Chapter 20
Twenty
Lacey
Cole is thoughtful and quiet the rest of the day. He always has a smile for me, and he's affectionate and playful as we finish going through his belongings and then start going through the kitchen. I can just tell he's still chewing on the information his deputy gave him.
By the time seven o'clock rolls around, we're both filthy and exhausted, but we've made a giant pile of contractor bags on his front porch, and more piles throughout the house of things to put into the storage container when it arrives on Monday.
We're standing in his living room, and he's staring around at the piles of things that comprise his life—clothing in piles on the couch and in laundry baskets, framed family photos, boxes of kitchenware…
most of which need to be replaced anyway, but baby steps…
boxes of books, bags of bedding. He kept a few boxes of things that belonged to his father and a few more, even older family mementos, but for the most part, he's throwing away a good eighty percent of the contents of this home.
Purging the past to make room for the future.
His plan is to move into a house Felix and Riley have flipped and staged but not sold yet while the renovations are underway; it would be too hard to be in the home while it's being worked on, if just emotionally; don’t tell Cole, but I have a feeling Felix and Riley plan to take the house down to studs, siding included.
But again, I don't think that's the real reason for the way he stares off into space when he thinks I'm not paying attention.
Like now.
He's got an old track trophy in his hands, but he's staring at nothing. I move up behind him and hug him, resting my cheek between his shoulder blades. "Penny for your thoughts?"
He shakes his head as if to clear away the fog of thoughts.
"Oh. Um. Just…everything. It's all one big swirl in my head.
You and me, Maia, my father's death, Amber's murder, you leaving, Mom dying, me living in my childhood bedroom for fourteen years after my father's murder, that I can't prove, Jared Beasley, Jeremiah Beasley…
it's all…" he claws his fingers beside his temples and shakes his hands.
“Hey.” I take his hands and pull them down. "Even more reason for you to jump in the shower so we can go hang out with your friends."
"Our friends," he corrects, turning to face me. "They're our friends, not just mine."
I roll a shoulder. "It's hard to feel that way. I still feel like an outsider, which is weird."
“You're not an outsider, Lace," he says. "You're just…not settled back in yet." He frowns. "I guess I'm assuming you're back to stay."
"I told you I didn't have a plan, Cole. I just ended up here. But if you and me are thinking about…reconnecting…" I swallow hard because that's a result I'd never dared even think about hoping for. "Then there's nowhere else I’d rather be."
“I’m not thinking about anything, Lace," Cole says, and my heart stops. "I lost you once. I don't know if I could handle losing you a second time. I want this. I want us."
My voice is thick, my throat hot. "I do, too."
He takes my hands in his, kisses my knuckles. "You know there's only one shower, right?"
I blink up at him, my expression innocent. "Well, we'd better save water and time by showering together. Y’know, for efficiency purposes.”
"My thoughts exactly, Miss Grey."
"Great minds think alike, do they not, Sheriff Mannix?" I walk backward and pull him up the stairs. “We have to stop by the pharmacy on the way to The Cellar."
He follows me, his eyes locked on mine. "For?
"Plan B and condoms."
"People will talk, Lace."
“They already are, Cole." Still walking backward, I lead him into the hall bathroom where his shower stuff is.
"Let them. I've been through way too much to give a shit that people are gossiping about us getting back together.
You and I know the truth, and those whom we love and love us know the truth, or will when we share it with them.
Everyone else can go to hell." I yank his tee off and shove his shorts down.
"And since we need plan B anyway, I think I need to feel you bare inside me one more time. "
Cole grins, peeling my clothing off. "I like the way you think."
It was after seven-thirty by the time we got out of the house—neither of us were content with just once, and the shower kept getting put off, and then when we actually got into the shower, I sort of slipped and ended up on his cock all over again…
and then we stopped at the pharmacy for supplies, and he got stopped by half a dozen people who wanted to chit-chat…
meaning get a look at he and I together, buying sex stuff.
So now it's after eight, and we're standing at the entrance to the Cellar, fat flakes of snow swirling around us. Our hands are joined, fingers linked and tangled.
Cole lets out a breath. "Lacey, if you're not—"
I yank open the door and pull him in after me.
"We've been over this, Cole. We're together. Publicly. And I don't care what people say. I don’t owe anyone but you any answers.” I look up at him as we enter the bar.
"It's you who has a reputation in this town to worry about.
I'm the prodigal who suddenly came home.
You're the jilted lover who stayed. If anyone should be worried about the talk, it's you, not me. "
"And I'm not worried. I don't think anyone will be shocked—not that I care if they are.
I've been concerned with that—my reputation, with what people think about me, what they say, for too long.
But I don't care anymore. Let them talk.
Let them make their assumptions." He looks down at me.
"I never stopped loving you, and now I have you back. That's all I care about."
"Cole, Lacey!" Nyx's voice rings across the bar. "Over here!"
"Here we go," he mutters, and leads us across the bar to his friends—our friends.
Despite what he just said, I think he's nervous about their reactions, at least, if not the town at large.
They've pulled together two tables in a back corner, and I see Felix and his wife, Ember, Riley and his fiancée, Cadence, Nyx, the huge red-haired and-bearded man, Bear, and his wife, Noelle, whom I have vague memories of, but she was two grades under me and in a totally different social world than I was.
Cole's grip on my hand tightens, and I squeeze back as we weave through the crowded, noisy bar to the table, where they have two seats saved for us.
All eyes, as we approach our friends, lock onto our joined hands.
Nyx stands up, fixes a very serious look at Cole, and starts loudly slow-clapping. "Fucking finally!"
Cole glares at him. "Nyxie, sit down and stop clapping. You're embarrassing us."
"It took fifteen years, but you guys are back together." Nyx grabs our joined hands, looks from Cole's face to mine. I get the impression that he's dead serious. "This is the best news I've had in a long goddamn time, and I'm not even kidding."
Felix pours beer from a pitcher—one of four—into two clean pint glasses and slides them to us as we sit down. "Nyxie is the one who likes to publicly embarrass people, not me, but I do agree with him. Seeing you two walk in together, hand in hand? All is right in the world again."
Riley, when he saw us enter, beelined for the bar.
Now, he returns with a round server tray full of spilling shot glasses.
He rounds the table, plonking a shot glass in front of each of us before plopping into his chair.
He lifts his shot glass high in our direction.
"Fifteen years ago, Lacey, circumstances that are none of our business took you away from Three Rivers.
Our boy Cole was never the same after that.
" He speaks louder, covering my nascent protest. "I'm not asking you to tell us.
It's not our business. I know you well enough, I hope, to think you did it for a reason.
That reason is between you and Cole. All I care about is that you're back, and you are, by all appearances, with Cole again.
" He points at me with the glass. "I haven't seen that look on your face since high school, buddy. Puts a nice warm glow in my heart."
Cole blinks at Riley, looks at me, frowning. "What look?"
I snicker, because I know the look Riley means. "Rye, don't."
“Oh yes, Rye is going to," Riley says. He points the glass at Cole again. "To you, Lacey. For putting that look on my best friend's face again."
Cole is irritated—he hates not being on the inside of a joke. "What fucking look?"=
I lean close, and whisper in his ear. "You get a certain satisfied smirk after you and I have gotten it on, honey. It's a very distinctive look that we're all very familiar with."
He looks at me, then around the table. "I do not have a look."
Felix coughs into his beer, sets the glass down, wipes foam off his upper lip. "Cole, bud, you have a look."
"It's a cat-ate-the-canary sort of thing," Nyx adds. "We could always tell when you and Lace had just boned before you showed up because you get this stupid smirk."
"I'm not smirking!" Cole yells.=
I cling to his bicep and nuzzle his jaw. "Hush, honey. They're happy for us." I kiss his earlobe, his temple. "And you do smirk, after." I drop my voice to a whisper meant only for him. "I love the smirk because I know I put it there."
He frowns again. "I don't smirk."
Riley cackles. "Accept it, brother. You do. And it's a good thing."
“But…" Cole shakes his head. "Is it only when…?”
"I know what you're trying to figure out how to ask," Nyx says, "And the answer is yes, you only get that particular look on your face when it's Lacey Grey."
This makes me a little uncomfortable, but it also makes me feel kind of good. "I can't speak to that," I say.
"I can," Felix says. "Nyx is right." He looks at me, wincing. "Shit, sorry. That's—"
I force a laugh. "No, it's okay. We…we've decided to be open about things with each other. And obviously he was with other people."