22. Center of Gravity #2
“I’ve been bringing you coffee every afternoon.” I step closer. Close enough that my body heat makes her shiver. “I know what you like.”
She considers that while I study her reactions.
A sigh escapes me when she steps forward on what I can only describe as tentative legs—like she thinks the rules might be different in the morning and nobody has briefed her on the new ones yet.
“I assume this is where you tell me that we made a terrible mistake.” Her tone is flippant, dry, protective.
My little Viper, searching for the exit.
Her hostile energy vibrates off her, so I press my hands to either side of her hips on the edge of the counter and lean in until her face is three inches from mine and she has nowhere else to go that isn’t…me.
Her throat works overtime, emitting a soft, garbled sound of distress.
The muscles in my face and neck relax. “Not a mistake, baby.”
“Cole.”
I never knew my name could evoke such panic in that single syllable.
“Not a mistake, Juniper.”
“I’m just—”
“Not.” I press in closer. “A. Mistake.”
“What I’m saying is—”
“I know exactly what you’re doing. You forget, baby, that I. Know. You. I understand you as Juniper. As Junie. As Viper. As Spite-Berry. I get all versions of you.”
She closes her mouth, furrows her brow, then opens her mouth again, only to close it a second later.
The next time she opens it, I kiss her.
Slow. Unhurried. The kind of kiss you give when you have the whole morning and no intention of rushing a single damn thing. Her mouth tastes of my toothpaste.
“Did you use my toothbrush?” I ask against her lips.
“Your mouth touched every inch of me last night.” She shrugs. “It seemed like the most sanitary thing we’ve done in the last twenty-four hours.”
I choke on a laugh, and she fists a hand in the front of my shirt, then she kisses me back, and for about thirty seconds, there’s nothing in my kitchen except the two of us and a growing question about what’s next.
Then she bites my bottom lip. Lightly. A warning shot.
I pull back an inch.
“That was…efficient.”
She’s breathless, and my inner caveman beats on his chest.
“You started it.” Jesus. Is there anything better than verbally sparring with this woman?
“I literally did not.” She scoffs, but the flush of her cheeks tells a different story.
“You came down here wearing my clothes, Juniper. That’s a policy statement.”
She laughs. Full, throaty, startled. It settles the beast inside because it’s her real laugh. The one she still doesn’t give freely, and it lands in my chest like I was holding space for her happiness.
Then her expression makes one small adjustment. She’s swallowing what she wants to say. Then does it again and again, until I have no idea what comes next.
Unease creeps up my spine like icy fingers against heated skin.
She focuses on a point on the wall across the room. “So, what now?”
Three words carrying the weight of the world.
This is the kind of honesty I’ve been waiting to earn from her.
“Coffee,” I say gently. “Then work. After that, whenever you’re done, we’ll have dinner. I’ll even cook.”
She lifts one sculpted brow. “You’ll cook.”
I nod while she chews on this information.
“Something that isn’t eggs?”
This fucking woman. “Something that isn’t eggs, Junie.”
She narrows her eyes. “Can you do that without poisoning us both?”
I flash all my teeth at her now. “Are you asking me to prove myself to you, baby?”
“No one gets the queen for free, Cole.”
Fuck. Me. She’s magnificent.
“No, no, they don’t, do they? Be in my kitchen at seven.”
“I’m already in your kitchen.”
“Seven p.m., smart-ass, wearing something other than my shirt.”
She rolls her eyes, and I vividly imagine spanking her, knowing immediately that she’d like it.
“That’s a very aggressive dress code for a dinner you’ll most likely burn.”
“Juniper.” Her name vibrates through my ribs.
“Cole.” She could have said duh, and I would’ve heard the same thing.
We could go back and forth all freaking day.
Instead, I kiss her.
Softer this time. Just the corner of her mouth. It’s the moment she realizes I’m not pulling away from her. I’m not softening the morning into something we never talk about again. I’m not doing everything I’ve always done.
I’m staying.
In the small, unglamorous, dinner-at-seven sense of the word.
“Come sit on the porch with me.” I use the same tone I used when I told her to strip, and it has the desired effect.
But Junie wouldn’t be Junie without some of her fire melting through the haze.
“I’m wearing your clothes, Cole. Are you trying to get the gossips gossiping around here?”
“Gossip is only a negative thing when it’s untrue. Porch,” I say, lifting our coffees. “With me.”
The last thread of my sanity follows her out the door.
She sits on the top step instead of the rocking chairs. It’s a callback to our history. Maybe this is my chance to correct our future, so I sit on the step below her and watch the sky brighten the way it does in the first few days of summer. Everything’s blue and happy and hopeful.
The only sounds are of nature and the occasional slurping of coffee, but I don’t fill the silence because her brain is working a million miles an hour, and she’ll do it herself. When she’s ready.
“I meant what I said last night.” She didn’t take nearly as long as I thought she would.
“I know.”
“About not running anymore.”
“I understand.”
“And you just, what? Trust me?”
I nod, unsure of where she’s going.
“Because, just for the record, I don’t. I know myself, Cole.
At some point, I’m going to want to run, to sabotage…
this. And while I want to say it won’t happen, it will, and if we’re doing this.
” She waves a hand in the minuscule space between our bodies.
“Then when I do, I want you to—” She pauses to suck in a large mouthful of air, then allows her shoulders to droop.
“I don’t know what I want you to do. I’m not good at this part. ”
“When you’re ready to run, tell me.”
She glances down with a frown. “What?”
“When you want to run, tell me that’s what you’re doing. Don’t do it silently. Don’t do it like I did. Just—tell me, and then if you still want to run, we’ll figure the rest out.”
What I don’t say is that I’ll follow her. I know that about myself now. One taste of her will never be enough. I just don’t work without her. I probably never did.
Her eyes flicker with a million different thoughts that she’ll never say out loud.
Then her thumb presses against the engagement ring that has never felt so right. “That’s a high bar, Whittaker.”
“It’s really not. I just made the mistake so you don’t have to.”
She exhales through her nose, but my attention is stuck to her thumb as it pushes the diamond around her ring finger—it’s an automatic tell she probably doesn’t even notice.
“I’ll try.”
“Yeah?” This must be what hope feels like.
“Yeah. I’ll tell you.” She sips her coffee. “Just…for now, anyway.”
I don’t know what she means by for now, and I don’t ask because it sounds like something she’s testing out—a sidebar to our conversation, an exit strategy if all hell breaks loose.
And maybe that’s my fault. I haven’t given her much reason to trust me, and I know better than to poke at something she’s still working through in her head.
So we sit.
Side by side with the pulse of the ocean on one side of me, and the heartbeat of love on my other.
Somewhere behind us, the phone I hid in the drawer still carries the weight of Natalie’s threat, and the county tax deadline looms, while a banquet has the power to solve one problem but not the other because our past still has a thumbprint on our life.
But I’m done being a spectator in my life, so I silently vow to dismantle every lie I’ve kept hidden.
Starting with Natalie Moore.