Chapter 25 #2
“I’ll get to it,” Cooper gestured awkwardly, and then headed down into the basement—taking care on the bottom step.
With the torch, the fuse box was easy enough to find, and luckily Laura had bought the right kind.
He had the faulty ones switched out in no time, and when he flipped the switch, he saw the lights upstairs turn on.
“Angel,” Laura greeted him when he emerged back up to the kitchen. She’d changed into a fresh T-shirt—not stained with baby drool—and had her hair caught up in a ponytail. “Can I get you a coffee? Tea? Half-thawed filet of salmon?”
“It’s fine, I should be going.” Cooper still felt out of place, but she insisted.
“Please, sit down. I’ve been wanting to catch up. It’s been so long since . . . well.” Laura steered him to the kitchen table and moved to make coffee. “How are you doing?”
Cooper slowly exhaled. “I’ve been better,” he said, and immediately regretted it. Laura was the last person in the world he should be talking to like this, after everything he’d put her through.
“I heard,” she said slowly. “About you and Poppy. I’m sorry, she seemed nice.”
“She was. Is,” he corrected himself, then shrugged, trying to be casual. “It didn’t work out. It happens.”
“You know, I was thinking, and you haven’t been with anyone serious since us, have you?” Laura was watching him carefully, and Cooper felt trapped under her gaze. This wasn’t like with Riley, or even Mackenzie, where he could shut down their questions and move on.
He shrugged again, and looked away. “I don’t know, I’ve dated plenty these past years.”
“But nothing that’s lasted.”
“You should be glad about that,” Cooper tried to joke. “You always said I couldn’t make you happy. The least I can do is save some other poor woman from making the same mistake.”
“Is that what you really think?”
When he looked back, Laura seemed surprised.
“It’s true, isn’t it?” Cooper felt a wave of bitter regret. “I couldn’t give you what you wanted, no matter how hard I tried. I’m just not cut out to love anyone, I guess.”
He ached to say it, but there was no avoiding the truth. He’d thought he’d accepted it by now, but Poppy had thrown a wrench in that for good. She’d shown him what he’d been missing out on. What he could have had, in another life maybe.
“It’s OK,” he said to Laura, who was looking at him with what looked like pity in her gaze.
“Some of us just aren’t made for all of this.
” He nodded around at the photos pinned to the refrigerator door, and the pile of baby clothes, fresh from the dryer.
“And if I was . . . well, don’t you think we would have figured it out back when we had the chance? ”
Laura looked at him for a long moment, then shook her head with a rueful smile. “Did it ever occur to you that we didn’t work out because we weren’t supposed to?”
He looked away. “You don’t have to say that. I know I screwed us up.”
Laura frowned. She came to sit beside him, reaching over to take his hand. “Seriously, Cooper, have you really been blaming yourself for that all this time? God, you’re even more stubborn than I thought.”
Cooper pulled back. “Hey.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “We were a disaster. Come on, you know that. We were at each other’s throats all the time, over who knows what?
Oil and water, that’s what my mom always said, and she was right.
There was no saving us, but you just wouldn’t give up the fight.
I didn’t understand it, why you wanted to keep putting us both through that misery. ”
“I loved you,” he frowned.
“And I loved you, but I couldn’t live with you.” Laura sighed. “It was too hard. Remember, I told you it shouldn’t be that hard.”
“Hard to love me,” he said, with that same damn bitter ache.
“No,” she corrected him gently. “Hard to be together. Admit it, I was no walk in the park either. God, when I think about those fights we had . . .” She shook her head. “You made me crazy.”
“You would act like you lost your damn mind,” he agreed, and she laughed.
“You see? That’s not good love. That’s not what you can build a future on.
Imagine it,” she added. “You and me, at each other’s throats every day, all that resentment and frustration boiling over.
You really think that’s the life you should have had?
We gave it our best shot,” she continued, “but you weren’t the one for me, and I sure as hell wasn’t the one for you.
You were meant for someone else. Someone who can make you happy, without wanting to wring your damn neck every other day. ”
Cooper looked at her, trying to wrap his head around what she was saying. All this time he’d been blaming himself, thinking that if his love wasn’t enough to make it work with her then he’d never be enough for anyone else. But now she was saying there had been no saving them.
It wasn’t his fault.
Could it really be that simple?
He shook his head slowly. He wanted so much to believe in what she was telling him, but he felt like a dying man in the desert, so desperate for water he was clinging to the mirage just up ahead.
“But I tried my best, and it wasn’t good enough for you.”
Laura looked stricken. “I’m sorry if I made you think that,” she said, squeezing his hand. “I know we both said some things in the end there, but I never meant for you to hold onto them like this. God, Cooper, you deserve to be happy. You’re a good man, even if we weren’t good for each other.”
Cooper exhaled. He felt off balance, like the world had suddenly tilted off its axis, and everything he was so damn sure he had figured out was now up in the air again, spinning in the wind.
“You really think that?” he asked, and the naked hope in his voice would have made him ashamed if it were anyone else in the room. But for better or worse, Laura knew him from the inside out. She looked at him straight on and smiled.
“I do. And I wouldn’t lie to you. If you were an asshole with no hope of redemption, I’d be the one telling you that.”
He managed a smile. “You and Mackenzie, at least.”
Laura brightened. “How is she?”
“Giving me a hard time.”
“Good.” Laura got up. “You need a kick in the ass sometimes. I had high hopes for that Poppy, it seemed like she had her head screwed on straight.”
“Not so much.” Cooper couldn’t help but smile. “She’s a total romantic. Believes in soulmates and happily-ever-afters.”
Laura arched an eyebrow. “That doesn’t sound like your kind of thing.”
“I know.” He nodded. “But she had me believing. For a while, at least.”
He looked away. That was the crazy thing, that for all his bitter memories and stubborn thinking, Poppy really did make a believer out of him.
With her, he could see it: why some people just belong together.
No judgment, no fights. He’d never felt a peace like the moments where she was curled in his arms—and never known reckless desire like when she fixed those teasing eyes on him with a smile, tempting him to lose himself forever in her touch.
“Aww, hell,” he cursed, as it hit him all over again. “I’ve screwed this up real bad, haven’t I?”
Laura patted him on the shoulder. “I’m sure it’s not too late for fixing.”
“I don’t know about that.” Cooper thought about the way he’d acted over the past week, pushing her away, time and time again. “She’s leaving to go back to New York.”
“So?” Laura challenged him. “Give her a reason to stay.”
Cooper was about to detail all the ways that wouldn’t work, when a loud wail came from the baby monitor. Laura sighed. “Sorry, he’s teething. Won’t give me an hour’s peace.”
“No, it’s OK. I’ve taken up enough of your time.” Cooper got to his feet. “And thank you,” he said awkwardly. He hadn’t been expecting to talk like this—and he definitely hadn’t expected that Laura would be the one to make him see that maybe, just maybe, there was still hope for him, after all.
“Anytime.” Laura smiled. “Don’t be a stranger now. We’re going to be renovating Brady’s room soon, and I love my husband, but the man can’t tell a hammer from a wrench.”
“Give me a call, and I’ll fit you in,” Cooper agreed. He paused. “I’m glad you found it,” he said, giving her a wry smile. “Steve, the baby . . . It seems like a good life.”
Laura smiled. “Tell me that again when I’ve had more than three hours sleep.”
The wailing went up a decibel.
“I’ll leave you to it,” Cooper said quickly. “I can see myself out.”
He closed the front door behind him, listening as baby Brady’s wails quieted. The cool air hit him in a rush, and for the first time since that day at the library, he felt a clarity, some damn direction after all the dark, messy self-doubt.
He wanted Poppy—not just for a night, but for everything. A future, a family, all those things he’d believed were out of reach until she’d come along to show him that some things really were meant to be, after all.
He needed her. He loved her. They belonged together. Now he just had to figure out how to make her see it, too—sometime in the next twelve hours.
Before she closed the book on him for good.