Chapter Fifteen
Cooper
When Patrick dropped me home, I found my front door unlocked, which should have been concerning, but I was too exhausted to care. The crime rate was basically zero in Foxwood Hollow, so locking your front door was more ritualistic than a necessity.
“So, Cooper was right, all this time you knew your nests were too small for me, and you just crammed me in like a sardine,” Axel grumbled from my living room.
“Cry me a river, big boy. I let you—”
“Please don’t finish that sentence in front of me,” I interrupted before Dylan could say something that would require me to have a bleach bath for my brain.
“You’re back. Why are you back? Did he kick you out? I’m going to fucking kill him. Slowly too,” Dylan ranted.
“He didn’t kick me out. I asked him to bring me home.”
“Oh okay. I’ll put the murder on hold. For now.”
Dylan and Axel were both standing awkwardly in front of something in my living room.
“What are you hiding?” I asked.
Dylan blushed. “So, um. I got a bit stressed that you were upset and I didn’t know how to help, but I thought, well, if I was stressed, I’d want a really nice big nest to come home to so I sort of… stress-nested. For you,” Dylan babbled.
The two of them stepped apart to reveal the biggest nest I’d ever seen, with ten times the nesting materials I owned. It looked so comfy and warm, so perfect. I burst into tears.
Axel stepped forward and gave me a hug.
“I’ll leave you two to it,” Dylan said quietly before trying to step behind me towards the door. I reached for his arm and tugged him into the hug.
“Stay?” I asked.
He looked like he might start blubbering, too, but he managed to hold it in for once and nodded.
“Of course I’ll stay. If that’s what you want?”
“I want.”
And that was how I ended up spending most of my day sandwiched between my best friend and my baby brother in a giant cloud of nesting materials. I knew that most people preferred to wallow alone, but I didn’t. Having Axel and Dylan close by made the whirlwind in my mind a little quieter.
After we’d eaten several large pizzas and watched enough episodes of Real Housewives to melt my brain, I could hardly keep my eyes open. Axel and Dylan offered to stay the night, so they took my bedroom while I remained curled up in my nest.
It was comforting to have them close while giving me some space to process what had happened. I tossed and turned for a while, somehow both wide awake and completely exhausted at the same time, and then my phone chimed.
Patrick
*28 minutes 42 seconds*
I cautiously clicked play and kept the volume low.
“Chapter fourteen. The storm wailed its last breath a few days later, leaving behind dirt-crusted, melting ice and a skating rink on the deck…”
I hit the pause button and took a deep breath to stop myself from crying again.
Patrick had recorded himself reading aloud.
For nearly half an hour. For me. It was the next chapter in the book he’d been reading to me the last few nights I’d slept at his.
The love story was between a hot beefy man with a moustache and a sweet ghost whom Patrick said reminded him of me.
The Lookout’s Ghost, I think it was called.
Snuggling back up in my nest, I hit play and listened to the gentle timbre of Patrick’s voice reading me a story. Despite everything that had happened, his voice was still soothing to me, and it gave me a little hope. I listened right until the very end.
“Night, little fox. I hope tomorrow is a better day. Sleep well,” Patrick said softly.
The following morning, I felt hungover as I dragged myself into work. I groaned when I pulled up outside the office and spotted Jack’s van. I’d been hoping I could avoid him for a little while. It was embarrassing that he knew about all this shit with Patrick.
“Morning, Piper,” he greeted me.
“Morning.” I headed straight to the kitchenette to make a coffee to take with me, and I could feel Jack’s presence following me. Ugh.
“Look, I promise not to pry or stick my nose in, but I spoke to Morgan this morning and he sounded like shit, and honestly mate, you look like shit. Do you need a day?” Jack asked.
“A day for what?”
“I don’t know. Like a day. You know, a day off or whatever.”
“You want me to have a day off?” I asked, confused.
“I just want you to know the option is there. You’ve literally never called in sick. You have the immune system of a mountain goat or something, so I’m saying I can cover you if work isn’t the best place for you today.”
I poured my coffee into my flask and added some milk and sugar before screwing the lid back on.
“What would I do instead?” I couldn’t figure out if I was supposed to just go home and pretend I was sick or something. That didn’t seem like a healthy idea.
“Jesus, kid. I don’t know. I’m literally in therapy because I don’t know how to take time off work. Give me a second.” Jack pulled out his phone and called someone before putting them on speaker.
“Hello?” Patrick’s voice echoed around the room. He must have been setting up at the cafe because there was some clanging around in the background.
“Why have you called him?” I whispered to Jack, who ignored me.
“Theoretically speaking,” Jack began, “if someone was to take a day off to like rest and recuperate, what would they do?”
“That might actually be the most depressing question you’ve ever asked me,” Patrick responded, and I couldn’t help but snort. He had a point, me and Jack were hopeless. “You are taking a day off to rest and recuperate?” he asked Jack skeptically.
“God no. I’d probably collapse and never get back up again.”
“Am I on speaker?” Patrick asked.
“Maybe.”
“Cooper?”
Ugh. “Um. Yes. Hi,” I replied awkwardly.
“Why don’t you go home and get your drawing stuff and come here for breakfast?” There was clearly something wrong with me because it bothered me that he’d made it a suggestion and not an instruction. I was tired, and I didn’t want to think. I didn’t want to choose.
“He’s frowning, Morgan,” Jack unhelpfully interjected.
Patrick sighed. “If it’s me you don’t want to see, Jia’s working. She can serve you?”
“It’s not that,” I replied without explanation because I wasn’t getting into this in front of Jack.
“Jack? Take me off speaker and pass your phone to Cooper.”
Jack handed me the phone.
“It’s just me now,” I said. Jack went back into the main part of the office to give us some privacy.
“Do you want me to go and leave you and Jack to figure this out?”
“No. I just… I’m tired, Da—I mean, Patrick. I don’t want to make decisions today.” I scrunched my eyes shut.
Patrick hummed. “Okay, I hear you,” he said gently. “Tell Jack you’ll take the day. Do what I suggested and head over here. I’ll figure something out for the rest of the day once you’ve had something to eat. Alright?”
I let out a deep breath. “Yes. Thank you.”
When I arrived at the cafe, Patrick set me up in a quiet corner seat and brought me a giant chocolate milkshake accompanied by an apple “for my health.” The big plate of fried chicken and waffles that followed apparently was not a health concern.
I felt a bit weird drawing my comics since Axel had confessed to having shown some of them to Patrick.
I wasn’t mad at Axel—I knew he’d been trying to help—but it still left me feeling exposed and raw.
And yet, it was the only way I’d ever found to process how I felt, and right then, I was feeling too much.
I held the sketchpad at an angle so nobody could see what I was drawing, and when Patrick came over to clear my plate, I held it to my chest like he might snatch it from me and show the whole world my innermost thoughts and feelings.
Thankfully, he ignored the weird behaviour.
“Is that helping?” He gestured with his chin to the sketchpad, and I nodded.
“I know you don’t want to make decisions today, but I’m going to need you to make one,” Patrick said.
“I can probably manage one.”
“Do you want me to plan something for you to do on your own, or do you want me to keep you company?”
It took me a moment to answer because I always wanted to spend time with Patrick, and I didn’t really like hanging out on my own.
I could have gone to the pub in the afternoon and hung out at the bar while Milly worked, but it didn’t really appeal.
Only, hanging out with Patrick felt like I wasn’t protecting myself very well.
Last night, Dylan had lectured me—at length—about knowing my worth and not accepting crumbs from people, and I knew he was right.
I knew that a lot of what Patrick had done and said wasn’t okay. I did believe he was sorry, but my heart couldn’t take it if I forgave him only for us to end up exactly as things had been before. It wasn’t enough for me, and if he wouldn’t commit to more, then I needed to walk away.
“Company. But… could we do something where we can talk?” I asked.
Patrick looked so relieved, which surprised me. “I would really, really like that,” he said.
I’m not sure you’re going to like what I say, though.
Patrick had left Jia in charge at the cafe, and we’d gone for a walk down at the duck pond. Winter was finally making way for spring, and dozens of daffodils had bloomed.
“When I was little, I used to come and pick these to give to my mum,” Patrick said. “She loves flowers, I should buy them for her sometimes. She used to light up when my dad would come home with a big bunch of them just because.”
“I didn’t know your dad well, but somehow that’s hard to picture.” I chuckled.
“He was a grumpy bastard with everyone except Mum, even with me. Softer than a cloud for her, though,” Patrick said fondly.
We strolled closer to the pond, and Patrick handed me a sandwich bag of seeds he must have grabbed from the cafe before we left, and I chucked a handful to a group of ducks that began quacking loudly. The reeds that lined the pond swayed as a gust of wind hit.
I took a deep breath. “There’s some things I need to say to you before I chicken out,” I blurted.
“Honestly, Coop? I’m surprised you’re speaking to me at all after what I said. Say whatever you need to say, I can take it.” Patrick stuffed his hands into his coat pocket like he was expecting me to stand there and call him names or something.
“I… I accepted too little from you.”
Patrick nodded like he agreed, and it bolstered me to continue.
“You acted like we were more than just doing scenes, but then you’d tell me that’s all we were, and that wasn’t fair.”
“You’re right. I was… scared. That wasn’t fair on you.”
“Why are you trying to get me to forgive you? So you can move on and not feel bad? So things can go back to how they were? What do you actually want here?” I asked, terrified of the answer.
Patrick looked surprised at that and took hold of my shoulders, turning me to face him. I couldn’t bring myself to look at his face, though.
“If you’re asking me that question, then I really haven’t been very clear, so I need to say some things, too.
I was in a bad place after Max and I broke up and my dad died.
And then this little fox appeared on my doorstep, and he listened to me vent, and I could talk to him like I’d never talked to anyone in my life.
I had no idea who he was, but I trusted him.
I’ve trusted him for years. I trusted you for years.
You were my friend when I needed one more than anything. Thank you for being there for me.”
I blinked back tears and swallowed past the lump in my throat.
“Like the biggest fucking walking cliche ever, I let the actions of a shitty, cheating ex dictate that I could never let anyone in again. And it was especially stupid because I already had. I’d been kidding myself.
When I saw you with Markus in Foxholes, I wanted to claw his eyes out so he couldn’t even look at you. ”
I snorted at that. “You sound like my little brother, Dylan.”
“Who nobody warned me was super fucking scary by the way.”
“You are scared of Dylan?” I almost bent over laughing at that. “My pint-sized little brother?”
“I could see it in his eyes that he’d already picked a place to dump my body. And you know that alpha of his would help him, too.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that. Probably all true,” I said, recalling how, only yesterday, Dylan had in fact been threatening to murder Patrick.
He took my hands and held my knuckles up to his lips and kissed them with so much tenderness, I didn’t know where to look.
“All of this is me trying to say that, if I can show you that I’m not the total wanker I’ve been acting like, and that I’m so fucking sorry for what I said, then I really hope you’ll consider making me yours. Because I love you to bits, Cooper Bailey, and I don’t want to be afraid anymore.”
I forced myself to hear the words. Let them sink into my skin and make their way into my fragile heart.
Patrick let go of my hands and wrapped his arms around me.
I dropped my head onto his shoulder and tried to get words to come out.
I did love Patrick. I’d known that for a long time, but I wasn’t ready for him to have those words just yet. All I could give him right then was…
“Let’s try.”
“Really?” He sounded genuinely surprised.
I lifted my head and gave him a cautious smile.
“Can I kiss you?” he asked.
I nodded, and Patrick held my face between his hands, staring into my eyes before he closed the distance and pressed his lips to mine.
The connection thawed something inside me, and I realised it was the first time he’d kissed me and not held anything back.
He moved his lips against mine and poured himself into it.
It was a kiss that said “I’m sorry,” said “I’m scared but I’m in this anyway,” a kiss that said “I love you.” I didn’t want Patrick to ever kiss me another way again.
“Will you take me to bed, Patrick? Not for a scene. Just you and me,” I asked.
“You’re sure? We can wait.”
“I’m done waiting.”