CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Dublin
I wake before him.
I don’t know what time it is. Early. Quiet. The kind of morning where the world hasn’t fully decided to start yet. Even the sky sits somewhere between the gray of dawn and the pastel colors of sunrise.
I’m in Cole’s room. His bed. It’s not like I haven’t spent every night here since the steakhouse despite the room down the hall with all of my things in it—including a perfectly made bed.
I lie on my side, propped up on my elbow, and watch him. He sleeps like everything in his life is under control. Like the weight he carries when he’s awake doesn’t follow him here.
His breathing is even. His face is relaxed. The sharp lines of tension I’ve gotten used to seeing are softened.
I take all of him in. How his hair falls across his forehead. The faint shadow of stubble along his jaw. The broad line of his shoulders disappearing beneath the sheet. One hand pulled behind his head.
It’s unfair how handsome he is. That’s my first thought.
The second? Could this really last?
The question settles in my chest unanswered because nothing about this is logical. Nothing about this is safe. And yet when I lie here next to him like this, it feels like it could.
His phone buzzes on the nightstand. Once. Twice. Three times.
I should shut it off so it doesn’t wake him, letting him have a few more minutes of peace.
The buzzing starts again. I’m just about to reach over him to try when his eyes flutter open slowly, disoriented for a second before they land on me. The sleep-drugged smile he gives me makes every part of me want to snuggle into him and wish the outside world away.
“Morning, Trouble,” he murmurs.
“Morning.”
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
“It’s been going off for a while.”
“Has it?” he asks, voice rough with sleep.
“Mmm.”
He turns his head, squinting at the screen, and groans. “Of course it has. I’m sorry if it woke you.”
“It didn’t.”
He drags a hand over his face before grabbing the phone and unlocking it. Another groan.
“The guys?” I ask. I hope. Because I’ve learned that when it goes off that many times, it’s usually their group chat . . . or his dad.
And the moods that usually follow are completely opposite.
He shakes his head once. “No.” He pauses. “My dad.”
I reach for his free hand and thread my fingers through his, knowing his response to his father’s texts is always stress.
He stills, almost like the contact surprises him, but then he closes his fingers around mine. My thumb brushes lightly over his knuckles, my lame attempt to try and soothe whatever discord the texts being sent create.
The questions I’ve dared to ask him a million times race through my head. Unrelenting. Off-limits. And yet, I draw in a slow breath and cross the line.
“You know about my parents. How they’re wacky and call me Buggie and love to travel every chance they get,” I say softly, his breathing already slowing. “Tell me about yours.”
His reaction is immediate. His jaw tightens. His hand tenses around mine. His eyes flutter up toward the ceiling.
“There’s nothing to tell.”
I tilt my head slightly, studying his profile.
“Cole . . .”
He pulls his hand from mine and sits up fully, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “There’s nothing,” he repeats as he scrubs a hand through his hair and starts moving toward the bathroom.
I sit up slowly, familiar with this wall he just stepped behind. “We share a bed,” I say quietly. “Currently our life. We’re weathering all that out there. This”—I gesture between us—“I’d like you to let me in.”
He doesn’t look at me, but rather grabs his joggers folded on the top of his dresser, pulls them on, and then enters the bathroom.
“I need coffee,” he murmurs before shutting the door and ending the conversation.
He doesn’t say a word when he opens it a few minutes later. He doesn’t even look my way as he pads across the bedroom and out to the stairs.
I flop back on the bed, frustrated at my failed attempt.
Guilt eats at me for asking. I practice my apology in my head as I brush my teeth and do my skin care routine.
The house is deathly quiet when I come downstairs. So quiet that I pause at the bottom step, acknowledging that an apology, practiced or not, might not fix this right away.
But then I see it.
The pink mug he uses for me on the kitchen island, steam curling from the top. My coffee exactly how I like it.
Of course it is. Because even when he shuts down, he still shows kindness.
I pick it up, wrapping my hands around the warmth, and glance toward the back patio where the sliding glass door is open. Cole is out there, sitting on one of the lounge chairs. His knees are bent with his feet on the cushion, his elbows are on those knees, and his head is hanging down.
He doesn’t look angry . . . he just looks worn. Exhausted in a way that’s so much more than just physical.
I need to apologize. I may have played off my question as curiosity, but I was prying and that was shitty of me.
I stand in the doorway.
“Hey,” I say cautiously.
He doesn’t look up right away. “Can you come out here?” he asks quietly.
“Sure.”
He only lifts his head to look at me when I’m close to him. He shifts over in the lounge chair so that I sit down next to his thighs, facing him.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to push.”
He exhales. It’s long and slow and sounds like a decision being made. “You didn’t push. You have every right to ask questions.”
“And you have every right to refuse to answer them. It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”
He stares out at nothing for a second and then sighs like the weight of the world is on his shoulders.
“My dad.” He stops and clears his throat.
I hold my breath afraid to . . . I don’t even know what.
“I’ve never talked about him, about . . .
what you saw that night. It’s kind of been the undercurrent of my life that no one knows about. My secret.”
He scrubs a hand over his face like he’s trying to figure out how to even start, and I remain silent.
“That wasn’t new,” he finally says. “That night in the rain? That wasn’t some one-off.” He shakes his head and I hate that he won’t look at me. “That’s just . . . how it’s always been.”
It’s what I’d assumed, but I’d hoped I was wrong. Hearing him say it makes my chest ache.
“The sad thing? I didn’t know that wasn’t the norm,” he says.
“Not sad. That’s all you knew.”
He huffs out a quiet breath, gaze still fixed somewhere over the fence.
“It was middle school, I think. My friend asked me to come over after the game. I was tired and pissed because I’d played like shit.
I really didn’t feel like going but went simply to avoid my dad and the wrath I knew was coming.
His dad was at work, so I figured I’d at least buy myself a few hours of peace before the criticism started.
” A humorless, ghost of a smile shadows his mouth.
“Man, imagine my surprise when we’re in the middle of playing video games—something I would never have been allowed to do at my house after losing a game—and his dad walked in the door, home early from work. ”
I stay quiet but link my fingers with his in a silent show of support.
“I thought we were screwed. We lost. We were playing games. And then when his dad came into his room and asked my friend how he thought he did”—Cole sucks in a breath—“I shrunk in the corner, waiting for the fury. But fuck, my friend just shrugged and said he’d missed a couple of reads and could’ve played better.
And his dad just . . . nodded. He stood up, ruffled his hair and said, ‘You’ll get it next time. I’m proud of you.’”
The words hang there between us. Words that millions of parents say to their kids every day. Words that were foreign to Cole.
“I remember standing there thinking what the hell was that? Like . . . they were speaking a different language. I even asked my friend, if that was all he’d say.
If there was more that was going to happen after I left and he looked at me like I was crazy and asked what I meant.
” He shakes his head, his sigh shaky. “Then I went home and got what I expected.”
He doesn’t elaborate. He doesn’t have to.
“That was probably the worst revelation of all of them because I knew then that my dad and his actions weren’t normal.”
“That had to have been brutal.”
He nods, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “I tried to keep him away after that. High school especially. Most kids look in the stands to make sure their parents are there. I looked hoping that they weren’t,” he says. “I told him not to come to games because I played better when he wasn’t there.”
“Did he listen?”
“Of course not.” He glances my way. It’s fleeting but enough for me to see the pain in his eyes. “He’d show up anyway. Sit where I couldn’t see him—or where he thought I couldn’t. Fuck.” He leans his head back and stares at the sky for a beat.
“I can’t imagine.”
“He called it his ‘critique.’ It came after every game. After every practice. Just this constant barrage of . . . well, you saw what it was.” He looks down at our linked hands and stares for a few seconds.
“That’s a lot of pressure for anyone, let alone a kid to have to deal with.”
“I grew numb to it. I guess. I think. I don’t know.” He runs a hand through his hair and then stands up, nervous energy owning his body. “It was just a part of my life I kept hidden from everyone. A little part I was ashamed to admit happened.”
“And your mom?” I ask gently. “Where was she in all of this?”
His expression shifts—almost as if his opinion of her is as complicated as the emotions playing over his face.
“She did what he said,” he says, voice even. “That’s just how it worked in our house.”
“That doesn’t bother you?”
“What, that she picked her husband over her own kid?” He barks out a disbelieving laugh. “It used to.” He pauses. “Still does sometimes.”
“Understandably.”