll have at least a little bit of brain damage by the end of my career, so…”
Colton shifted a little, tucking Annie in a little closer. “What about Melody?”
I sucked in a breath. The room went still, Xavi and I quiet as hell, none of us moving.
But Annie did.
She sat up a little, looking between the three of us. “What?” she asked. “Why’s everyone gone quiet?”
A second passed, then two, and Xavi opened his mouth to finally answer her, but Colton cut him off before he could. “It was my sister’s name,” he said softly.
Annie looked down at him beneath her, blinking. “I… I don’t think you told me her name.”
I let out a breath. He must’ve already told her she’d passed.
Colton shook his head. “No, I didn’t,” he said, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “I don’t talk about her a lot. Maybe I should.”
Annie rolled her lips between her teeth. “We’ll absolutely consider Melody,” she said firmly, and I caught the way Colton’s shoulders relaxed a little, like he’d been holding onto the suggestion since the moment he’d found out earlier and it was weighing on him.
“We can probably find a way to make Melody work for a boy, too,” I offered, reaching over and patting Colton’s shoulder. “Melvin, maybe.”
“Melvin sounds like an old man,” Xavi snorted. “I really think we should stick with something like Stick or Netta?—”
Annie tossed a pillow at his head, and he yelped, falling into a fit of laughter as he pretended to be mortally wounded.
Slowly, the room slipped into comfortable silence, and we all shifted, getting comfortable beneath the covers in a way that wouldn’t suffocate Xav from being so low down on the bed. Occasional giggles turned into deep breaths and light snoring, and I flipped off the light, tucking myself into Annie’s back.
————
The feel of her shifting against my chest stirred me from sleep.
My eyes blinked open, the low light of the room making it difficult to see, but she was sitting up between me and Xavi, Colton off somewhere behind Xav and snorting lightly, Xavi still out cold.
I reached out to her, my brain still foggy from sleep, and found the clammy skin and ragged rise and fall of her back.
I fully woke up immediately.
“Annie?” I murmured, trying to keep my voice down to not wake the guys.
“Bathroom,” she whispered, but her voice was tight, muffled. “ Bathroom .”
Shit . “Okay.”
I pulled the covers back and slid off the side of the bed, reaching out a hand for her to take and come my direction. Her fingers were freezing, but she wrapped them around my hand, letting me pull her to the side of the bed and off it.
“Come on, darling,” I whispered, half tempted to pick her up and carry her there myself, but I knew she’d protest in case she ended up spewing her guts on me.
She shuffled quickly, her bare body following the path she barely knew to the guest bathroom. I trailed her, one hand on her back, gently guiding her right when she tried to go left.
I flicked on the shower light as we got to the bathroom, trying to keep the light low to not assault either of our eyes, and she sprinted for the toilet before dropping to her knees like she’d done it a million times before.
I knelt down beside her, my chest tightening. The light reflected off her damp, sweat-slicked skin, still bare from last night, her body shivering, and I reached up and grabbed the towel from off the rack and threw it over her shoulders for a little extra warmth.
“I’ve got you,” I murmured, gently sweeping her hair out from under the towel and into my hand. My other rested between her shoulder blades as she heaved, wrenching sounds echoing off the bathroom walls, her little whimpers and gasps for breath making my heart break.
It felt wrong, watching her like this. Not because she was sick, but because I couldn’t do anything to stop it — if I could’ve taken it on myself, I would have.
When she finally slumped forward, her breath shuddering, I released her for a second to grab a wash cloth and dampen it. I sat back down beside her and dragged it over her mouth, cleaning her up a bit, then tossed it aside with a promise to myself that I’d come back and sort it out in the morning.
“God,” she croaked, her voice broken and wrecked from the act. “I’m so sorry.”
I shook my head and leaned back against the wall, pulling her into my chest. Her skin was still a little damp, but she was warming back up. “Don’t be. Not for this, never for this.”
“It’s been like this for weeks.” She let her head fall against my shoulder, and I cradled the back of her head, dragging my fingers gently through her hair. “Nausea so bad I can barely keep food down. I saw a doctor last week, he gave me some meds for it, but it’s still a little here and there. It’s worse at night.”
I pressed a kiss to the side of her head, my chest aching for her. “You said your mom had it too, right? When you were on the phone with your dad.”
She nodded against me. “Yeah.”
I exhaled into her hair. “I’m sorry.”
She let out a humorless chuckle. “You just had to hold my hair while I threw up and you’re apologizing to me ? Absolutely not.”
I shrugged, kissing her head again. “Weirdly, when I used to think about having a kid someday, I’d imagine this part. The whole being-up-at-three-in-the-morning thing, holding your hair back, trying to make it better. I looked forward to it, somehow. So it doesn’t bother me.”
She gave a breathy laugh, the sound exhausted and small, but it made the ache in my chest dampen a little bit. “You’ve got this whole grumpy-guy persona down pat, but you’re such a softie. Dreaming about being the knight in shining armor and actually doing it. You’re down bad, Cole Maxwell.”
I chuckled, dragging my knuckles up and down her back beneath the towel. “Yeah. For you.”
My fingers splayed out across her waist. “You want to get some air? We can go out on the back porch. Don’t think it’s too cold tonight.”
She shifted, her chin resting on my chest as she looked up at me. “Yeah. That sounds nice.”
I helped her up slowly, steadying her. She brushed her teeth first, eager to get the taste out of her mouth.
We walked to my room first, and I scanned it for the briefest of seconds to make sure I hadn’t left it a mess, even though I never did, before pulling her in. I slipped on a pair of pajama bottoms and tossed her a spare sweater from my top drawer, offering her something for her lower half, but she mumbled something about being too warm already and pulled the sweater over her head.
We padded through the dark house to the back door, and I pulled it open as quietly as I could, the soft creak of the metal squeaking hopefully not enough to wake the guys. The porch was quiet when we stepped out, moonlight casting shadows across the wood, a bit of wind moving through the trees. Somewhere far off, a car hummed past. Other than that, there was nothing — it was the kind of quiet that settled heavy in your bones.
I led her over to the wide lounger and sank down first, tugging her down with me so she could curl into my chest, her knees drawn up and her arms tucked in close. “You sure you’re not cold?” I murmured, wrapping my arm around her.
She shook her head against my chest, her gaze pointed up at the sky, her fingers playing with the hem of her borrowed sweater’s sleeves.
I tilted my head back, looking up at the clear sky, scanning for constellations. I loved them, knew too many of them, and I couldn’t help but think of that first night I’d truly met her, when I’d taken her outside at the afterparty and the sky was full of clouds. I’d wished for constellations then.
“See that weird W shape?” I pointed up with my free hand, trying to direct her gaze. “That one’s Cassiopeia. I used to tell my mom it was actually an M and that we were just looking at it wrong. M for Maxwell.”
She huffed a little laugh into my bare chest.
“Orion’s out too,” I said, nudging her gently with my chin against her head. I pointed toward it. “I used to camp out in my backyard with my telescope as a kid sometimes. It was just one of those shitty NatGeo ones, but I loved?—”
“I’m sorry I didn’t say it back.”
I went still. My heart skipped a beat. I’d been trying not to think about that — I’d told her she didn’t have to, and I’d meant it, but it still hit like a blow when the words hadn’t come. “You don’t have to apologize, darling.”
“I do.” She turned her face up toward me, her eyes shadowed by the moonlight, but I could see the hint of shimmer in them. The way they sparkled like she wanted to cry. “It’s not that I don’t feel it. I do.”
The breath left my lungs quietly. She feels it.
“I just—I…” She took a deep breath, wetting her lips. “If I say it to you, I want to say it to all of you. I don’t want anyone to feel like anyone else is a step ahead or above. I don’t want Colton and Xavi to think I’m playing favorites.”
Relief tangled with something bittersweet in my chest. “Yeah,” I breathed. “I get that.”
“And I… I just don’t know where they’re at yet,” she said quietly. “And I won’t want to put them on the spot. It’s already so weird, this whole thing. It’s so fast, and it’s complicated, and I just want to make sure everyone’s on the same page in case I fuck anything up. I don’t want to run, Cole, but I feel insane trying to keep up with it.”
I ducked my head to press a kiss to her temple. “You’re not insane, Annie,” I rasped. “This whole situation is insane, yes. But you? No. You’re the sanest person I’ve ever met for considering everyone else like that. I probably should have, too, before I told you.”
She sniffled softly, tucking her head in a little more, her fingers still playing with her sleeves.
“You don’t have to say it yet, then,” I said. “I’ll wait. Knowing you feel it too is enough for me for now, even if you’re not saying it fully. So, thank you for that. I’ll wait as long as you need me to, even if it kills me a little.”
She moved, then, crawling further into my lap and wrapping her arms around my neck, tucking her head into me, her legs astride me. I pulled her in close, breathing in the scent of her, my heart still thudding in my chest, my breathing still a little uneven. I loved her, and it would drive me insane until I heard it back, but I’d take that over her disappearing for god knows how long.
“Just, please don’t go again,” I murmured, pressing a kiss to the side of her head. “Please. I know I sound desperate, but I genuinely don’t care anymore, Annie. We can’t survive that again. It was bad.”
“What do you mean?” She croaked. “I’m—I’m not going anywhere, but what do you mean it was bad?”
I swallowed. Part of me didn’t want to say, didn’t want to make her feel bad for the weeks she’d been gone, but part of me felt she deserved to know what she’d walked into earlier, especially if it changed her opinion on any of us.
With a kid to consider, now, it didn’t feel fair to keep it from her.
“We were at each other’s throats,” I said, swallowing down the lump in my throat. I’d tried to stuff down everything over the last six weeks, but it felt like it was all rising back up. “All of us. Colton and Xav kept arguing almost every day, and I lost count of how many times I had to step in before it became physical. I lost it at Colton a few times. Colton kept trying to be positive, but it was a weird, broken form of him I’ve never seen. I went numb. And Xav…”
I let go of her with one arm so I could scrub my face, trying to push down the images of Xavi throwing up in the living room, the weight of just how much he’d been drinking, the fights he’d been in, the chaos on the ice.
I took a deep breath. “Look, I don’t think it’s an ongoing problem, but Xavi was drinking a lot. Far too much. We got him to dial it back a bit the last few days, but it was bad. Kept getting into trouble on the ice. But he hasn’t had anything since yesterday as far as I know, which is a personal best for him over the last six weeks, so I think it’s safe to say it was a phase and not something we need to look out for.”
She pulled back from me, her hands on my shoulders, her gaze strong but broken as she looked at me. Tears rimmed the edges of her vision. “ What ?” she croaked. “This—All of that—Why… Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Darling, what on earth was I supposed to do?” I asked gently, taking her face in my hands like she was made of glass. “You needed space, and we were under the impression that it was over. None of us wanted to be another Elliot and bother you. We didn’t want to make anything harder for you.”
Her mouth parted, a choked little sob coming out, and I suddenly wished I could take it all back, every bit of it. I wished I hadn’t told her. I didn’t want her beating herself up over it.
“Annie,” I said softly, my thumbs dragging through the tears that had started to fall. “It’s not your fault. We’re grown men, we would have figured our shit out eventually. Please don’t?—”
She surged forward before I could finish, her lips crashing into mine like she was trying to undo every second of time we’d lost, as if she could fix it all with the desperation of her mouth alone. It was messy, frantic, wet with tears. Her hands pushed through the short ends of my hair at the back of my neck like she didn’t know what else to hold on to, and I let out a shuddered breath into her mouth, my arms closing around her tight enough to try to fuse us together.
I kissed her back harder than I normally would, the numbness I’d suffocated myself with for weeks broken, every rush and surge of emotion hitting me hard and quick and all at once. I tilted my head, catching her lower lip between my teeth, pulling on it, reminding myself that she was real and here and ours again.
Her sobs had morphed and turned into soft, broken little sounds that made my stomach clench but my cock harden, a confusing whirlwind of sensation as she arched into me, gripping me so hard I worried she’d break the skin.
“I thought I lost you,” I said, my voice breaking as I spoke the words against her lips, my breathing heavy and chest cracked open. “I thought… I didn’t know how to?—”
She kissed me again, hungrier this time, shutting me up before I could stumble over any more words, like we could burn away the upset of the last six weeks if we just kept going. I let my hands roam, let one slip under the sweater, trailing across her waist, her ribs, her breasts, the other slipping around the back of her neck and tightening like I could keep her from vanishing with that alone.
She kissed me like she’d missed me just as badly as we’d all missed her. Like she’d been drowning without us. Like this was the only way she knew how to say sorry.
I didn’t care that we’d all already had her tonight, didn’t care that she’d woken me up at three in the morning with nausea, didn’t care that we were outside in the dead of night. I needed her. Now .
“Off,” I rasped, tugging at the sweater and pulling it up and over her head, needing the feel of her bare chest against mine. I pulled her back flush against me, not leaving a single space left, feeling the way her heart hammered against her chest.
She hadn’t said it back, but right now, it felt like she had. Everything about her was desperate — the way she gripped onto me, the way her completely bare body ground down on my barely covered cock, the way her frame arched into me like she didn’t just want this, but needed it.
I lifted her carefully, just enough to put a few inches of space between her spread thighs and my pajama bottoms, and pushed the elastic waistband down, untucking myself. I lined myself up, not bothering to take my time, not bothering with foreplay or gentle touches. I needed her. We needed this.
She sank down on me like a live wire.
I growled low in my throat as I kissed her harder, my hand around her back, gripping her hip, pulling her body forward and guiding her. I anchored myself to her, or maybe her to me — I didn’t know anymore. I was losing track of everything that wasn’t her mouth, her breath, her heat.
“You can’t leave again. You can’t,” I rasped between breaths. I didn’t care if it was insane, if I was running the risk of sounding like Xavi when he got going. “Fuck what it did to us, I can’t do it again, Annie. I couldn’t fucking breathe without you.”
A ragged sound pulled for her as my lips found her jaw, the space just below her ear, my teeth and tongue grazing the spots I knew she liked. Her hips moved on their own now, no need for guidance, her body chasing as I moved to meet her.
“You’re everything,” I whispered, my voice rough from the lump in my throat and the need coursing through me, all tangled into one beast I didn’t quite know how to control. “You’re it for me. The three of us, you, the—fuck, the baby .”
I trailed my hand down her arm, finding her palm, pushing her fingers open and slotting mine between them.
“I love you,” I rasped against her skin, biting back a moan. “I love you.”
Her free hand gripped my jaw suddenly, dragging my mouth back to hers. She kissed me again, like she was on fire, like she was burning for every second we’d lost, the taste of her mouth minty and salty from her tears. She kissed me like she was trying to say it back in every way she could without using words.
And I took every fucking bit of it she would give me.
I always would.