15. Chapter 15 #3
Cole actually yelps—a sharp, startled sound that makes me glance over. His eyes go wide, guilt flooding his face as the new phone slips from his hand and lands in his lap.
“Oh, shit. Fuck.” Both hands disappear into his hair, tugging hard enough that I consider stopping him before he rips them out.
“I completely forgot about Alex. Oh my God, I’m such an asshole.
He probably thinks I’m dead. Or that I ghosted him because I got bored.
Fuck, Viktor, why didn’t you remind me earlier? ”
“You were busy having an emotional breakdown.”
“That is not an excuse.”
“No,” I agree. “It is not.”
He shoots me an offended look, but it collapses almost immediately under the weight of his own guilt.
The phone finishes restoring his contacts, and Alex’s name appears on the screen.
Cole stares at it for several seconds, thumb hovering over the call button while his knee bounces hard enough to shake the passenger seat.
Then he exhales and presses it.
The phone connects automatically to the car’s speakers. It rings three times before a cautious voice fills the space between us.
“Cole?”
“Hey, Alex.” Cole’s voice comes out smaller than usual, stripped of all the bright Hollywood performance he uses when he wants people to like him.
“Yeah. It’s me. I—fuck, I’m sorry. I know I disappeared, and that was a shitty thing to do.
I threw my phone away like an idiot and checked out for a while, but that doesn’t excuse not finding some way to tell you I was alive. You didn’t deserve that.”
“I knew you were alive,” Alex says. His voice is calm, but not untouched. “Elias contacted me after I called the team. He said you were safe and dealing with something personal.”
Cole closes his eyes briefly. “Of course he did.”
“He also offered me season tickets, signed jerseys, and what I’m pretty sure was hush money disguised as team merchandise.”
Despite himself, Cole makes a strangled little laugh. “That sounds like Curls.”
“I told him tickets don’t make ghosting someone okay.”
Cole sinks farther into the seat, staring down at his hands. “No. They don’t.”
“We weren’t exclusive, Cole,” Alex continues. “You didn’t cheat on me. I knew there was someone else in your head every time you looked at your giant Russian teammate like you wanted to climb him and punch him at the same time.”
I keep my eyes on the road.
Cole slowly turns his head toward me, mortified.
“But you still vanished,” Alex says. “And I liked you. Maybe more than I should have, considering you spent half our dates pretending you weren’t staring at hockey clips of another man.”
“I’m sorry,” Cole whispers. The guilt in his voice is real now, no spiraling performance, no dramatic curses to soften it. “You’re right. I should’ve called. Even if all I could say was that I was a mess and needed space, I should’ve given you that much.”
“Yes,” Alex says. “You should have.”
I can practically feel how badly Cole wants Alex to tell him everything is fine. Alex does not. He leaves the truth sitting there between them, uncomfortable and deserved.
After a moment, Cole clears his throat. “For whatever it’s worth, you didn’t do anything wrong. You were good to me. Better than I was to you.”
“Yeah,” Alex says, a thread of dry amusement returning to his voice. “I know.”
Cole chuckles and rubs a hand over his face. “Can I take you to dinner when I get back? Not as a date. Just… as an apology. A real one. You can yell at me in person, and I’ll sit there and take it without making jokes.”
“I don’t believe the last part.”
“Fair.”
“And I’m keeping one of the jerseys.”
“You should take all of them. Make Elias suffer.”
Alex laughs softly, but when he speaks again, his voice is more serious. “Dinner is fine. As friends. But don’t ask me to tell you that what you did didn’t hurt, because it did.”
Cole’s fingers tighten around the phone. “I won’t.”
“So,” Alex says, “is he there?”
Cole’s eyes settle on me. “Unfortunately.”
I lean closer to the console, keeping my voice low and dry. “Tell him you were busy getting railed by your emotionally constipated teammate.”
Cole’s head snaps toward me so quickly I nearly laugh. “Ignore him,” he says into the phone, glaring hard enough to burn a hole through my skull. “That was Viktor being an asshole.”
Alex is silent for one second before bursting into laughter. “At least one of you finally did something about it,” he says. “Good luck, Cole. Seriously. You’re going to need it.”
The call ends a few minutes later, after Cole promises again that he will contact Alex when we return. He drops the phone into his lap and stares through the windshield, shoulders slumped. “He’s too good for this world,” he mutters. “And I’m an asshole.”
I reach across the center console and rest my hand on his thigh, squeezing gently. “You are,” I agree. “But you admitted it, apologized without trying to escape the consequences, and you will do better.”
Cole turns toward me, something soft and overwhelmed flickering across his face.
Then I add, “And you are my asshole now.”
He huffs and looks out the window again, but I catch the faint smile tugging at his mouth as his hand settles over mine.