Chapter 12
Can we talk?” Cole watched as Ana jerked in surprise and turned her head before quickly refocusing on the treadmill so she didn’t stumble.
A week had passed since the Marine ball, but every time he’d tried to connect and talk, Ana had made one excuse or another as to why she couldn’t.
“I need to finish my workout so I can go pick up Ben.”
He climbed onto the treadmill beside her but didn’t start it. “Ana, I talked to Jonesie. He told me what he said. What he shouldn’t have said to you.”
“Was it true?”
Cole bit back a curse before he stretched out a hand and yanked the red magnetic emergency clip from her treadmill to stop it.
“Hey.”
“We need to talk, Ana.”
Her muted complaint had drawn the attention of several others in the gym, but Cole ignored the curious stares and focused on the woman in front of him.
She moved to straddle the treadmill as it slowed, and he took in the form-fitting tank top she wore over a sports bra and leggings. It took everything inside of him not to throw her over his shoulder like a caveman and carry her off to hide her away from the other admiring looks being sent her way. He wasn’t the jealous type normally. Only with her. More proof of how much she meant to him?
Ana grabbed the hand towel draped over the top and pressed it to her neck, but he noticed the way she squeezed it nervously.
“Cole, there’s really nothing to discuss. I think we need to keep things professional. If this isn’t about Ben…then there’s nothing to say.”
He inhaled and fought his frustration. She was not going to retreat. He wouldn’t let her. “Oh, there is plenty to say. You’re avoiding me.”
“Maybe I am. So why are you stalking me to my gym?” she shot back.
“It’s Elias’s gym—and the only one within a reasonable distance to the island,” he said dryly. “Catching you here was accidental.”
“I have to go.”
“Ana, why are you running? Huh? I thought we’d agreed to start fresh. Blank slate and all that?”
Her knuckles turned white even as her fingers turned red from squeezing the towel.
“I thought I could, but I…”
He waited for her to finish or give whatever excuse she was going to make, but instead she just stared up at him. He searched her gaze, seeing pain and regret in the depths of her green eyes.
“I hurt you,” she said finally.
“In the past, yes. You hurt me. But that’s the past. Ana, don’t let anything Jonesie said impact things between us now.”
“How can I not? When I think of what could’ve happened to you because of me, I can’t— I can’t breathe, Cole.”
He wanted to strangle Calvin for undoing the progress he and Ana had made. “I’m right here. Okay? Nothing happened. And even if it had, it wouldn’t have been your fault.”
“That’s not true. Calvin said you volunteered for dangerous missions. You did that because of me.”
He raked a hand over his head and glared at the two dudes still staring in Ana’s direction like they intended to play hero. “I was hurting; I’ll admit that. But how is that any different from how you reacted to ending things?”
He lowered his voice so that only she could hear. “You hooked up with Ben’s father because of the pain you felt over ending things. That wasn’t normal behavior for you. Ana, we both made mistakes, but we’re standing here now, and that’s all that matters. Don’t allow what Jonesie said to get into your head. Let it go.”
He watched as she blinked several times and the tip of her nose turned red, but he didn’t see tears. Only…resignation?
“I know it’s the past, but it doesn’t change things,” she said softly. “We’ve had our moment, Cole. And after what Calvin said and what’s happening with Ben, I think it’s best if we keep things as they are, as…friends.”
“I want more, Ana. I want you. I want us.”
She sucked in a breath at his words, and he could see the wariness in her eyes. But he also saw desire. For the same?
“Look, maybe the timing wasn’t right back then, but with everything we’ve gone through, how can you not see that we’re shortchanging ourselves if we don’t try again?”
Seconds ticked by, and he let himself hope despite Jonesie’s warning about the consequences of getting it wrong again.
“No,” she said with a firm shake of her head. “No, you have to stop with this. It will never work.”
He stared down at her, realizing she meant it. Ana cared for him— He’d even go as far as to say she still loved him the same way he loved her after all these years. But she didn’t believe in them and that?
He couldn’t fight her disbelief and doubts.
Didn’t know how to.
Because if she didn’t think they could make it, she’d sabotage every step to make sure they didn’t.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “You want more from me than I can give you. I can’t be responsible for hurting you again, and I-I can’t handle anything else right now. Okay? I can’t. Benji and his issues, my business— They come first, and you deserve so much more, Cole. You deserve better,” she said, turning on her heel and hurrying away into the lady’s locker room.
* * *
Several hours later, Cole glared at the ceiling of the rental building, his mind replaying Ana’s words at the gym on repeat.
The haunting way she’d said the last of it: that he deserved better…
He’d needed a ninety-minute punishing workout, a hot shower and the drive back to Carolina Cove before realizing one cold, hard fact: he’d forgiven Ana and himself for the hurt and pain of the past, but Ana hadn’t forgiven herself. And it didn’t appear that she was going to anytime soon.
So what now?
A loud bang sounded as Benjamin entered the rental building from the street and let the wind catch the door behind him, slamming it. Ben had been grumbling all week at the fact it was fall break, but he had to work while his friends surfed and goofed off.
“The windows are clean,” Ben said, hesitating by the door and staring intently at something outside.
“Good. Alec wants you to pick up trash and empty the bins at the pumps, and when you’re done, Brooks wants to teach you how to do some stuff in the back.”
“Okay but— Can I do the trash out front later?”
The teen’s hesitancy had Cole lifting his head to see that Ben lingered at the door, his gaze remaining outside. “As long as it gets done, I guess so. Any particular reason why?”
Ben sucked in a breath. Cole watched from the side as Ben’s face turned a dull shade of red and his hands fisted over the spray bottle and squeegee he held. “Ben? Something wrong?”
Cole stretched out a hand and used the mouse to click on the security camera feeds. The cameras covered the outside of the rental building, the front of the convenience store and a good view of the pumps.
A group of teenagers about Ben’s age made their way to the hotdog stand on the other side of the store, but the boy and girl in the back paused long enough for a blazing kiss. “Friends of yours?”
“Not anymore.”
The boy’s cryptic words were filled with pain, and Cole leaned back in the chair once again. “Hey, I know you’d rather be out there with them, but there is nothing wrong with working a job and earning money or, in your case, repaying a debt. It’s a good thing. Honorable.”
Yeah, that went over about as well as expected, Cole mused silently when he caught the flash of anger crossing Ben’s expression. “Anyway, I’ve been meaning to ask you if you’ve made plans for Thanksgiving?”
Ben’s gaze remained locked on the group outside, but as Cole watched, the boy’s shoulders tensed up even more.
“I guess. I can’t believe she’s making us go.”
Cole didn’t have to ask who the “she” was. “Go where?” Cole asked, his curiosity peaking almost as much as whatever it was about the group outside that held Ben’s.
“The Taylors. My grandma guilted my mom into coming to dinner. I mean, they hate us. I’d rather stay home or even come here and work.”
“Or even, huh?” Cole asked, a huff of a laugh emerging despite the topic. Cole knew Ana hadn’t always agreed with her parents, but hate was a strong word. “Since you don’t want to go out there to work while your friends are next door, take a break and tell me why you don’t want to go to your grandparents’ house.”
“Why do you care?” Ben asked in a suspicious tone.
Cole tilted the chair back even more and propped his feet on the lower drawer of the desk. “Because I do.”
Ben obviously didn’t like Cole’s response, but after a last look out the glass-paneled entry door, he meandered over and plunked down on the second stool across from Cole.
“I don’t want to go because they don’t like me—or my mom. And we don’t like them.”
“Still doesn’t give me any idea of why, Ben. Why don’t you like them?”
Ben lifted his bony shoulders and shrugged.
“We just don’t. They were never around. Even when I was younger, they never babysat me or anything. It was always Quinley. And whenever we go— It’s just always bad.”
“I admit I don’t know much about handling grandparents. Mine had already passed away before my parents died. Thankfully I had an aunt that dropped everything and moved in with us so the state didn’t split us up.”
Ben looked up, surprise etched on his features.
“What happened? How’d they die?”
Obviously Ana hadn’t shared anything about his past or how they’d met that fateful summer.
Cole told Ben about the car accident that had left him and his seven brothers and baby sister orphaned. “Alec took over along with Aunt Rose. Brooks and I were old enough to pitch in. Dawson, too. He was your age at the time. Anyway, we did whatever it took. Mowed lawns, washed windows. Anything. Just so we didn’t get split up.”
“Guess that means you never got into trouble like me then, huh?”
Cole grimaced. “I can’t say we never got into trouble. I think we all acted out at some point. It was rough losing them. Really rough.”
“Did you know my mom back then?”
Cole nodded. “I met her a month to the day after the accident. I was walking along the boardwalk, and there she was. And as sappy as it sounds, she looked like a freaking ray of sunshine.”
Ben laughed as Cole had hoped he would. “What do you mean?”
Cole inhaled and shook his head, smiling at the memory despite the twinge in his heart from Ana’s earlier words. “I was sad, so I’d taken a walk to try and distract myself. I wound up on the boardwalk, and there she was, staring up at the Ferris wheel and smiling from ear to ear, begging her friends to get on it with her. They didn’t want to. So I volunteered.”
“That’s how you met?”
“Yup. Even back then, the high school was big enough that I didn’t know her. She was a freshman, and I was a junior. But after that…” Cole felt Ben’s stare boring into him, and he shrugged. “I guess the rest is history.”
“So you dated? You met the Taylors?”
“A few times. The judge stopped in here one day to take a look at us and size us up, but he didn’t have much to say. I think it was obvious they didn’t approve though. Your mom was their only child, so…I guess I get it.”
“But you dated? What about proms and stuff? Did you go together?”
Cole let his mind go back in time to the frustrations of those years. They’d seemed like such big deals at the time, but now he saw them for the drops in the bucket they were. “They didn’t stop us from dating, but they certainly didn’t encourage it. Ana’s parents tried hard to keep her occupied and too busy to see me. As to the rest, we weren’t allowed. The rules were enrolled upperclassman only, so I couldn’t take your mom my junior or senior years. And by the time your mom was a junior and senior, I had graduated, so then I wasn’t allowed to go.”
“Did she go? Take someone else or go with friends?”
“No.”
“Bet the Taylors loved that,” Ben said, the words followed by a derisive snort. “My grandma seems to like that kind of stuff. I follow her online, and she’s always commenting on pictures of people’s kids when they’re all dressed up or getting awards. All the country club stuff.”
Ben’s statement held all kinds of pain in the flat way he said it, making it apparent he compared himself to those other kids. And felt his grandmother’s lack of attention.
Cole considered Ben’s words for himself, realizing it was another strike against him that Ana hadn’t done those things that apparently garnered Maureen Taylor’s approval because of dating him at the time. No doubt the Taylors wished their only daughter would have chosen differently. “A good parent wants the best for their children. They…probably felt she missed out on things because of me.”
“You’re definitely not the country-club type like my grandpa and the sperm donor,” Ben said dryly. “Not that that mattered since he bailed anyway.”
Cole froze in the seat and tried to act casual, but since Ben brought it up… “I’m not that type, no.”
Ben stared down at his feet propped up on the rungs of the stool, but he lifted his shoulders and shrugged.
“Mom won’t talk about my dad. Like, ever. She gets all weirded out and changes the subject. But I’ve heard her and Quinley talk when they think I’m not listening, and I’ve heard some of my mom and my grandparents’ fights. My mom’s said stuff like that about him. That it didn’t matter what they thought of him or if he was from a rich family when he was a douche anyway.”
Cole knew they treaded some touchy ground, but maybe talking about it would do Ben some good? Not to mention potentially answering some of his own questions about that time.
Ben stared at his feet like he’d never seen them before.
“I know his name,” Ben said suddenly. “I…found it a while back.”
Found it? “Are you saying your mom never told you his name?” That was hard to believe. Ana wasn’t the type for games. So why the disconnect? “What do you mean you found it?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Ben said evasively. “Mom’s always said it didn’t matter who he was because he wasn’t around. I mean, it’s always just been us, so I get it. I don’t think I even asked about my dad until I started school and realized kids had them, you know?”
“What happened when you asked her about him? What did she say?” Cole knew he should drop the subject of Ben’s father, but too many questions pounded through his head. He wanted answers. The more Ben said, the more answers Cole needed to make sense of it all.
“That we were our own family and crap like that. But when I got older and asked specific questions, she finally told me that he’d bailed when she told him she was pregnant.”
Cole watched as Ben glanced toward the computer screen and the image from outside where the group of four remained. Two of them kissed and groped like they were in a porno.
When Cole glanced back at Ben, the boy’s eyes were suddenly red rimmed, and his nostrils flared with every breath.
“What’s going on, man? Who are they to you?” Cole lifted a finger to point at the screen.
“Ex-friends,” Ben said in a low voice. “I can’t believe I was so stupid. They don’t even care that I got into trouble and have to work to pay you back.”
Cole gave Ben a second or two to swallow down the fury-born tears before he pressed the second heavy topic in the last few minutes. “Let me guess. That’s the girl you wanted to impress with the limo?”
A tight nod confirmed Cole’s suspicions.
“Cam said she’d never ridden in a limo and would…do anything to ride in one.”
Ahh, the promise of “anything.” To a teenage boy, those were seductive, magical words. “Looks like she’s pretty into that guy she’s sucking face with.”
A rough sound left Ben’s chest.
“Yeah, my ex-best friend. Mason’s the one who dared me to take one of the limos outside the hotel because she’d be a sure thing. Only when I didn’t show up, Mason went after her even though he knew I liked her.”
Cole wiped a hand over his mouth and chin, empathy filling him. “That’s a hard lesson to learn, Ben. I’m sorry that happened to you. I think you know they weren’t really friends, though, right? Friends don’t put you in those kinds of situations. Or stab you in the back.”
The PDA on the screen got worse when Mason reached down and grabbed Cam by the behind, hefting her up and turning her so that her back was pressed against the building, allowing him to grind his hips into her.
How old were these kids?
Cole reached up and clicked the mouse to go back to the sales screen and shot a quick text off to Ky in the convenience store to break up the teenage lovefest out front.
“Guess I don’t have any friends, then,” Ben muttered.
“Hey, come on. That can’t be true. Just because those guys showed their true colors doesn’t mean there aren’t good kids out there. Look at it as an opportunity to find someone like yourself who doesn’t want to be stabbed in the back.”
“Maybe.”
Ben wore his heart on his sleeve now, pain radiating off him in waves as he stood and moved to the shelves to straighten something that was already straight before he paced the tight confines of the small rental building.
“Tell you what,” Cole said. “We always have a company Christmas party at the big gaming place every year. It’s coming up, so why don’t you think about what I said and make a point to talk to a few different kids at school. When you find one or two you want to hang out with, invite them to come with you.”
“Really?” Ben’s expression shifted from surprise to suspicion. “Are you going to add the cost to what I owe?”
The question left Cole chuckling as he shook his head. “No, Ben. Every Blackwell employee is welcome to bring a date or their family, so I figure you can bring a few, people too.”
Ben crossed his arms over his chest and canted his head to one side. “Are you saying that because you want me to bring my mom?”
Cole lowered his feet to the floor and gave Ben credit for being astute. Too bad he didn’t have that ability in picking friends. “If you want to, sure. She could probably use a night off and some fun.”
Ben stared Cole down for a long moment before giving Cole another shrug.
“My ex-friends are probably gone now,” Ben said. “I guess I should get back to work.”
“Hey, Ben, whether you ask your mom to come or not is up to you. That wasn’t why I issued the invitation.”
Ben seemed to weigh the words and finally accept them at face value. “She’s usually busy working. She works even more now that the boutique is open.”
The teenager’s tone landed on the edge of bitter. “It’s hard work running a business. It’s a lot of work and responsibility knowing people count on you for paychecks, not to mention paying business expenses on top of personal ones.”
“I guess.”
“Money makes the world go round, Ben. Gotta have it to live, you know? Look, you decide about whether you want to include her. Either way, you can hang out and meet the rest of my family,” Cole said. “They all own a piece of the business, so you should know who they are since you work for them, too.”
Ben straightened and nodded. “I’ll come if she lets me. Thanks. And thanks for maybe letting me bring friends.”
“You’re welcome. Now get back to it. And, hey. If things get too tense at your grandparents or your mom changes her mind about dinner, you both have an invitation to my family’s Thanksgiving. Ky’s coming with his girl, so it’s not just us Blackwells,” he said, referring to the assistant manager of the convenience store. “Got it?”
Between the Taylors and his father not being around for Ben, Cole hoped the kid got the message that he had other people in his life who cared. Family didn’t always mean blood relatives.
“Yeah, I got it. Thanks, Cole.”
Cole stared at Ben’s shaggy head, seeing none of his mother’s coloring or looks in his features except for that brief flash of sincerity on the boy’s face instead of his typical snark.
Ben had royally screwed up in stealing the limo, but right now, he seemed to be a decent kid who searched for his place in the world and had learned tough lessons along the way.
Ana was right in that Ben needed help channeling hormones and raging emotions into something productive, but maybe after this talk they were finally on the right track. “Looks like we’ve got customers,” Cole said, seeing the occupants of a Subaru getting out and heading toward the door.
Cole watched as Ben pushed open the door and took a quick look outside, relief lowering his shoulders from his ears when he saw his loser friends were gone thanks to the text Cole had sent to Ky to run them off.
Ben stepped out but held the door for the customers before closing it behind them and heading on his way.
Cole forced himself to smile at the newcomers, but his thoughts raged.
Ana hadn’t even told Ben who his father was?