36. Dana #2
He shook his head. “No. I, uh, made a plan with Gray right before it happened. We found him when we got back. But I won’t deny that it gave me an extra push.
” He took another step, tentatively testing me out, breathing a sigh of relief when I didn’t move.
I had no reason to, he wasn’t a danger to me, wasn’t a danger to my son.
At least not like this. “I didn’t—I don’t—want to go like that. ”
The words fell out of my mouth before I could stop them. “You’ve stopped drinking.”
He huffed out a breathy laugh, but it didn’t seem like he found it humorous. Nerves, maybe. “I don’t want to lie to you. Not again. So, I’ll say this—I’m trying.”
Trying. Another step, and we’d move out of the friendly field and into dangerous territory. I still didn’t move, didn’t know what to think. What did he mean? If he wasn’t sober…
“I’m back in AA. I’m doing what I can. I’m trying, but I’m also being careful not to beat myself up when I fail,” he explained, his voice quieting as he took me in. All of me.
If it was honesty hour, then I could press him harder. I jutted my chin out as I looked up at him, cementing myself to where I stood. “How often have you failed?”
He nodded, but it didn’t seem like it was for me.
His throat bobbed as he swallowed, his Adam’s apple jumping.
I knew he wasn’t used to being this open about it with me, but if he was here, if he was trying to wedge himself back into Drew’s life, I needed answers.
I needed solutions. “Once, since I started back with AA,” he admitted.
“But if you want me to be harder on myself, I’ll do it. I’ll never fucking drink again.”
Why did he have to put me between a rock and a hard place?
He took another step, closing in on me, close enough to feel the heat of him and smell his shower gel.
No cologne, no masking the scent of alcohol.
I couldn’t even smell a hint of toothpaste or a breath mint.
I felt like I was a ticking time bomb, seconds from exploding, or maybe imploding.
I didn’t want to push him away. A part of me was proud of him for doing this, for digging himself out of the hole he’d buried himself in, but the other part wasn’t happy with knowing he’d had a fail. That part wanted none.
“I don’t want you to be harder on yourself,” I croaked, and dammit, could I just have one moment with him where I didn’t cry? “I just, I miss?—”
Before I could even breathe, his lips crashed against mine, knocking me off balance before his hands grasped my waist to keep me in place.
My heart thundered against my ribs, my body frozen as I tried to take it in. He was here, he was working on getting sober, he was kissing me. I wanted it, yet I hated that I wanted it. I wanted him .
I didn’t move a single muscle when he pulled himself from me, his eyes wide, his demeanor so fucking small again. “I’m sorry,” he breathed, peeling himself from me finger by finger as if he couldn’t bear to let go all at once. “I… I shouldn’t have come.”
My body finally gave way, my layers of ice melting.
I grabbed him by the collar of his white button-up and pulled him to me as if he was air and I was fucking suffocating.
I wrapped a hand around the back of his neck, feeling the warmth of his skin, forcing him to close in on me again.
His forehead pressed to mine, his breathing heavy and uneven, we stood in deafening silence just an inch from each other’s lips.
“I missed you,” he rasped, the little crack in his voice shuddering through my chest.
The pause that thickened the air between us shattered in an instant.
I kissed him as he drove me against the wall a little too roughly.
A mumbled apology filled the space between our mouths but I devoured it, savoring the taste of him that I’d missed and imagined every fucking night as I fell asleep.
He lifted me, slotting his hips between my legs and forcing them around his waist, desperate for contact anywhere either of us could get it.
With one arm around his neck, I pulled him in tighter, refusing to let him back away if he tried, but from the way his fingers dug into the bare flesh of my thighs and clung to my shirt, I couldn’t imagine a reality where he wanted to leave.
He kissed me as if he’d never get the chance to again, as if he needed this more than I did. Maybe he did.
“I’m sorry,” I swallowed, his lips leaving mine only to press against my cheeks, my chin, my jaw. “I’m so sorry. I should have told you about Drew sooner.”
“Don’t be.”
A knot formed at the back of my throat, tainting my words as I tried to speak. “But you’ve missed out on so much,” I said.
My shirt rode up as he held me to the wall, exposing the entirety of my lower half. He didn’t even bat an eye as he pressed a kiss against the tip of my nose. “I know.”
“You missed his first word,” I croaked. The backs of my eyes burned. “You missed his first steps.”
He huffed out a breath as his forehead rested against mine again, his eyes closed tightly, his brows furrowed.
“You missed his birthday.”
“I can’t tell if you’re mad at me for this,” he admitted, and I almost laughed. Almost.
“I’m mad at myself.” I buried my face in the side of his neck, cherishing his warmth and breathing him in. I missed how he smelled. I missed everything about him. “And a little mad at you. But maybe if I’d told you sooner, if I gave you something to cling to, none of this would have?—”
“Stop, baby, stop,” he sighed, one hand coming to rest on the back of my head as if I were seconds from pulling away. “Neither of us knows what would have happened. I was out of my fucking mind.”
The longer he held me, the more I had time and room to think, and for me, that was never a good thing.
The t-shirt rode up higher around my body, tugging and settling at my waist. The sensation of it pulled me closer to reality, to the situation at hand, to his I’m trying.
I wanted this, I wanted him, so fucking badly I could easily lose myself in it.
But I couldn’t let that happen, for Drew alone.
What I wanted didn’t matter. What he needed mattered.
And Drew needed a father, yes, but more importantly, he needed a father he could rely on. He needed someone that had their shit together. Someone that wasn’t just trying but succeeding.
I’d let my feelings for Cole cloud that.
But I didn’t want to let go, didn’t want to push him away again. I wanted to stay right there, in his arms, invite him back to my bedroom and shut the door to the world. I wanted to love him easily.
The tears came too quickly, too suddenly, as I realized I was making my mind up on something I wanted to live forever in vagueness with. I dug my fingers into the side of his neck, shuddered breaths wracking my chest as I took what I knew would be the last of what I’d get from him for too long.
“What’s—”
“We can’t,” I sobbed, and his grip tightened. “I’m sorry, Cole, but we can’t do this.”
I could feel my weight shift heavily on the wall as he struggled to keep us upright, but I couldn’t bear to pull back, to look at his face, to take in the ways that I knew I was hurting him.
“I need you to be better,” I said, each word cracking the ache in my chest and increasing it tenfold. “I need you to be sober. Fully.”
He held me in silence for what felt like hours but judging by the clock hanging beside my front door, it was only minutes. I cried and he shook, his fingers so deep into my skin that I was sure he’d leave little half-moon bruises from his nails.
Until slowly, finally, with every bit of restraint in both of us, he lowered my legs and set me down.
I was terrified to look at his face, to see the ways in which I’d broken him reflecting back at me, but he was still Cole when he pulled away. Cole, but a little more tarnished. “I’m sorry,” I rasped.
He steeled his jaw as he reached for the door handle, wrapping his fingers around it like he had done to me. “I get it,” he said, but I wasn’t sure he did.
A cry cut through the heaviness of the air, and Cole’s head whipped toward my bedroom, his mouth parting. We both froze, locked in place, until he broke and his fingers released the handle, one foot turning in that direction.
I caught him by the wrist before he could try.
“No,” I said, and his head dropped, his hair falling into his face.
He didn’t even fight me.
He let out a shuddered breath, his chest shaking, and before I could change my mind, he was out the door and down the driveway.
I wanted to take it back for Cole’s sake.
Wanted to tell him that it was fine and he could tend to Drew, that he could be in our lives again, only if it ensured he wouldn’t make one slip-up turn into two.
But that was selfish, and Drew was crying, and the mom in me took over before I could follow him out into the black of night and stop him from irrevocably changing all of our lives for the worse.