by Kennedy Fox
Squeezing his eyes shut, he pressed his thumb and forefinger there, shaking his head. “Look,” he breathed, forcing himself to meet her eyes as he ripped off the Band-Aid and got this over with so they could both move on. “The sex is fantastic. There’s no denyin’ that.”
Her eyebrows hit her hairline even as scarlet brushed her cheeks. “Well… That’s blunt. And an understatement.”
“I don’t know if this kind of chemistry is normal for you, but it’s not for me.”
She shook her head, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Me neither,” she answered softly.
Christ, why did that make what he had to do even worse?
“Sex still isn’t enough to build a relationship on, though.”
“Who said anything about a relationship?”
“C’mon, Sadie. You and I both know you wouldn’t be happy with anything less than that.”
When her only response was to roll her lips between her teeth, he knew he had his answer. And he didn’t realize until right then just how much he’d hoped for her denial, if only to stay with her a little longer.
He leaned forward, belatedly wishing he hadn’t stood on the other side of the desk. If this was going to be the last time he had the chance to touch her, he wanted to touch her. Wanted to brush the hair away from her face, run his thumb over her lower lip, and memorize the texture. Wanted to lick his way inside and taste her once more.
“I like you, firecracker. A lot. I like how you challenge me and how you don’t put up with anything from me. I like how you mouth off just for my reaction. And it’s because of how much I like you that I think we should stop whatever this is between us before it goes too far. Settle into friendship now that you don’t hate my guts anymore.”
She pursed her lips as she watched him, then nodded. “Ah, lookin’ out for me, are you? Since I obviously can’t be trusted to make that decision on my own?”
Cole blew out a heavy sigh and shook his head. “You know that’s not what I’m sayin’. If there’s anyone who can handle themselves, it’s you. But you can’t deny how different we are. You’ve told me more times than I can remember how much you believe in that happy ending, and how much you want it.” He met her eyes, ignoring the tightness in his chest, the irritating twist of his stomach. “I’m just not the guy to give it to you.”
Chapter Thirteen
Well, Sadie certainly hadn’t seen that plot twist coming. A permanent bachelor, the forever fuck buddy, growing a conscience and breaking things off before she got attached? Ha. Well, the joke was on him, because she was already attached. She had no idea when the hell that had happened in the mere week they’d spent together, but apparently it had.
But, actually, if she were honest with herself, she’d admit she’d been attached for quite some time. Since well before Cole had booked his stay at the inn. Well before their explosive photo session with Nat. Well before their first kiss or the first time they’d slept together. Well before he’d helped her at the inn, before they’d strolled the streets of Havenbrook together, and before their moonlit carriage ride.
She hadn’t known what to expect when she fell in love for the first time, but she’d assumed it’d be gradual. A slow build into comfort and familiarity rather than the sudden drop of a roller coaster.
She’d fallen for Cole as a mixture of both. Felt a spark of connection the first time their eyes had met from across the Square, and even more so when they’d officially met, though she’d buried that down deep. Shoved it in the recesses of her mind and locked it up tight, never to be addressed again. But the trouble with love was it seeped out from every crack and crevice. Bled into your very soul, whether you wanted it to or not.
Somewhere in her subconscious, she must have known, must have realized exactly what was bound to happen between her and Cole. Which was why she’d flipped the switch to hate so very easily in the months and years following Elise’s divorce.
And now, look where that had gotten her.
“What’s with your face?” Elise asked from her perch on the sofa in the Starlight’s main gathering space.
It was Christmas Eve, but when you managed an inn for a living, you didn’t get days off. So, for the past three years, with their parents in Florida, they’d spent their evening in front of the fireplace, splayed out on the sofa and bingeing Gilmore Girls’ Christmas episodes on the small laptop propped between them. Tomorrow, their aunt, Caroline Haven, would bring them a couple plates of home-cooked deliciousness, and Sadie would bake an apple pie. But for tonight, they’d gorge themselves on appetizers, get tipsy on hot buttered rum, and finally stumble into the cottage after midnight, all whispers and giggles. They’d fall into bed and snuggle up together exactly how they’d slept for the first ten years of their lives.
“This is just my face.” Sadie didn’t bother to take her gaze off the current episode, “Women of Questionable Morals.”
Because, well, Elise would be able to tell she was lying. And, well, Sadie hadn’t told her sister about the breakup with Cole—if that was what you could even call it. Or, actually, about anything at all to do with Cole.
“Um, hello? We have the same face, and that is not my face.” Elise sipped from her hot buttered rum and eyed Sadie over the rim of the mug. “So, what is it? You and Cole stop seein’ each other?”
Sadie choked on absolutely nothing and proceeded to cough until tears streamed down her face and her sister offered her a halfhearted back-slap. Once she’d caught her breath, she managed a broken, “’Scuse me?”
Elise rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. You’re not that stealthy. I’m just shocked you finally let it happen, considerin’ the stick permanently lodged up your ass.”
“First of all, I do not have a stick permanently lodged up my ass. One of us has to be the responsible one, and you already called dibs on being the flaky one.” When her sister only offered a shrug, Sadie continued, “And second, what you do mean ‘finally let it happen’?”
“Your obsession with him, obviously.”
Sadie huffed out an indignant sound. “I’m not obsessed with him.”
“Fine then, whatever you wanna call bein’ overly aware of his every move and havin’ an intense reaction to absolutely anything he did at all, even breathe.”
“Oh yeah? Since when?” And by that, she meant since when had her sister been paying so much damn attention to what she did with regard to Cole?
“I don’t know… When did he move in to town?” she said, as blandly as she’d comment on the weather forecast.
Sadie gasped. “You are not tryin’ to say I’ve”—she refused to utter any variation of the word obsession in the same sentence as Cole—“been interested in Cole for more than three years.”
“I’m not tryin’ to do anything. I just am.” Elise ran her gaze over Sadie from head to toe and back again, her lips twisted up in a smirk. “And three years, huh? Amazin’ how you knew that right off the top of your head.”
“I knew it because it was right around the time of your divorce, idiot.” Ah yes, the sisterly love coming out right on time for the holiday. Sadie was surprised they’d made it past ten, actually. “Or have you forgotten about that and the role Cole had in it?”
This time, when Elise turned her gaze on Sadie, she brought her whole body along for the ride, twisting on her cushion so they could face each other, a confused pinch to her brows. “Wait… Does your whole ridiculous fake-hate thing have to do with the divorce?”
“It’s not fake,” she said adamantly, even though she was lying through her teeth. “And obviously.”
“But…but…why? I didn’t get divorced from Cole. He wasn’t the jackass who cheated on me and then stole Great-Grandma’s antiques, only to shove them in a storage unit just so I couldn’t have ’em.”
“Well, no, but he was the jackass who made all that happen for Alec.”
Elise rolled her eyes. “That’s his job, Sadie. If a surgeon lost a patient on the operatin’ table, would you call t
hem a murderer?”
“Obviously not. You’re bein’ dramatic. That’s not at all the same thing.”
She lifted a single shoulder. “Whatever. I just think you hatin’ on him for doin’ his job is stupid, is all. And not worth your happiness.”
“Who said I was happy?”
Elise breathed out a laugh and shook her head. “Twin, remember? I may not be around all the time to witness your every move, but I do see you every day. And there’s no denyin’ you’ve been less stick-assy the past few weeks.”
“That’s not a word,” Sadie mumbled, feeling unsettled. Not because of what her sister said, but because it was true. She’d been more relaxed, more laid-back, and definitely happier since her first kiss with Cole. “Besides, it doesn’t matter anyway. He called it off. Said we’d never work. He’s right.” She shrugged and forced out a laugh even as her eyes filled. “Who’s ever heard of a wedding planner and a divorce attorney finding their happily ever after together anyway?”
“It could happen,” Elise said softly.
“No, I really don’t think it could. He’s not my forever. He’s not anyone’s forever. He doesn’t want to be.”
Elise pressed her foot into Sadie’s thigh—the most affection her sister would likely show—and Sadie pretended that was enough. That she was fine, sitting there on Christmas Eve, the man her heart had somehow attached itself to sleeping right down the hall, even when it felt like everything she’d ever wanted was slipping through her fingers. And she had no idea how to stop it.
Cole had no fucking idea how one tiny firecracker of a woman could have demolished him so completely in such a short amount of time. Yet there he was, driving thirty miles to Forest Falls an hour before midnight on New Year’s Eve, just so he wasn’t tempted to show up at the ball and kiss Sadie despite knowing better.
He’d tried forcing her out of his mind in the week since he’d moved out of Starlight Haven and back to his newly remodeled house. A place that somehow, over the course of a month, had turned sterile and cold. It hadn’t been until his third day home that he’d realized it wasn’t the surroundings that were so cold, but rather the lack of Sadie in them.
Blowing out a frustrated breath, he pulled up in front of his momma’s and sister’s houses, seeing the lights on in Carly’s, and headed that way. He knocked twice and opened the door without waiting for an answer, stepping over the threshold and listening for sounds from inside.
After mere seconds, his sister popped her head around the corner, baseball bat in her hand and a murderous expression on her face. As soon as she saw him, she dropped the weapon to her side, her eyebrows flying up her forehead as she glanced behind him and then met his gaze with a furrowed brow. “Cole? What’re you doin’ here so late?”
“My baby’s home?” his momma called from the kitchen before joining Carly, a smile sweeping across her face as soon as she saw Cole.
She held her arms open and strode toward him, happiness written all over her beautiful face. In her midfifties, Charlotte Donovan was still stunning, her kindness shining through in her eyes and her smile, her blond hair now leaning more toward gray.
He bent down and wrapped his arms around her, breathing in her familiar scent. “Hey, Momma.”
She pulled back, holding him at arm’s length as she frowned up at him. “What’s that tone all about?”
He forced out a laugh and shook his head. “I said two words to you. How could you infer a tone from that?”
“A momma knows these things.”
“Your sister can tell too,” Carly said with a pointed stare.
He followed them into the kitchen, where it looked like they’d had a party based on the plethora of snacks spread across the counter. “What the hell happened in here?”
“Better question,” his sister said, looking at him with a raised eyebrow, “is why are you here this late on New Year’s Eve—without Sadie, no less.”
He ignored the sharp stab in his gut at her name and settled into a chair at the dining room table. “How do you even remember her name? You met her for five minutes.”
“It may only have been five minutes, but it was long enough for her to tell me about it,” his mom said.
“Great,” he grumbled. “Thanks for that. You always were a snitch.”
Carly laughed without shame and sat down in the chair across from him, their mom taking a seat at the head of the table. “Maybe so, but I’m not wrong, am I?”
“Not wrong about what?”
“You like her. More than like her.”
Yeah, he did. He’d spent the better portion of his time away from her denying it, but he figured there wasn’t a point to that anymore.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m not the kind of man she’s lookin’ for.”
“Well, I don’t believe that for a second. And if it’s true, you don’t want her anyway,” his mom said, a sharp edge to her voice.
Carly rolled her eyes. “It’s not true. She’s totally and completely into him. I saw it with my own eyes. He’s just being an idiot. And a stubborn ass.”
“I’m so glad I decided to make the drive out here to ring in the new year with you both,” he said dryly.
His sister laughed. “No, you’re not. Which begs the question, why did you come? How’d you screw it up with her?”
“I didn’t screw it up. I did what I needed to and called it off.”
“Why the hell would you do that?”
He sighed and braced his elbows on the table, scrubbing his hands over his face. “Not that it’s any of your business, but we’re too different. I can’t give her what she needs.”
“And what is it that she needs? Someone who’ll care for her? Protect her and cherish her? Who’ll laugh with her and challenge her?” she pressed. “Are you tellin’ me you don’t do any of those things?”
He opened his mouth to disagree before snapping it shut.
“That’s what I thought,” his sister said, not a little smug.
“I’ve already done this before, and we all know how well that worked out.” Not only had he lost his wife, but he’d lost his best friend. The two relationships he’d thought he could count on.
His mom reached over and patted his hand. “Honey, you’ve done it before, yes. But you were too young, and you did it with the wrong person. We all knew it. Hell, you probably knew it too, but you ignored it, because you thought bein’ together as long as y’all had been meant you needed to take that next step. You proposed out of obligation.” She lifted her eyebrows in a tell me I’m wrong gesture, and when he didn’t say anything, she continued, “From what Carly told me, this thing with Sadie is new. And if you’re feelin’ like this about her after this short of a time, maybe that’s something to think about, hmm?”
“It doesn’t change the fact that I made a mistake once. I don’t want to go down that road again.”
His mom made a gruff sound in her throat and shook her head. “It’s your life, and you can do what you want with it. I just don’t wanna see you makin’ a mistake. You’re a different man than you were when you proposed right out of high school. You grew and changed, but she didn’t. And that’s okay. Not everybody’s meant to stay together forever, but that doesn’t mean you can’t try again with someone else. I don’t want you to throw away something that makes you happy just because you’re stuck livin’ in the past.”
He didn’t know why it took those words from his mom to snap him out of it and make him see reason, but it was as if she’d held a mirror in front of his face and made him open his eyes. He’d been looking at the past, focusing on what his life had been and all the mistakes he didn’t want to repeat instead of looking to the future with Sadie. He didn’t care how little time it’d taken for him to get to this point. He’d spent years before, when it all had amounted to nothing in the end.
In his bones, he knew Sadie was right for him. He only hoped he hadn’t fucked up too much for her to give him another chance. He glanced down at his watch, crin
ging at the late hour and mentally calculating the drive back to Havenbrook.
“I gotta go,” he said, bending to kiss his mom and sister on their cheeks.
“Nice work, Momma,” Carly said, high-fiving their mom as Cole strode toward the front door. “I thought for sure it’d take a couple conversations before he pulled his head out of his ass.”
His head was definitely out of his ass now. He just hoped he could make it to Sadie before the ball dropped at midnight.
Chapter Fourteen
Cole didn’t even want to think about how many traffic laws he broke speeding back to Havenbrook, but he didn’t care if it cost him a thousand dollars in fines so long as he made it to Sadie in time. In an ideal situation, he would’ve had time to swing by his house. Put on a suit and plead his case to her in the way she deserved. Unfortunately, this wasn’t an ideal situation, and he was racing against the clock, the time ticking too close to midnight for his comfort. So, he bypassed his home and sped straight to the historic center where they were holding this year’s ball, hoping no one would still be taking tickets this late in the party.
He threw his car into park in the middle of a fire lane and raced up the front steps and into the building, not stopping until he crashed through the double doors of the event hall. The space was crowded, filled with Havenbrook residents in their finest. This year’s theme was A Masked Affair, so everyone inside wore one, cloaking half their faces.
Not that it mattered—Cole was able to spot Sadie from across the room. Even if it weren’t for her vibrant red hair spilling down around her face, he’d still be able to find her. He hummed whenever they were in the vicinity of each other, his body aware of her every move. He’d ignored it for so long, pushed it out of his mind as if that were all it would take to forget about her. But now that he’d accepted it, his body came alive in her presence.