Chapter 22 COLE
COLE
Aria is vibrating. Not just excited—she’s glowing. She’s standing on the podium, her ribbon in both hands, Daisy beside her, clutching her own, both girls grinning like someone hung the moon just for them.
The crowd cheers as the announcer calls their names again. Zane whistles loud enough to break glass, Beck lifts Oliver onto his shoulders, Tessa’s crying into Jace’s shirt, and he’s pretending he isn’t wiping his own eyes on the sleeve of his flannel.
And me? I’m just… trying to breathe.
Because my daughter, my girl, just won her first medal at a barrel racing competition, and I can’t remember the last time I felt this proud. Aria runs straight to me the second the photos wrap up. I catch her mid-jump, lifting her off the ground as she laughs into my neck.
“Daddy! I did it! I did it!”
My voice cracks. “Yeah, baby. You did.”
She pulls back, breathless, cheeks tinted pink. “Miss Ella taught me everything. She told me to breathe, trust myself, trust Cinder, and it worked and—“
I glance at Ella, who is standing a few feet away, watching us with Aria’s helmet tucked under one arm, her cheeks flushed from the sun, brown curls escaping her braid in soft wisps.
She looks proud, relieved, and a little emotional.
She gives me a small smile, the quiet, private kind she only ever gives when it’s just for me.
I mouth, “Thank you.”
Her smile deepens, her eyes warming. God help me.
The entire Morgan clan piles into the holding pen for pictures after. Mom insists on taking some on her phone “for the mantle, honey,” and Aria poses with everyone, including Daisy, Tessa, and Ava, who hands Luella to Zane so she can fuss over both girls.
The celebratory dinner ends up being a chaotic Morgan-style feast. Hank grills, Ava makes a massive salad, Quinn bakes cornbread because Mom brought the lemon bars, and we all know she’ll fight whoever tries to compete with her desserts.
Aria barely sits still, buzzing all over the place, replaying her run in perfect, breathless detail. Daisy is the same, and I spend most of dinner with some strange ache blooming in my chest, watching my daughter be so… happy.
And I know exactly who helped her get there.
Ella catches my eye across the table at one point, and something tightens in my throat. She has no idea what she’s done for us. I need to make sure I properly thank her later.
After dinner, dessert, every congratulation and celebration the girls can possibly withstand, I take Aria back to our cabin while the rest of the family starts cleaning up.
She drags her feet the whole way, suddenly exhausted. I tuck her into bed, smoothing her hair back, brushing a kiss to her forehead.
“Daddy?” she mumbles sleepily.
“Yeah, sweetheart?”
“Thank you for letting me do barrel racing.”
My chest pulls tight. “Thank you for loving it.”
She smiles drowsily. “Miss Ella says I’m a natural.”
I laugh softly. “Miss Ella’s right.”
Her eyes flutter closed. “Today was perfect.”
“Yeah,” I whisper. “It really was.”
She’s asleep within seconds. I stand there a long moment, watching her breathe, letting the quiet settle around me.
When I step outside, Ella is waiting, standing under the moonlight with her hands in the pockets of her jeans, the soft glow of the cabin lights catching the edges of her hair.
She looks up when she hears the door. “Is she asleep?”
“Completely out,” I affirm.
She smiles. “It was a big day.”
“Yeah.” I take a few steps toward her. “For both of us.”
Her breath catches just slightly. “You okay?”
“I’m great,” I admit. “Better than great. I’m… proud. Proud of her. Proud of what you did for her.”
She shakes her head softly. “She did the work. I just helped her along.”
I step closer. “Shiloh.”
Her eyes flick to mine, just a breath, but enough.
“You gave her something that changed her,” I say quietly. “You gave her confidence, joy, and something to look forward to every morning. That was more than helping.”
Her voice drops. “Cole…”
“You gave her a piece of herself she didn’t know she had,” I continue. “And you gave me something too.”
She swallows. “What?”
“Hope.”
The word hangs between us, raw and simple and truer than anything I’ve said in years.
She inhales sharply, eyes glistening in the low light.
I step closer. Close enough that her breath brushes my shirt.
Close enough that the warm Texas night suddenly feels charged with something darker, deeper, hungrier.
I lift my hand, brushing a stray piece of hair from her cheek. Her eyes close at the touch, the smallest exhale slipping past her lips.
“I’ve been wanting to kiss you all damn day,” I whisper.
Her eyes open slowly, heat swirling in the grey. “Then why didn’t you?”
“Because I would’ve lost control,” I say honestly. “And we weren’t in the right place for that.”
“What about now?” she breathes.
“Now?” I lean in just enough that our mouths share the same air. “Now it might be.”
She’s the one who moves first this time. Her hand slides over my shirt, fingers curling into the fabric, pulling me in that last inch. Our lips crash together, slow at first, tasting, savoring, then deeper, hotter, like something inside both of us breaks loose all at once.
I grip her waist and press her into the nearest wall, swallowing the soft sound she makes when her back hits the wood. I drag my mouth down her jaw, her breath shaking against my ear.
“Cole…” she whispers, voice trembling with heat.
“Yes, love. I know,” I rasp.
My hands slide along her hips, her curves, the warmth of her body pressing into mine. She arches into me, wanting, needing, matching every bit of the hunger tearing through me.
I nip her lower lip, slow and deliberate. She gasps. Her nails scrape lightly up my arms, sending fire straight down my spine.
Her voice is barely a breath. “I want you.”
Something inside me snaps.
I grab her waist, lifting her easily. Her legs brace around me as she lets out a shocked, breathless sound that goes straight to my head. Her hands fly to my shoulders, gripping tight.
I press my forehead to hers. “Ella,” I growl softly, “I’m two seconds away from forgetting the whole world exists.”
Her lips part. “Then forget it.”
I kiss her again, harder, deeper, hungrier. Her fingers sliding through my hair, body fitting against mine like she was made for this moment, for my hands, for my mouth, for the way I can’t stop touching her.
Her whisper comes soft and wrecked against my lips. “Take me.”
My breath leaves me in one rough exhale. I look at her, really look at her—flushed, breathless, eyes dark with want—and my voice drops to a low, shaking rumble.
“Sweetheart…” I lift her higher, her breath catching. “If I keep kissing you out here…” I murmur against her throat. “…I’m not stopping.”
Her fingers tighten in my hair. “Then don’t.”
And that… that’s the moment I give in. Heat slams through me, sharp and consuming. I kiss her one more time, slow, deep, claiming, before pulling back just enough to speak against her mouth.
“Hold on to me.”
She does.
I turn toward the cabin door, her breath hot against my neck, her body wrapped around mine, her voice a whisper that shreds every last piece of restraint I have left.
“Cole…”
I growl softly, grip tightening on her thighs. I carry her inside as the door closes behind us, the world narrowing to nothing but the sound of her breathing and the heat waiting to swallow us whole.
In the seclusion of my bedroom, I set her down on the bed, hovering over her, feeling every inch of her curves under me. I lower my lips to hers, and we kiss, long, mapping, relearning. Our mouths talk like people who’ve had a backlog of unsaid things.
Her breath stutters when my hand slides under the hem of her blouse and finds the warm skin of her stomach.
I cup her belly, spreading my fingers over her smooth skin, trailing kisses down the slope of her neck.
My mouth finds the soft swell of her collarbone.
She tilts her head, offering herself like she means it, and I don’t take that for granted.
My hands wander, and when I find the curve of her breast through fabric, she makes a small sound that lives in my chest.
“You don’t have to hide,” I murmur. “Not with me.”
We peel our clothes off like we are learning anatomy and trespassing at the same time. Nothing is rushed. Because we both know what frenetic lust can do—make people forget the person beneath the heat. We take time to read each other’s skin.
When she’s on her back on my bed, I drag my mouth up the inside of her thigh, slow as confession. I don’t skip the marks. I kiss them, trace them with my tongue, and watch her. Her breath hitches in delicious waves under my touch.
I delve into every delicious drop she has to offer, letting her juices trail down my chin as I play with her nipples. She digs her fingers into the sheets, eyes squeezed shut, and when she climaxes, she says my name like a prayer and like a warning.
“Cole!”
I don’t stop until she clamps her legs around my head, halting me. I come up from between her legs slowly, lips glistening, fingers sticky with her. She’s crying—not ugly, not of despair, but of release, of disintegrating the weight she’s carried into dust.
She relaxes as I trail kisses back up, and when my mouth finds hers, she’s soft and slick and trembling. We move like a conversation, give and take. There is no leering, no objectifying. This is reverence disguised as hunger.
Her hand finds my hair and holds on like that’s the safest thing in the world. “Cole,” she breathes, and I taste the way she says it—small and raw.
I close my mouth over hers and let my heart answer what my hands already know.
We switch, as if we’ve rehearsed this for days: her mouth tracing the base of my throat, slipping under the waistband of my jeans, daring me to trust. She’s attentive, slow with me, patient, and when she takes me into her mouth, it’s like a balm.
I watch her eyes as she works her tongue and lips all over my cock, the small smile that tightens the corner of her mouth.
She likes this; she likes that she can make me this open, this vulnerable. “You taste good,” she murmurs, and it breaks me because I find her the same.
We move together, sometimes clumsy, sometimes perfect.
There’s such tenderness in every touch, an intimacy I never expected to find there.
I cup the back of her head, fingers tangling in the soft hair, and when I close my eyes, the world narrows to the sound of her breath and the weight of her hands.
She hums, this tiny sound that could stop wars.
“I need to be inside you,” I declare, pushing her off me.
I drop out of her mouth with a pop and readjust us. I pick her up off the bed, pinning her against the wall, her legs wrapped around my waist.
“You’re perfect. I love everything about you,” I whisper as I thrust forward, burying myself in her in one swift move.
And I do. I express more praise towards her delectable body, the things I notice about her, how the light plays across the small patch of skin at her hip, how the stretch marks are like battle scars, and I salivate at them like trophies of surviving.
We take our time, slow march the end down to a crawl, fucking like we have all the time in the world when we know that we are living on stolen moments.
When we orgasm together, I take her with me back to the bed.
We bask in the aftershock, catching our breath in the small hollows of each other.
I fold my arm around her, and she tucks her head under my chin.
Her hand finds my chest, fingers splayed flat, and I feel the rise and fall of her breathing.
The sound she makes is like surrender and victory rolled into one.
I don’t know what tomorrow holds, but for tonight, she is mine and I am hers.