Chapter 22 Coco
Coco
As soon as Brittany pulls out her phone and begins recording, the game is on.
Not everyone plays, but those of us who do scatter like cockroaches when the kitchen light’s flipped on.
I grab Stone’s hand and guide him to my dad’s shop. He takes one step inside and whistles. “Is this a bomb shelter or the world’s biggest chili cook-off?”
A throaty laugh slips from my mouth. “There’s a lot, isn’t there?”
“Not just a lot—enough to feed an army. Or two.” He nods over his shoulder at me. “My bet’s on two.”
One wall is covered in shelves filled with clear tubs containing either beans or rice.
Those are the homemade rations. There’s also a shelf devoted to military MREs, one for store-bought freeze-dried food ranging from chicken spaghetti to peach cobbler to strawberry oatmeal, and another shelf for five-gallon jugs of water.
I’ve been looking at this stuff for so long it’s hard to see it with fresh eyes, but I do my best and realize my family looks either completely well prepared or absolutely insane.
Might just be a mix of both.
“And look at those supplies.” Stone exhales another low whistle, suggesting he’s impressed. “I’ve never seen so much fire starter and steel thermoses.”
“My family makes go bags and sells them,” I explain.
He quirks a brow. “Go bags?”
“Yeah. You put them in your car, and if an emergency happens and you’re stuck in the wilderness for a while, the contents of the bag will keep you alive—if you know how to start a fire, that is.”
“That is so cool.”
I slide up onto a counter and swing my feet. “I guess. I never really wanted to have anything to do with it.”
He crosses over to me and places a hand on either side of my legs, pinning me in.
My pulse immediately rockets into outer space.
So many questions fill his jade eyes. “Why didn’t you want to work in the family business?”
I shrug, look away. “They wanted me to. It was kind of a big deal that I didn’t, because Brittany promotes the company on her channel and my family is busy. But I’m just not as passionate as they are about it. Also, I guess . . . Well, you saw how hard it is to compete with my sister.”
“Hey—sorry about earlier. The whole table thing.” He rubs the back of his neck like he’s embarrassed. “But your mom, what she said—it didn’t sit right with me. It felt like a personal slight to you.”
My insides twitch. “No one’s stood up for me like that in front of them before.
It’s not that I haven’t tried to. Some days it feels like I could tell my mother a million times that I hate something as simple as broccoli and she still wouldn’t hear me.
” I exhale, and my body deflates. “It’s hard living in a shadow. ”
“I guess it would be.”
He takes a step closer. His pupils are inky black. A strand of his hair is out of place. I slowly reach up and fix it. Stone closes his eyes and leans in to my touch. I can’t breathe. It feels like my lungs have stopped working.
His lids flutter open again and he murmurs, “As far as I’m concerned, you don’t stand in anyone’s shadow.”
My voice is barely above a whisper when I reply, “That means a lot.”
There’s a long pause before he says, “How long until Brittany finds us?”
It’s so unexpected that I can’t help but laugh, hiding my mouth behind the back of my hand. I lean back. “Well, this is my spot, so she should be here in about ten minutes or so.”
Stone takes a step back. “Your spot?”
“Yeah.” I slide off the counter and cross to the far wall, where there’s an unlocked cabinet. “We all have our designated spots. We’ve been in the same ones since Brittany started doing these. It’s part of the script. And this”—I tug open the cabinet—“is where I go. It might fit two of us.”
It might. The space is small and dark. The only way we’ll both squeeze in is if my knee locks between his legs and his hands rest on my breasts.
My fingers spark at the tantalizing thought. As if to answer them, the ground beneath my feet quivers slightly, like a weak signal trying to be heard. Through the window, I spot a blue flicker spill over the grass. It’s quick, gone just as fast as it appeared.
I’ve got to stop thinking about Stone this way. His hand does not need to be on my breast. We can’t get romantically involved.
He approaches, and a scary thought enters my mind: Did he see the magic? Did he witness the sparks on my fingers? Does he know?
Stone rubs his chin, humor sparkling in his eyes. “This cabinet looks like a great hiding spot for a first-timer. It’s small, dark. Things could happen.”
He wiggles his brows, and heat immediately blooms on my cheeks.
Stone leans one shoulder against the cabinet and knocks on the steel surface. “So you’re just going to go in, be where you’re supposed to be?”
I shrug. “I guess?”
“You’ll do this for a sister who didn’t congratulate you on a new job, and who would have let you suffer in the kitchen—the same kitchen I pulled you out of so you could come shoot? I’m just saying.”
A jolt of electricity shoots down my arms as I recall target practice. It’s the one thing I actually enjoy about these extended get-togethers—besides seeing my extended family—aunts and Nu-Nu. “Did you see the look on her face when I almost hit the bull’s-eye?”
He beams, and it rocks me. Stone is so beautiful. I may have tried not to notice before, but it’s impossible to ignore now, when the fear and anticipation of being caught fills every moment.
“I saw the look Brittany gave you. I don’t think anyone else did.” He shakes his head and his mood shifts, darkens. “You don’t deserve that.”
“Hey.” I step closer. “Are you okay?”
He pushes off the cabinet. “I don’t know. No, I do know. I had a memory. Nothing concrete, but it left a bitter taste in my mouth.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“No. But you don’t need to cater to them like this. This isn’t the Coco Chanel I know.”
I bust a gut at his nickname.
The lines around his eyes soften. “The Coco I know dives headfirst into a project and isn’t afraid to take risks. But I get it—this is your family, and for family, sometimes we bite our tongues.”
Sparks of worry and hope flare inside me. “Do you remember yours?”
“Not a thing.” He laughs bitterly. “But I know you’re not supposed to let anyone treat you like you’re less than. You let them, and it makes me angry.”
He takes a step forward and his shadow falls across me. A knot clogs my throat as he leans in and whispers, his breath tickling the curves and planes of my ear, “Do you know what I want to do?”
My breath hitches at the sound of his sultry voice. “No.”
“I want to hide somewhere else. Somewhere no one’s ever discovered you.” He pulls back. “Now, where could that be?”
I think for a moment and then snap my fingers. “I’ve got it.”
Stone takes my hand, and tingles walk up and down my spine. “Great. Take me there.”
“You’re not allowed to touch anything,” I say in a mock-stern voice.
Stone stops in the doorway.
Stares.
Looks at me.
Blinks.
His voice brims with awe. “Do you even know what you’re asking?
That’s like demanding a kid who’s all alone in a candy shop not eat everything in sight.
” He rests his hands on his hips and sighs.
“No way will I be able to do that. This—all of this—must be touched.” His gaze flicks to me.
“Did that sound inappropriate? Because that’s what I was going for. ”
I giggle and tug him by the sleeve into the room. “Just get in here so I can close the door.” From the woods, I hear Brittany whooping and shouting. “She’s caught another one.”
“Poor bastard,” Stone says with a playfulness in his eyes that makes my lungs spasm.
I softly shut the door and turn around, pressing my back to it and taking in the room I haven’t fully stood inside of in years.
“I never come here,” I murmur.
“Why not?” Stone leaves me and wanders to the far wall, where hundreds of original LPs are shelved. Hundreds. Maybe thousands. I have no idea how many records my dad owns. “If this was mine, I’d sit in here all day listening to albums.”
“You would?”
“Yes.” He swings around as I step up beside him.
“I would lock myself inside this place and never leave.” His face brightens.
“Music! I love music! Maybe there’s a clue to who I am underneath all of this.
” He tempers his excitement, gesturing toward the wall.
“That is, if milady would allow me to peruse the shelves.”
My stomach flutters at the word milady, and a laugh bursts from me. “I was joking earlier. You can touch. Peruse all you like. If you find something you want to listen to, we’ll put it on.”
Fire dances in his eyes. “Where?”
I point to a standing stereo system that’s at least thirty years old. “There.”
“That has got to be the god of stereo systems.”
“Well, you know, if the apocalypse occurs and society crumbles, you must have music.”
Stone nods in reverence. “Truer words have never been spoken.”
I laugh again and he drops his hand to squeeze mine and then gently pulls me toward the wall. “Search with me.”
“For what?”
“Jazz.”
“Oh no. You’re joking, right?”
He shakes his head, his gaze never leaving the wall as he scans the titles. “I am for sure not joking.”
“What are you searching for?”
“I’ll know it when I find it.”
I run my finger along the titles until I find something he might like. “Charles Mingus?”
“Not in the mood. Something else.”
“Why something else?”
He tips his face toward me, and his expression is completely open. There’s no filter or walls. Nothing separates us.
“Because I love jazz. There’s something raw and true about it. No secrets, no lies, just honesty. Musicians keeping the core melody while playing around it, sustaining that truth while dropping in other ingredients. That’s jazz. And sometimes”—he smirks—“you can dance to it.”
A tingle cartwheels down my spine at the mention of dancing. “Is that so?”
“That is so. Ah! Here!” He pulls a record from the wall. “Holy shit. Is this the original Saxophone Colossus?”
“I have no idea.”