Chapter 16 #2
I stared back. “If your parents weren’t together, wouldn’t you do everything you could to fix it? To make sure they could have a good marriage again?”
“Honestly?” he said. “No. I wouldn’t.”
I rolled my eyes and shoved past him. “And that tells me just about everything you know about this situation.”
“You can’t seriously think this is a good idea,” he said.
“I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
I shouldn’t have told him the truth. At the very least, I should have tried to soften it.
Of course he didn’t see it my way—I hadn’t even tried to explain the nuance of the situation.
The way that I spent weeks waking up in that house, feeling like a piece of myself was missing.
How my whole family moved on, acting as if Dad not being there was normal.
How much I worried that if I didn’t succeed at this that my family would fracture for good.
“Then explain it to me,” he said. He was staring straight into my eyes, like he was challenging me to a duel.
I swallowed, my fingers curling into fists in my pockets. “I believe in soulmates,” I said finally.
His eyebrows flicked up. “Okay,” he said slowly. “And?”
“And my parents are each other’s,” I said. The words came faster once I started. “I know they are. You don’t spend thirty years with someone, raise four kids, build a whole life together, and then just… lose that because of one mistake.”
“One mistake,” he repeated.
“Yes,” I snapped. “One. A terrible one, obviously, but not some cosmic sign that they’re doomed forever. People screw up. That doesn’t mean the love just evaporates.”
Cole sighed and rocked back on his heels, glancing away from me. “If Katie’s boyfriend cheated on her, I’d kill him. You think I shouldn’t?”
“That’s different. High school relationships are never built to last.”
Cole scoffed. “I don’t even know where to begin with that.”
“Don’t tell me you really believe in love, bad boy.”
“What if I do?” he asked, raising his brows. “If you’re so sure soulmates exist, why can’t you find each other young?”
He stared at me with a challenge in his eyes and I so desperately wanted to shove him away.
But maybe, just maybe, that was just because I knew he was right.
If I was looking at anyone else’s relationship, I wouldn’t be able to excuse cheating.
I’d hated Sebastian’s ex-girlfriend for doing it to him.
But why couldn’t he understand that this time was different?
That my parents belonged together, even if they both lost sight of it?
“This is my house,” I mumbled as we reached the front pathway.
I came to a stop at the end of it, knowing that I should just walk away and not look back, but equally wanting to stay here and talk to Cole all night.
I had no idea where that feeling had come from—we couldn’t go five minutes without arguing and yet somehow, this walk had been ten times as fun as the date he’d saved me from.
“Big place,” Cole said, his eyes running over the house.
I wondered what it looked like to him, what stood out first. If his eyes first locked on the wreath on our bright red front door or the pots on either side of it filled with pinecones and evergreen branches for the season.
If his eyes scanned the windows of our two-story home, trying to figure out what each room was. “Which one is your room?”
“One in from the right,” I said, pointing as if he wouldn’t be able to notice it. “That’s my balcony there.”
“Of course you have a balcony,” he said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
His eyes slid from the balcony to me. “It just suits you. Very Romeo and Juliet. Except no one dies. Hopefully.”
“I don’t know, I was a little worried for Mitch back there.”
He shrugged nonchalantly. “He’ll be okay.” The way he said it was a mix between sincere and teasing. Mitch was shaken up, I’m sure, but he would be okay. Not that I thought Cole cared either way, but still.
“Thank you, by the way,” I said. “For…protecting me.”
“Anytime, Princess.”
His words after his first incident with Mitch at The Corner Cup came back to me then: and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
Despite the drama of the day, I found myself smiling slightly, warmed by the idea that Cole has been looking out for me even when I didn’t ask him to. Even when we weren’t even friends.
He shoved his hands in his pockets and nodded at me, then started walking back toward his car. But suddenly I wasn’t ready to say goodnight to him yet.
“Wait,” I said. I wasn’t even sure why I was asking him to stop, only that I didn’t want him to leave. “You owe me an answer.”
He slowly turned back, a curious look on his face. “What?”
“I told you about my dad,” I said. “I answered your question. So now you have to answer one of mine.”
The corner of his mouth quirked up. He took a step toward me and I had to resist the urge to take a step away.
“And what question is that?” he asked, his voice low and dangerous. It made my heart thump in my chest, and I told myself that was only because I’d seen him beat someone up less than an hour ago. My body was only reacting to the sense of danger that it felt about him, not anything else.
I didn’t actually have a plan of what to ask, so I asked the first question that came to mind: “Did you really go to juvie?”
Cole almost looked like he was going to laugh. “No. I didn’t.”
A week ago, I would have questioned whether he was telling me the truth.
After all, anybody who had been to juvie probably wasn’t going around announcing it and was probably a good liar anyway.
But now, as I looked at him, I got the overwhelming sense that he was telling the truth.
Cole was many things, but he wasn’t a liar.
“Then what really happened?” I asked. “At your old school, I mean. Did you actually get in a fight? Were you really expelled like everyone says?”
Cole stepped forward again, this time coming up so close that I could smell his cologne. The scent was so intoxicating that it almost made me feel like I needed to hold my breath to be able to focus and not get overwhelmed by it all.
His hand came up, brushing against my cheek.
And now it wasn’t even that I was holding my breath but that it was trapped in my lungs completely, every nerve in my body instead focusing instead on his touch.
His eyes follow the path of his fingers.
When they flick back to mine, I think he’s going to kiss me.
I think I want him to. No, I know I want him to.
“Maybe one day I’ll give you that answer,” he murmured. The whispers made me shiver. Then, as if it was always what he’d intended, he tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear and stepped away. I immediately felt colder without him in front of me. “Goodnight, Princess.”
He backed up one step, two. His eyes stay locked on mine until he gets five steps away, then he turned on his heel and sauntered off. I watched him until he rounded the corner to where he parked, and only once he was out of sight did the breath return to my lungs again.