4. Chapter 4
Chapter four
Cooper
T he ride back to Sutton’s house is painful.
Excruciating, even.
She hasn’t spoken a word to me except for a semi-polite yes or no after breakfast, which is starting to creep me out.
Sutton isn’t nice or polite.
No, my Sutton is a force of nature to be reckoned with. She gives me more shit than I even know how to handle, and I admire her for it.
Not that she’s my anything.
But this demure, quiet creature beside me is something I have no idea what to do with.
Snark and sass, I can handle anytime.
Quiet and letting me lead? Fucking weird.
I toy with the radio dial in the truck, switching the sensual sounds of Hozier to some backwoods country music that she hates. Hell, the only reason I have the station programmed into my truck is to annoy the shit out of her on the off chance I have to take her home.
The singer’s twang fills the cab of the truck as he croons about his love of beer, cut of shorts, and God.
I glance in her direction, waiting on a bated breath for the insult she’s sure to spit out at me as usual, but nothing comes.
Not a peep.
Sutton sits there without a sound. Not even an overexaggerated eye roll. Hell, she doesn’t react at all.
Two songs play through without her acknowledging a thing.
I had to bite my tongue not to say something once the first ended.
“Fuck it,” I gripe, turning the radio off and pulling off the side of the road. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Hmm?” She turns to me. “What do you mean?”
“I mean this”—I gesture to her—“this silent and agreeable bullshit you’re doing.”
Her brown eyes are full of that fire that I know and love. “I’m trying, Cooper.”
“Trying what? To be a bigger pain in my ass than usual?”
Sutton’s jaw drops. “Are you kidding me?”
“No, drop the act. It’s weirding me out.”
Shaking her head from side to side, she scoffs. “Of course, nothing I do is right. You don’t like me as myself. You don’t like me when I go out of my way to be agreeable. Why don’t you just admit it already, Cooper, and make everyone’s life easier? You don’t like me.”
Shock slams into my chest like she physically punched me, and I rear back at her words. That can’t be what she thinks. Can it? For once, I’m cursing the large interior of my truck. I wish she was closer so I could tug her over to me and shake the crazy out of the woman. “You can’t possibly think that?”
“Please take me home so we can both be put out of this misery already.”
“Sutton—”
“Please.”
I bite the inside of my cheeks and nod before pulling back out onto the road.
Five painful minutes later, I pull up and park in front of Sutton’s trashed lawn. Beer bottles and cans litter almost every inch of the lawn, and the grass reeks of hops and vomit.
“Shit, Sutton.” It’s all I can get out as we make our way through the wrecked sidewalk to her door.
A sniffle sounds from her direction, and I look down to find her wiping away a tear.
“No, no, no. Please don’t cry, Sut. I can’t handle your tears.”
She scrunches her face as if she’s trying to hold back the tears filling her eyes from falling any further.
“Come here.” I wrap my arms around her, and she buries her face into my chest. Her hands fisting the back of my shirt.
“I’m sorry,” she weeps into me.
“Shhh,” I say, rubbing circles into her back. “You have nothing to apologize for. It’s going to be okay.”
“How?”
“I’m not going to leave until we get this place picked up.”
“You don’t have to stay…”
I pull back so she has to look up at me. “Yes, I do. Friends don’t let other friends clean up this kind of mess alone.”
“But we aren’t friends,” she whispers, batting away yet another fallen tear.
I try to ignore the tightening in my chest at her words. “I might not be your friend, Sutton, but you’re mine.”
Her lips part a little at those words as she stares at me, stunned.
“Okay, now show me where the recycling bin is, and I will get started on the front lawn while you assess the damage within.”
The recycling bin is overflowing by the time I have the front lawn cleared. And sweat drips from my brow as I shut off the water, having power washed the grass and pavement to the best of my ability before calling it quits.
I’m not sure if the scent of stale beer and vomit is gone or if I’m immune to it after the hour I spent ankle-deep in it.
“Sutton?” I call out while walking through the front door to her living room, which smells just as bad as the lawn had. Trash bags are piled by the door, filled with aluminum cans and, sadly, the remnants of pillows and picture frames.
“Sut?” I call again.
“In the guest bathroom,” she yells from the back of the house.
Navigating my way around the bags of trash, I make a mental note to pile whatever didn’t fit in her garbage bin into my apartment dumpster to get rid of. When I reach the back bathroom, I find Sutton on her hands and knees, scrubbing at the floor with her ass pointed straight at me.
Gone are my oversized sweats she had worn home. No, now she’s in nothing but a pair of my boxer briefs and a tiny sports bra that leaves little to the imagination.
I swallow the lump that always seems to form in my throat when I see her.
Pushing aside my growing arousal, I clear my throat. “Lawn’s finished.”
She pauses her scrubbing, lifting onto her knees and turning her head to look at me. God, she is beautifully sinful-looking in that position. My mind reels with images of her on her knees before me like that, but with my cock getting ready to be buried between those two plush lips.
“Were you able to remove the skeevy slut aroma?” she asks.
I shake off the fantasy of her as I lean against the doorframe. “Unfortunately, the scent of desperation and poor decisions might linger until the next rain.”
“Shit,” she groans. “Why couldn’t Dillon have trashed the honeymoon suite like the idiot I expected him to be?”
“That’s Dillon the Douche for you, always keeping you disappointed.”
She lets out an exhausted, halfhearted chuckle. “That he does.”
“Where do you want me now, boss?”
“Cooper, you really don’t have—”
The sound of the front door slamming and glass bottles crashing makes us jump.
We start toward the living room, only to find Dillon relaxing with his eyes closed, his ass on the couch and his feet propped up on the coffee table as if the place isn’t completely ruined by his dumb choices.
I lean in closer and whisper, “Speak of the douche.”
Sutton chuckles beside me as said douche opens his eyes and looks in our direction.
“Of fucking course he’s here,” he grumbles. He lifts his feet from the coffee table and places them on the floor as he stands. “I should have known it was about him.”
Sutton’s forehead scrunches in confusion. “Excuse me?”
I don’t like it, not one goddamn bit.
But I hold still. Waiting, watching.
Sutton isn’t a damsel. She isn’t weak. She doesn’t need me to fight her battles. And she sure as shit doesn’t need me to make the situation worse by stepping in to help.
But that doesn’t mean I won’t the moment he looks like he’s going to take it too far.
I’m ready for whatever that tool throws her way.
Sutton stays silent. Not moving an inch. Not showing one ounce of guilt for leaving him or fear of his reaction. No, she is a stone wall before him, unbreakable.
“Him. Cooper. The smarter-than-me asshole you’ve been secretly carrying on with.” Dillon’s eyes widen as he looks at me, then back at her. “Are you fucking him?”
Sutton’s eyelashes flutter as she blinks.
Aiming a glare our way, he pops his knuckles. “You are, aren’t you? He’s the real reason you wouldn’t sign the damn wedding papers. I’m right, aren’t I?”
Unease spreads through my veins like wildfire at his behavior.
“Answer me, you bitch,” he demands, his voice filling the room.
“That’s it.” I move to step between them, when Sutton steps forward, cutting me off by laying her hand across my chest.
“You finally figured it out. Congrats. Maybe you aren’t as dumb as you think you are,” she taunts with a laugh.
Huh?
I open my mouth to object, but Sutton lifts her hand, silencing me.
Surely she isn’t insinuating what I think she is?
I freeze in place.
She did not just lie and use me as her scapegoat.
“I knew it.” He spins on his heels and grabs a beer bottle from the table full of them, then chugs down the remaining liquid. “I asked you if there was anything going on multiple times, and you told me no. So I guess you’re a cheating whore and a liar now, aren’t you, Sutton?”
Still reeling from being officially dragged into their shitstorm via a lie, I don’t have time to process the fact that he has questioned her about me on more than one occasion.
“I’m so glad I cheated on you during every out-of-town gig.”
Despite the anger roaring through my chest and the bitter disgust coating my tongue, Sutton stands there showing no emotion. Not giving him a damn inch. She might not want to be with him anymore, but that sure as shit doesn’t mean it doesn’t sting to hear he was sleeping with other women.
“I mean, come on, Sut, you wouldn’t even let me hit it raw.” He gawks at me as if it’s some insane thing. “Not even once.”
“And it sounds like she was pretty fucking smart not to since you’ve been cheating on her this entire time.”
He huffs out a laugh. “She letting you ride bareback?”
I ball my fist, taking a step forward, but Sutton steps in front of me, placing a hand on my chest. “He’s not worth it,” she mutters to me before turning to face him while leaning against my chest. “And for the record. I always let Cooper fuck without protection. I love it when his cum coats my insides.”
This fucking woman.
My dick hardens at her words. The image filling my every thought until Dillon’s red-hot rage boils over. He picks up a vase from the table and throws it against the wall, and I instinctively wrap my arms around Sutton and pull her closer to me.
“Get out,” I shout, my menacing voice echoing off the walls.
“This isn’t the end. I’ll be back,” he seethes before stomping out the front door. I don’t move until I hear the rev of his car and watch through the window as he tears away down the road.
Sutton shakes as she clings to me for support.
“It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”
“How?” she cries. “How is this okay?”
“He’s an asshole. But he’s gone. This is your home. I’ll help you pack up his stuff, and we will leave it out for him on the lawn.”
“Okay.”
I tip her head back until her beautiful brown eyes are staring up at me. “You aren’t alone in this. You have me, Viv, and Nate. Speaking of which, why aren’t those two assholes over here helping us clean this mess?”
“I gave them my honeymoon last night.”
“You did what?”
“I transferred everything over to them.” She shrugs as if what she did was nothing and not something extremely thoughtful. “They deserve a getaway.”
“How did you do that without me noticing?”
“You didn’t notice they were a little extra horny for each other?”
“Ugh. No. Those two are always all over each other, especially after a couple of drinks.”
“Well, it was more than that. They knew they were going to get some extra romance on this weekend. And it brought out their inner wanton sluts.”
I laugh. “Wanton sluts?”
“It’s the perfect word to describe them.”
“No it’s not.”
“Yes it is.”
“No,” I argue. “They are over-the-top, outrageously in love.”
“Like I said, wanton sluts.”