Chapter Ten
Lori
Cole and I are still sitting facing each other, him on the coffee table, me on the couch, his hands on my knees. He’s looking skyward, battling his demons that are now my demons. I think that is the problem, among others. He doesn’t want them to be mine.
My hands come down on his, silently telling him that I am here, and whatever this is, we’ll deal with it. My touch seems to pull him back out of whatever hell he’s in, and he looks at me. “I went to the jail to talk to the man who attacked you, but he refused to see me.”
I’m not sure Cole should have even gone there, not in this state of mind, but I don’t let myself react. He’s as cool under pressure as anyone I’ve ever known and this is leading somewhere. I need to give him space to take me there. “He blames us for handing the man he believes killed his sister freedom. Are you surprised?”
“Yes, actually,” he says, his tone sharper. “He came after my woman. I thought he’d want to taunt me. And I thought despite that, I’d make him see reason, explain our client wasn’t the killer. I told myself I’d do that because it would help keep you safe.”
“But?” I prod gently.
“It’s a good thing he didn’t see me, Lori.” His voice roughens, his expression turning all hard lines and brute force. “I would have beaten the shit out of him and gone to jail without any regrets.”
“No,” I say, rejecting this idea. “You would not have. You know that’s not the way—”
“It doesn’t matter what I know,” he says, his voice vibrating with anger. “When I walked into that holding room, I wanted one thing. That man’s blood. Reese knew, too. He was trying to talk me off the cliff.”
I swallow hard, hating where my mind goes, but it seems obvious. This is not Cole, except now he has me. “Because I do this to you,” I say. “Because, like I said once before, I’m the poison that—”
“Don’t go there, Lori,” he says, taking my hand. “I can’t have you go there right now or ever. This is not about you. This is about me. You’re everything to me.”
“But?” I press, the question rasping from my dry throat, urgency building in my belly. “Because there is obviously a ‘but’ hanging between us and you’re starting to kill me here. Just tell me, Cole.”
“There is no ‘but’ to us, Lori. No question between us. This isn’t about us. Not in that way.” He cuts his gaze and then looks at me again. “I don’t talk about this,” he says. “I haven’t told anyone this my entire adult life. Just you. This is not for Reese. This is not for Cat. Just you.”
“Just me,” I whisper. “Just us.”
“I shut this out to the point that it wasn’t a problem. Well,” he runs his hand through his hair. “I didn’t think it was and I didn’t tell you, because—I would have. At some point, I know I would have, but I just don’t reach down and touch this place freely or willingly.”
“But my attack made you?”
“Yes. Yes, it did.” He swallows hard and looks skyward again, seeming to struggle with control before his tormented gaze returns to mine. “When I was a teen, thirteen to be exact, my father was on a high-profile case, much like the one we just worked together. He got an innocent man off, which was admirable, back when he still had a human side. He did the work law enforcement did not. He found the real killer, and did so by following the evidence they could have easily followed.”
A knot starts to form in my belly with the certainty that whatever is coming is bad. Really bad. “But something went wrong.”
“Yes. Law enforcement didn’t make the arrest. They were slow to look at what my father presented in court.”
“The killer came after your father?” I assume.
“No, Lori,” he says, his voice grave. “Not my father.”
That knot doubles in size. “Who?”
“My mother. We were in a shopping mall, and she had to go to the bathroom. I was waiting on her in the hallway outside. The man, the real killer, approached where I stood, stopped in front of me, looked me in the eyes, and then gave me an evil smirk.”
Tears well in my eyes and I have to remind myself that this is not when his mother died. I grip his hand so tightly, so very tightly, as he continues, “I remember ice sliding down my spine a moment before he charged in the women’s bathroom, and that look he’d given me, that smirk. I knew he was going to kill her. I knew. I ran after him, but he was already on top of her. I jumped on his back, but he threw me against a stall and my head thundered against the wall. I tried to get up and he screamed at me to stay down or he’d kill her instead of beat her. I stayed down. I stayed down, Lori.”
“What else could you do?” I lean forward and cup his face. “You were a teenager, Cole. A young teenager. You couldn’t have done much of anything.”
“I could have gone for help. I sat there. I was stunned and scared and—” He pulls back, his hands settling on his own knees. “I could have done something more. Something. I could have jumped on him again. I could have hit him. Screamed bloody murder. But no. After he ordered me to stay down, I was paralyzed.”
“You were a kid.”
“And she was my mother who ended up in the hospital for a full week. She barely lived. Ironically, considering my father’s job caused that attack, it’s why I became a criminal law attorney. My way of making up for the monster I let hurt someone I love.” He stands up, withdrawing completely now, and then he’s walking away, standing at the window, his fists pressing to the glass, chin on his chest. I quickly follow him, slipping between him and the window, but I don’t touch him. I give him space, I let him decide what he needs right now, but the picture is far too clear.
“It was like history repeated itself. Someone you love. Another bathroom. Another man attacking.”
“Yes. Exactly.” He stares down at me for eternal moments. “This is a part of me I clearly suppressed. I didn’t know it was still there, not in a truly reachable way. It affects me. I can’t deny that now and it pisses me off. It was a lifetime ago.”
“Of course it does. How can it not? Cole, it makes you who you are. It’s a part of why you fight so hard for your clients.”
“You don’t understand, Lori. I didn’t do relationships before you for a reason. I didn’t see that as part of this, but it was. You’re right. It is a part of who I am. I didn’t let someone get close to me that could get hurt. That ex I told you about, the one that cheated—she called me emotionally detached because I was.”
“But you’re not. Not at all.”
His hands come down on my waist and he pulls me to him. “Not with you. I never blinked. I never considered what was buried. It just didn’t exist with you, but now it does.”
My heart skips a beat. “What are you saying?”
“I’m clearly not good at fearing I will lose you. I don’t do fear well. I don’t do sit and wait well. I’m going to protect you, I have to protect you, starting with this case, and the present situation. You’re going to have to listen. You’re going to have to deal with how overbearing I’m going to be. I need you to understand.”
I cup his face. “I’ll be careful.”
“No,” he says, his hands coming down on mine. “That’s not enough. You need to communicate. You can’t just—”
“I know,” I say. “I will. And we’ll fight and as you said—fuck. But we’ll make it work.”
“You’re strong-willed and independent, and while I love those things about you, I’m going to—”
“I know what you’re going to do,” I say. “Knowing why matters. We’ll deal with it, Cole. This is not going to beat us.”
“I’ll shove it back in a box, but it’s going to take time. You need to know that. I need to know you can handle that.”
“I can. I will, but maybe shoving it in a box isn’t the answer. Maybe it needs to be out. Maybe—”
“No. This needs to be buried. It has to be.”
I swallow. “Okay. I’ll help you.”
He drags my hands between us. “Ending this case completely will help me. Cat’s going to release her article tomorrow. I know you know that.”
“You asked her to write it. I know. I was afraid it would get her the wrong attention.”
“I agree,” he surprises me by saying. “I regretted the request for that very reason. When I came out of the meeting with the ADA, it was with one certainty. Four women are dead and more could die and law enforcement isn’t going to do anything. Using a reporter to pressure the DA isn’t an abnormal action, but this is Cat we’re talking about.”
“And?”
“And Reese said that Cat decided to write the article before I requested she do it. Unlike me, with my past, which I did not share, they don’t feel like her doing her normal job is a risk beyond anything we already do. He said she’s not going to back down. This is why she does what she does. To make a difference. I need you to talk to her.”
“I already tried, despite your request, Cole. She’s writing the article. She’s a champion of right over wrong. It’s one of the things I love about her, and you. She’ll be fine. This isn’t like with your father where he named the killer, or I assume he did.”
“He did,” Cole confirms.
“This person is in hiding, and the truth is, Cat might be driving him back into a deeper hole as we speak. What option remains but to do just what your instinct said to do? We have to pressure law enforcement. And you—you can’t start second-guessing yourself. If you do, that monster in the bathroom wins.”
He presses his hands on the window on either side of me. “Right. Right. You’re one hundred percent right.”
“What happened to the man in the bathroom?”
“He was stabbed to death in prison the year after he was put there,” he says. “Which is one of the reasons I was able to bury this so damn deeply. I didn’t have to think about parole. It was over. I need this case to be over and now I have this idiot attacking you in a bathroom while a real killer runs free.”
I press my hand to his heart. “We’ll make it go away together. All of it.”
He covers my hand with his and just stares at me, his expression so damn unreadable that I want to reach inside him and strip away the past. I’m contemplating how I might do that when he suddenly scoops me up and starts carrying me up toward our bedroom. I curl into him, reveling in the fact that instead of pulling away from me, he’s pulled me closer. He’s let me inside and while it felt like it took forever, it was only a few days before he opened a closed door and let me inside.
We enter the bedroom, our bedroom, and he sets me on the bed, coming down on top of me, the heavy, perfect weight of him comforting. He’s here. We’re here. He kisses me, and it’s not long before his shirt that I’m still wearing is gone, and he’s kissing me everywhere. He is tender and sweet, but when he too is naked and buried inside me, the demons of the past are right there with us, driving his every move, and the tenderness is gone, a rough, hard need in him taking control. I am right there with him, driving away those demons, or trying.
Hours later, he finally sleeps, but I don’t. I lay in the darkness of our room, listening to Cole’s steady breathing, thinking of the way he took control of my financial struggles and while it had seemed controlling at the time, I realize now there was so much more to those moves he’d made. He has a deep need to protect those he loves, and Cole made sure he loved no one. Until me. This moves me in ways that I thought impossible. How could I be moved more than I already am by this man? He’s everything to me. But I am. And I am also certain the storm has not passed, but it will. I won’t give up until it does.