Chapter 6
Six
Lacey
Panic, panic, panic.
Holy shit, I'm so stupid.
I was able to score a room at Cammy's B-and-B, and it's a lovely little room. Vintage toile wallpaper featuring little boys chopping wood and girls drawing water from wells and birds and horses and cows. It's pastoral and cozy. The bed is a four-poster twin—quite a downgrade from the California King I’m used to, not to mention the difference in the mattress and bedding; I’m used to high-thread-count sheets and a mattress that costs as much as a used car.
But it's private, I paid in cash, and it's warm.
It's even got an adorable little electric fireplace that gives off actual heat and adds ambiance.
After locking down the room, I spent the day reacquainting myself with downtown Three Rivers. I popped into shops, had coffee, lunch, more shopping, dinner at the Alt, where I caught up with the Cartwright girls, and ended up catching a cute little rom-com at the theater.
It was, quite honestly, a good day. I covered my black eye with makeup and wore my hair up under a winter hat, and was able to go mostly unrecognized. It was kind of like playing celebrity.
And then, on the way back here, I stopped at a party store and got myself a bottle of rosé. I drank the whole thing while bingeing on Pringles and watching shitty reality TV on my phone.
By the time the bottle was gone, I was tipsy enough to think texting Cole was a good idea.
At three-something in the morning.
So now I'm sitting here with my phone in hand, staring at the screen, trying to figure out if I'm willing the three dots to appear or not.
The dots dance, and so does my heart, and my gut, and my lady bits…for some reason, I’m unwilling to examine at this precise juncture.
Cole: Gimme ten. Dress warm.
Um. Alright. It should probably concern me that at no point do I even momentarily question Cole, his plans, his intentions, or anything.
Cole Mannix tells me to be ready in warm clothes in ten minutes?
Guess who's standing outside in the frigid air at three-twenty-three am, exactly ten minutes later, in thermal leggings and jeans, thick wool socks and my insulated, rubberized winter boots, a long-sleeve smart wool undershirt, a commercial-grade Carhartt zip-up hoodie, an Arcteryx outer shell, and my matching wool hat and mittens.
And exactly eleven minutes after his text, Cole's personal truck, the vintage Chevy, is coasting up the driveway to the front door of the B-and-B, his lights and engine off.
Oh, oh, oh! I know this game!
He brakes until the truck is almost at a stop, and then he shoves open his door and hops out.
Muscle memory from a thousand and one nighttime escapes from my parents' house takes over, then.
As soon as Cole's feet hit the ground, I'm behind the wheel and he's at the tailgate pushing, his boots crunching in the snow.
I navigate the truck around the circle drive until we're facing away and picking up momentum as we coast down the gentle incline.
Cole puts on a burst of speed to grab the corner of the open door, and I slide over while keeping the wheel straight as he jumps in behind the wheel.
I'm laughing breathlessly, just like I used to, as he tugs his door closed and hits the headlights. He's puffing with breathless laughter as well, a huge grin on his face.
God, he's gorgeous.
Age has graced him with a rugged, refined beauty.
As a young adult, he was kind of a pretty boy, to be honest. The All-American golden-haired good boy next door, the sheriff's son, the star football player, the straight-A student, the responsible one who was always trying to keep his hooligan friends out of trouble.
Now, he's all man. His jawline is craggy and hard, his eyes deep-set and expressive, his mouth supple and kissable, and the beard, fuck me—the beard. Eddie would never grow one despite having what I always secretly thought of as a weak jawline. I told him all the time that he’d look better with a beard, but he always categorically refused to even consider it.
Cole wears the beard like a god. I can't imagine him without it.
Cole lets us coast all the way to the main road and around the turn, only twisting the ignition once we're well away from the B-and-B driveway. And when he does turn the motor on, I see why he waited so long—it catches with the throaty, rumbling snarl of a very well-tuned big block V8.
Weird how easily some things come back to you, like the silent getaway and the fact that I love vintage cars and tinkering with engines—I've played the dutiful yuppie rich bitch suburban wifey for over a decade, allowing my life and personality to be all about brand name purses and wearing the right outfit to events and donating to the right charities and playing golf before brunch on Sundays and tennis at the country club and shopping at Somerset and taking in shows at theaters downtown.
God forbid I wear jeans and get my hands dirty.
God forbid I, Eddie Fascinelli's wife, know anything about engines.
His buddies were discussing their cars once.
Eddie prefers the absurdly expensive, flashy, low-slung sports cars—Lamborghini, Ferrari, McLaren.
He doesn't wash them, doesn't gas them unless he has to, and certainly doesn't know a damn thing about anything to do with cars except how much they cost. His two buddies, however, were vintage truck junkies and were discussing their trucks and the engines and how many cubic feet and pound feet and all those fun details.
I tried to join the conversation, but Eddie told me in so many words to shut up and let the men talk.
And I fucking did.
Of course, I had headaches, and I was bloated every time Eddie wanted sex after that for almost two months, which was my only real way of fighting back against his assholery.
But still.
Shut up and let the men talk, Lacey.
Fuck that.
Cole is eyeing me. "You, um, okay, over there?"
“Yeah, sorry," I say. "I just… never mind."
He adjusts the heater so it's not blowing quite so hard, and then glances at me.
"Nope. The only way you and me are gonna have any kind of a conversation about any single goddamn thing, Lacey Grey, is if you tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God.
" He fixes me with what must be his Cop Glare of Authority.
"If you can't be totally honest with me, then I’ll take you back to Cammy's. "
I hold up both hands. "Fine, holy shit. Fine." I tug off my hat and mittens and unzip my jacket and hoodie—I’m wearing way too many thick layers for the toasty interior of the truck. "You remember how I used to spend every Sunday morning?"
He nods. "With your Pops, working on his Apache." A curious glance. "And?"
I run my hand over the dashboard. “That was the only time I ever felt close to my father. This isn't news to you."
"Yeah, your dad was always kind of a jackass to you. But I know you loved those Sunday mornings tinkering with that inline-six."
"Yeah. He would talk to me. He'd tell me what he was doing and why.
Let me do things. If I made a mistake, it was okay.
Just go back and fix it." I wince as emotions bubble up inside me.
"Nothing I ever did outside of that garage was ever good enough.
Not ever. Not in school, not in my life, nothing, ever.
But in that garage, it was okay to mess up.
To not be perfect. I could grab the wrong wrench or start working the wrong bolt and it was okay. "
"Going deep right off the bat, huh?" He eyes me. "My truck reminds you of him?"
I shake my head. "No, it's not that." I shrug.
"Well, maybe a little, but no, not really.
It's more that I haven't thought about how much I used to love vintage cars until now.
How I lost that part of myself when I married Eddie.
" I let out a soft, sad sigh. "Along with everything else that made me me. "
He's conspicuously silent for a while. "I don't know how to respond to that, Lace. I don't know the first fucking thing about your life or who you are, now." It's his turn to wince. "I don't mean to sound harsh. I just—"
"You have every right to sound harsh, CoCo." I slap my palm over my mouth. "I have no right to call you that anymore, do I?" My eyes burn, stupidly. "You don't use cutesy nicknames with people you hate."
"I don't hate you." His voice is so soft I can barely hear him.
"Cole, it's okay. I get it. I deserve it. And you were the one who just said we had to be totally honest."
"I am being totally honest. I don’t now, have never, and could never hate you. Confused, hurt, and angry? Fuck yes. All that in buckets. But I…I loved you, Lace. I could never hate you."
The alcohol is wearing off, leaving me thick-headed and tired. Which has the effect of loosening my tongue almost as much as being tipsy.
"Hate and love are two sides of the same coin, Cole."
"I dunno about that one, Lace." He shakes his head and shrugs. "I always thought the opposite of love was apathy."
"No, you're right. The opposite of love is apathy. But the inverse of love is hate." I tune into our surroundings for the first time, realizing we've been heading steadily north this whole time. "Where are we going?"
"You'll see. We're almost there."
A few minutes later, he's pulling a U-turn to park on the southbound scenic turn-off overlooking Lake Michigan.
Just ahead, hidden in the jumble of leafless, skeleton-finger trees, is the path that leads to Secret Beach, where Three Rivers locals prefer to go to swim in the chaotic summer months when the public beaches are swarmed with fudge-eating tourists and their shrieking kids and giant umbrellas.