Chapter 11
The entire Bardot crew—well, those of us in Sassafras—has assembled to move Thea, Chloe, and Hank out of their apartment.
I will admit, I’m pretty sad to lose my little buddy across the hall.
But when a pipe burst in their apartment, Jules went all caveman on everyone, insisting that they move into his house.
Honestly, it made me wonder if he orchestrated the entire thing just to have Thea closer to him on a daily basis.
We’re all waiting outside of Louie’s when Jules and Thea pull up.
Jules looks downright giddy, causing me to be even more skeptical of his intentions.
I’m also not sure how much is actually salvageable inside the apartment, but there’s an unspoken Bardot family rule that when one of us calls, all of us answer.
So here we are, on a lovely spring day, doing everyone’s favorite activity: moving.
Jules introduces Thea and her family to Mom and Dad. To absolutely no one’s surprise, our mom, Elaine, has zero chill when meeting Thea. I think she’s so glad that one of us boys has brought someone home, it wouldn’t matter if that person was actually a blow-up doll at this point.
Not that Thea is like a blow-up doll. She’s actually really great and I’m happy for my twin. Happy and… jealous? Yeah, I’m fucking jealous of him too.
I watch, trying to shake that feeling off, as Mom gives Thea a giant bear hug telling her, “I always wanted a daughter.”
“I’m telling Bex you said that,” Gabe shouts.
Mom lets go of Thea, turning to wag a finger in Gabe’s face. “Gabriel. You will say nothing unless you want me to dethrone you as my favorite son.”
Everyone knows Anders is her favorite son.
“Everyone knows Anders is your favorite son,” Jules chimes in, apparently drawing upon our twin telepathy.
Mom faces me. “I think Benoit is my favorite son right now,” she says with a wink.
“Benoit?” Thea questions. “Your name isn’t Benjamin?”
I give my parents a pointed look because this is a question I’ve answered most of my life. I was the child they decided to give the uber-French name to—it’s my burden to bear. “No,” I answer. “But that’s a very common assumption.”
“It’s not an assumption,” Thea replies. “That’s what Cole calls you.”
My head immediately snaps to Thea at that. “Cole talks about me?”
I hear it. I hear the desperation as soon as the words fall from my lips. And so does everyone else because they are all currently staring at me with varying degrees of interest. Mom looks absolutely feral.
“I mean, ha! Yeah, that Cole. She always calls me the wrong name. Silly really…” I trail off, shoving my hands in my pockets and praying to the universe that someone, anyone, will take pity on me and end this conversation.
I’d even take an unexplained natural phenomena at this point.
A freak tornado. An on-land shark attack. A sharknado!
Instead, I get Chloe. The most honest, vocal four-year-old I’ve ever met.
“You kind of look like Kristoff when he realizes Anna went on an adventure without him,” she helpfully points out.
“Enough of that, Princess Chloe!” I scoop her up, heading inside the building in an attempt to get away from this conversation. “Let’s get your things, shall we? I heard you get to stay at JuJu’s house.” I throw a wink over my shoulder to a blushing Thea.
She hasn’t quite accepted it yet, but I already know that she and Jules are inevitable.
After a long day of moving, I’ve stopped by the coffee shop to check in on progress. The more I think about it, the more I’m glad that Cole is talking to Thea. Not only because she’s talking about me, but also because both of them need a friend. They are opposites in so many ways.
Thea is mild-mannered but protective. She’s been through a lot and that makes her nervous, skittish.
Cole is… unapologetic. Intimidating. Beautiful. A force to be reckoned with.
Both tend to hold the world at arms length, so it’s encouraging to see them open up to one another.
Not for the first time, I think about Cole’s friendship with Maya—or lack thereof—and how lonely it must be to not have anyone. I imagine Cole putting her delicate hands on her hips, telling me she doesn’t need anyone. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want…
And, as I hoped it would when I moved back, luck is on my side because the menace herself just walked by the coffee shop.
Cole looks adorable, per usual. She’s got an oversized Hawthorne University sweatshirt on over loose fitting jeans.
Her typical “fuck off” boots are laced up halfway, as if she just didn’t have it in her to finish the job.
A haphazard braid curls over her shoulder.
She looks tired, though I would never tell her that.
All of the lights are off, so I’m sure she doesn’t realize I’m in here when she stops to read the flyer on the front door.
It’s got all of the typical Coming Soon information on it.
Soon is relative because this renovation has taken much longer than any of us anticipated.
She scowls, hiking her backpack up onto her shoulders.
I inch closer to the door but she doesn’t see me until I’m right on the other side of the glass. When she finally realizes I’m there, she lets out a string of expletives, doubling over as she catches her breath. “For fuck’s sake, Benjamin. Warn a girl next time!”
Her voice is muffled through the glass, and I can’t help but crack a smile at her distraught state.
“Quit laughing at me!” She doesn’t miss a thing. Never has. I unlock the door to let her in and then hold up my hands in surrender.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.”
“So you regularly stare at unsuspecting women through a window.” She narrows her eyes. “Why are you wearing those glasses again?”
“To see…”
She rolls her eyes, cocking that damn hip out to the side. “Honestly, Benjamin. I am aware of the general purpose of glasses. However, I did not realize you were… how should I put it? Visually lacking. You never answered my question about it the other day.”
“We are getting older.” I step to the side, holding my arm out for her to enter. To my surprise, she doesn’t argue.
“My vision is still 20/20,” she brags as she passes. It takes everything in me not to inhale her heady scent—a sweet mix of vanilla and caramel.
“Not all of us can be perfect, Colette.”
She huffs a laugh, taking a look around. “The place looks…”
“It’s a mess,” I finish for her. There’s a pile of hardwood flooring in the corner, ready to be put down.
A stack of chairs lines one wall with one singular long table in the center of the dining space.
I’ve been working from there most days, so I can supervise and make decisions while Jules is still at school.
He’ll be done any day now, and I know he’s itching to be in the shop full time.
My steps are hurried as I place a few chairs around the table. I had just stacked them up for the day when Cole walked by, but now that she’s here I’m not eager to let her leave. “You can study here if you’d like,” I offer. “I can grab something for you to drink? Diet cherry cola?”
Her eyes narrow at me. “Why do you have diet cherry cola?” I know it’s her favorite, but I shrug instead of answering her.
She sighs, mumbling to herself but sets her backpack down, though, I can tell she’s wrestling with herself about it. I leave before she can say anything else, getting the drink I promised her.
Popping the top on her can, I hand it to her as she plops down into the chair. “I have some more emails to answer, so you’re welcome to stay here and work for as long as you’d like.”
That’s a lie. I have zero emails to answer. It’s a stark contrast from my life in Boston where I felt like I was always working.
She yanks a psychology textbook out of her bag, followed by a laptop, a planner, and a pencil bag, ignoring me completely the entire time. I take a few sips from the soda I got for myself and pretend to be doing something of great importance on my computer.
What I’m actually doing is sneaking glances at the gorgeous redhead across the table from me.
She flips to a marked chapter in her book, her finger slowly tracing across the page.
An involuntary shiver runs through my body at the thought of that finger tracing…
other places. Her brow furrows when she gets to a particular line, and she glances at her laptop screen as if she’s cross referencing something.
I admire the light dusting of freckles, almost too faint to notice, that covers the tip of her nose and cheeks. She’s illuminated by the bluelight glow, her brown eyes looking practically black as they reflect her screen.
It’s so quiet in here, I’m about to ask if she wants me to turn on some music when she says, “We aren’t having sex again.”
Choking on my spit, I erupt into a coughing fit at that statement. “I—” I don’t even know what to say to that. Cole hasn’t even looked up from her schoolwork after dropping that metaphorical bomb.
“Not even one more time?” I try. “I can be good.”
That gets her attention. She levels me with a stonefaced glare. “You could barely follow directions last time.”
“You caught me by surprise,” I counter. “I wasn’t expecting to go from interrupting your date to being tied up in your bed.”
“Aha!” She jumps up. “So you admit, you were sabotaging my date!”
Shit.
“No. I said I was interrupting. Very different from intentional sabotage.”
She deflates slightly. “You are up to something. I know you are. And I will find out what it is.”
“Your determination is admirable, Red.” I smirk and she lets out a growl of frustration that I can feel all the way in my dick.
As if she can sense her loss of control coming, Cole hastily shoves everything back in her bag. She honestly lasted longer than I expected her to.
It still hurts, though. I’m trying to bridge that gap between hate and… being able to spend an adequate amount of time in the same room together. I’m obviously fucking failing.
That much is clear as Cole flips me the middle finger, storming out of the shop just as quickly as she arrived.
And maybe I’m a masochist because there are a whole lot of things I’d like to do with that finger.