Chapter 10
Cooper leads us a few blocks to what he’s told me is his favorite coffee shop in his neighborhood, a cozy cafe in a squat brick building with a million potted plants hanging in the window.
“After you,” he says, holding the door open for me.
Something about his smile hits me—how damn happy he looks to be welcoming me to his favorite spot—and suddenly, it feels like I’m walking on shifting sand, and I trip over the threshold.
But Cooper’s there, one hand at my elbow, the other at the small of my back, steadying me. I straighten, and his hand falls away from my arm, but the other stays gently pressed at the base of my spine, the warmth of his palm making it feel like I’m lying in the summer sun.
“You okay?” he asks, voice a low vibration near my cheek.
I shake my head, then jerk it into a nod. “Fine,” I say, not feeling fine at all. He still doesn’t move his hand. “Grab us a table.” I nod at the only one open as I step away from his touch. “I’ll order. What do you want?”
His eyes flick to the board as he bites his lower lip. The way the edge of his teeth push into the pillowy pinkness makes heat rush to my cheeks, and I dart my gaze away.
“I’ll do an iced latte,” he says, turning back to me. I make the mistake of looking at him again, his grin sunny and lopsided. God, I hate him.
I nod, pursing my lips and shooing him toward the table.
The line is long, the barista taking the time to actually chat with each customer in a way that’s disarmingly personal.
It makes sense why Cooper likes this place.
The bright, mismatched decor, the staff that genuinely seems to give a shit, patrons greeting each other with knowing smiles…
He’s found Midwestern friendliness in this brutal city.
As much as I try to fix my attention to the chalkboard menu, it keeps slipping to Cooper.
I can’t help but study the way he absorbs the room and then reflects it back—a smile playing at his lips as he watches a little girl blow bubbles in her pink drink while her mom beams, his ears perking up as a trio of friends whoop with laughter over some joke, the subtle way his eyes melt as an elderly man reaches across the small table to brush his thumb at the corner of his companion’s lips.
Finally, I put in our order and wait for the drinks at the end of the bar. Cooper catches me looking at him and makes a big show of waving his arm like I lost him in a crowd. My cheeks heat and I look away, taking a scalding sip of my black coffee the second it’s placed on the counter.
With a deep breath to calm my shaky center, I head to my demise… I mean, our table.
“Iced latte with oat milk, Polly Pocket,” I say, sliding it to him.
“My hero.” Cooper grins, tapping the wrapper off his straw, poking it in the drink, and taking a sip. “Why oat milk, though?”
My eyebrows dip low. “Aren’t you lactose intolerant?”
“No?”
I blink a few times, studying him. “Oh… I thought for sure you were. You give off that energy.”
“I give off lactose-intolerant energy?” Cooper says, leaning back, face fixed in a sour expression. “What does that even mean?”
“I… I just…” I swirl my hand at him. He glances down at his sweatshirt, which is embroidered with SILLY GOOSE ON THE LOOSE and an image of the animal fleeing from a pond.
At least this one he’s upgraded with a hood.
“I feel like someone who can consume cheese without issue wouldn’t compensate with a fit like that. ”
“This shows I’m a warrior,” Cooper says, slapping a hand to his chest. It makes me think of a goose flapping its wings and I snort.
“I don’t know, man, you just have the energy of someone who tweeted about being a tummy ache survivor long after it stopped being funny. Probably pinned it as your last one as that ship sank. It seems reasonable that milk could take you down.”
Cooper is silent for a moment, jaw slack as he rapidly blinks. I shift, worried that somehow this was the jab that hit him too hard.
Then his face creases with a smile, his laugh infectious. “You’re brutal.”
I try to hide my own smile but it sneaks through. “So?” I mumble, taking another sip of my coffee.
His grin slips into something more pensive, head tipping to the side as he studies me. “It’s alarming how much I like it.”
I gulp down another sip right as he says that, and the hot liquid stabs down the wrong pipe as I involuntarily gasp.
It takes everything in my power to choke it down instead of spitting it right in his face.
Would serve him right if I did. Who does he think he is, saying something like that out of the blue?
“You good, Kitten?”
I wave him away, blinking back tears and holding in some rib-shattering coughs. “Fine,” I wheeze. Cooper gives me a skeptical look, casually sipping his drink as I collect myself.
“As much as I love spending time with you and listening to all the creative ways you bully me, I did have a motive for asking you for coffee.”
“You’ve decided to preserve the remainder of your dignity and call this whole thing off?” I’m speaking from a way higher horse than I deserve to be on as my eyes continue to water.
“Not a chance, sweetheart. I’m having way too much fun, and dignity is overrated.” He winks at me. My grumpy reflexes aren’t quick enough, and I flash a smile. He stares at my lips, gray eyes sparking, and it feels like he’s trying to memorize the shape of them.
I clear my throat, and he comes back to himself, shifting in his seat. But he’s still quiet, toying with his discarded straw wrapper. His face is clouded, and he twists the white paper around his finger so many times the tip starts to turn purple.
I don’t register the decision, but my hand darts out, stilling his fidgeting. With a flick of a manicured nail, I slice the vise of paper, my palm settling over his knuckles.
We both stare at where I touch him, and, with a delayed reaction, I pull my hand away, toying with my rings as I mumble, “What’s wrong with you?”
Cooper rakes his teeth over his bottom lip, watching—entranced—by my fidgeting now.
“There are things I need to tell you,” he says at last, eyes dragging up from my hands to my face. “Things I need to tell you without an audience or the pressure of me trying to win you over. Things I spent six years sorting through and agonizing over that I finally have words for.”
My throat is tight, but my face must display all the questions bouncing through my head that I can’t manage to verbalize.
“I owe you an explanation, Eva,” he says in a rush, his body deflating with the force of it. “Will you hear me out?”
A voice in my head breathlessly whispers, Finally .
I smother it down, scolding it with a scream that this is a trap, that getting my hopes up with Cooper—with anyone —is a parable I’ve repeated way too many times for it to be acceptable or cute.
But, like the fool I am, I feel myself nodding in agreement.
Cooper looks at me—really looks, like he’s seeing every alarm-bell fire in my brain, like he’s wading through the swamp of my worry and dismay to find something to say that will satisfy me.
“I met you at one of the worst times in my life,” he finally says.
I’m incapable of not taking things personally, and I feel my expression sour.
Cooper shakes his head, holding his palms up and giving me a pleading look. “Nothing to do with you, Kitten. You were a bright spot.”
I shouldn’t bask in the praise like it’s sunlight on winter skin, but I do.
“Please, continue telling me how great I was and how you screwed everything up,” I deadpan, fixing my face back into an unimpressed mask.
His smile is all-knowing like he can see his words glowing in me and his gray eyes linger for a moment longer before he sinks back into a steady seriousness.
“The spring of my junior year, my younger sister died in a car accident.” He says it simply, voice crystalline and free of emotion, but pain flashes across his face, his entire body flinching like the words cut him just to say.
Sympathy slices through me, chilling my blood. I am, quite simply, the world’s biggest dick, making jokes while he was getting ready to tell me something like that.
“Don’t give me that look, Kitten,” Cooper says, voice strained with an attempt at levity.
“What look?” I say, feeling tears well up in the corners of my eyes.
“That look that says you feel guilty for negging me two seconds ago.”
I open my mouth to protest, but he shakes his head, offering me a strained smile as he reaches out and places his hand over mine. I let him keep it there.
“You didn’t know, and I wouldn’t want you to hold your tongue on my behalf.
” The world pauses, shrinking down to where it’s just me and him, those gunpowder eyes of his seeing right through me.
There’s a pulse where our skin meets, and I can’t tell if it’s the jagged thump of my heartbeat or his. I’m not sure it matters.
With a slow movement, like I’m trying not to spook a skittish animal, I rotate my wrist until my palm rests against his, my fingers curling around his warm skin.
Cooper stares at our hands, teeth working against his lower lip.
He clears his throat and then continues.
“It was a Thursday night and she was hit by a drunk driver when she was heading home from practice. She was eighteen, a senior in high school, with a track scholarship to Columbia and a beautiful fucking life ahead of her.” I watch his throat work as he swallows, jaw tight and lines of tension etched around his eyes.
His breath rattles, ripping the air from my lungs like a moment of my discomfort can do anything to match his years’ worth.
“My world fell apart, Eva,” he continues, voice grating like sandpaper. “It fell apart in a way that’s hard to comprehend even now, let alone for a dumbass twenty-something-year-old who doesn’t have a clue. Like I said, this was the year before I met you, but that year, I was a wreck.”
Even feeling like an outsider with my step and half siblings, it would absolutely destroy me to lose one them.
I couldn’t imagine not seeing Serena’s smile or never hearing Derek’s laugh again.
I grip Cooper’s hand tighter, pulling his sad eyes up to mine.
I’m not sure what my expression looks like right now—probably some paltry, useless show of sadness that will never be enough—but whatever he sees there has his shoulders relaxing, his hand holding mine back with gentle strength.
“I had another younger sister at home who I still couldn’t talk to without breaking down or feeling anger over the sister I lost,” he says, keeping his voice low.
“My parents’ marriage fell apart, and they were fighting nonstop.
I was drinking and smoking a ton of weed and hating who I was and doing everything I could to dull myself into a husk.
Someone who could tell a joke or throw a good party that didn’t have to feel anything real. ”
His confession sits heavily between us, the air thick. I have the urge to look away, hide behind a veneer of competent but distant understanding instead of looking directly at the raw honesty he’s handing me. Run away so I don’t feel the urge to hand him something real in return.
“You met me at my worst, Eva,” he reiterates, keeping a hold of my hand even though my grip has gone slack, palm sweating. “I was dumb and devastated and I can’t take it back but I want to give you the context as to why. You didn’t deserve my mess, but I gave it to you anyway.”
I stare at him, emotions a mangled, pulpy knot in my throat. His cheeks turn red, eyes flicking down in sudden shyness.
“Do you… do you kind of see why I was the way I was?” he asks, a touch of desperation in his voice as if he needs my absolution. I’m not sure why he would. I was a blip in his timeline of tragedy. My feelings shouldn’t matter… They didn’t matter then.
“I understand,” I manage, voice rusty.
Cooper looks at me again, eyes roving over my face as he checks for my sincerity. Whatever he finds there makes him smile. “I really nailed this light and cheerful friendship hour, huh?” he says at last, pulling his hand away and taking a sip of his latte.
My fingers curl into a tight fist like they’re trying to hold on to the lingering heat of his skin, embed it into my own. I make a conscious effort to release my grip.
“Yeah, you’re really good at small talk.” I allow a sly smile to play across my face, no matter how fake it feels. “A damn court jester.”
Cooper laughs, the sound coursing through my chest like voltage, and it takes a concerted effort not to rub my palm over my heart.
“Next friendship hour I’ll make sure to do a vibe check and let you choose between a wine-and-whine or beer-and-queer so you have a better idea of what you’re getting yourself into. ”
“Don’t forget the third option,” I say, shooting him a playful look. One of his eyebrows arches up, enjoyment dancing across his features. “Dessert-and-hurt where we trauma dump over cheesecake and espresso martinis.”
Cooper laughs again, dimple highlighting his boyish grin. His hand darts across the table, grabbing mine and pumping our arms in an overzealous shake. “You, Eva Kitt, have got yourself a date.”