Chapter Seventeen
COLE WATCHED LEESA talking with his father on the dock. They’d come back to the marina after she’d cried all her tears and she’d tried to reassure him that this wasn’t goodbye. Although he knew she couldn’t stand behind that because even she didn’t know what she was looking for back in Towson. She’d lived there her whole life. All of her memories of her father, her childhood, and her college years were tied up in the town where one act of betrayal had turned her life upside down. What if she went back and, as he hoped she would, she found everything she was looking for and then decided to stay? He couldn’t blame her for that. If anyone understood the significance of memories and family, he did.
The truth was, he’d been fooling himself these last few days. She’d been honest from the start, never committing to remaining in Peaceful Harbor. He’d known that Leesa was unsettled, but he hadn’t realized the extent of her turmoil. She obviously wasn’t used to anyone having her back or taking care of her the way he wanted to. He got that, especially since her asshole ex had left her right when she’d needed him most. But he wasn’t that guy, and he would do whatever it took to prove that to her. What worried him most wasn’t whether someone would bring up her past and they’d have to deal with it. Hell, if it were up to him, he’d call a town meeting, get it out in the open, and deal with it once and for all. Of course, that would be possible only if there were such things as town meetings. But life wasn’t that simple. Life was full of what-ifs and hidden obstacles, like what Elsie was facing with her family. What worried him most was the idea of Leesa going back to her accuser’s family and whoever else she felt she had to clear the air with without him standing beside her, supporting her in any way she needed and in all the ways she deserved.
He never realized that what they’d experienced out on their magical boat ride was the calm before the storm. When they’d arrived back at the marina, Leesa had gone directly to his father, who was working on the boat with his brothers. They’d taken a walk down the dock and were just now, forty minutes later, heading back. Cole had told Sam and Nate what was going on, and then he’d walked off the boat and had been pacing the dock ever since, trying to figure out how she’d ever find closure with something like this.
He felt Sam’s and Nate’s presence behind him before he heard them. Nate’s hand landed on his shoulder, heavy and supportive. “You okay?”
He turned and faced his brothers’ serious gazes. Nate had suffered far greater losses than what Cole was facing. His brother had sent his best friend on the assignment that had cost him his life. What kind of strength did it take to pull through that? Leesa’s leaving tore him to shreds. And what was worse was that she wanted to handle it alone. She’d already had to handle enough alone. As much as he admired her strength, he hated not going with her, protecting her, being there for whatever she needed.
“Yeah. It’s not me I’m worried about. She needs to do this. I get it. I just can’t figure out what kind of closure she’s going to find, and I’m worried about her.” He glanced over his shoulder just as his father embraced Leesa, and he felt his heart swell with love for them both.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that finding peace has nothing to do with making sense of something. If you ask me,” Nate said, “closure is different for everyone. Look at me and Jewel. Jewel needed to learn to let her younger brother and sisters grow up without micromanaging them, while I needed to figure out how to move past my part in Rick’s death. If you had asked me how I was going to do it, I wouldn’t have seen a way. I think Leesa probably doesn’t know, either.”
“I can’t imagine that any of what you just said is going to help Cole.” Sam’s eyes narrowed as he crossed his thick arms over his chest. “How long’s she going for?”
“I don’t know,” Cole said, realizing that she could be gone for weeks. She hadn’t given him any indication of how long she was thinking of going or even whether she was coming back. “I assume as long as it takes. She’s worried about the kid who accused her.” Thinking about the unfairness of what she was going through and how she didn’t deserve any of it, he said, “What I’d like to know is how does someone as good as Leesa get kicked in the ass and put through hell while people who cheat and lie never have to deal with shit.”
“You know what Tempe would say,” Sam said. “This is her ‘test of fortitude.’”
“Spoken like a person who has never had to deal with something as life changing as this.” As soon as the words left his mouth Cole felt guilty, because Tempe helped people every day of her life. She saw the ugliest of cases from the hospital—young kids in hospice whom she tried to help manage their discomfort through music. She knew exactly how life changing this was for Leesa.
“I don’t mean that. I’m just pissed.” Cole ran a hand through his hair as he told his brothers the truth. “I feel useless. And like a total asshole because part of me wishes the kid were an adult so I could beat the shit out of him.”
Sam scoffed. “That’s normal, dude. I think Nate and I feel the same way.”
“I just can’t help but think that if she comes back, she’ll come back in worse shape after being back in a town where her ex treated her like she didn’t matter and the kid she helped betrayed her.” He stopped pacing and said, “What I really want is to go with her and be right by her side as she does whatever she needs to.”
“So do it,” Sam suggested. “Jon’ll cover your patients.”
“I’m not worried about my patients. Leesa said she has to do this alone.”
“Shit, all girls say that. But they don’t mean it.” Sam rubbed the scruff on his chin. “They need men to pull them through the hard stuff.”
Cole shook his head. “Dude, you’ve got a lot to learn about women. There’s a huge difference between a woman needing a man to take care of her issues and a woman determined enough to prove herself.” And even though he knew Leesa was the latter, and he respected the hell out of her for it, that didn’t mean part of him didn’t wish she needed him to be right there with her.
***
LATER THAT AFTERNOON Tegan sat on the edge of Leesa’s bed, watching her pack. “I can’t believe you’re going back. You seemed really happy here.”
“I am happy here.” She shoved a pair of jeans into her suitcase. “But despite needing to go figure this stuff out, I’ve mooched off of you for too long already.”
“Hardly. What about Dr. Oh-So-Orgasmic Braden?” Tegan’s words were teasing, but her tone was semiserious. “You know, it’s dangerous to leave such a cute doc all alone. What if I break my ankle again? He might fall for a damsel in distress.”
Leesa threw a pillow at her. “You’d never hit on him. Besides, his ex seems to be all up in his stuff right now. If anyone will see this as an opportunity, it’s her.”
“Doesn’t that worry you?” Tegan asked.
She sat down beside her friend and sighed. “After having my entire life ripped out from under me by a twelve-year-old’s rebellion, or heartbreak, or whatever the hell it was, I’ve learned that I can’t control what other people do. Worrying about it won’t stop it from happening. I’m worried about Cole, but not about him finding another woman. I don’t even know if our being together is the right thing for him. It feels right to me. I mean, I never once felt for Chris what I feel for Cole after just a few days. We’re both already in so deep, and I worry that his being with me just puts him in harm’s way. I would never forgive myself if he had to deal with explaining my background to his patients or his friends, or…” She looked away, trying to stave off tears.
“Annalise Avalon, you’re an incredibly talented, giving person, and Cole sees that. He told you that he’d support your relationship no matter what. Maybe you should just accept that and move forward.”
“That’s just it. I can’t. I thought I could, but it turns out that pretending everything I went through never happened isn’t easy. I want to go back and deal with it. I feel like I’ve left an
open jar of snakes and they’re creeping out all over the place, just waiting for the right moment to strike. I need to close that jar once and for all.”
“If you want to go back, why do you look so sad?” Tegan reached for her hand.
“Because.” Her eyes dampened despite her best efforts to keep her emotions in check. “I know I have to do this. For my own sanity and for any future I hope to have with Cole or anyone else. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. I’m throwing myself to the wolves, and I don’t know what to expect, or how long I’ll be gone, or...” She swiped at her tears.
“Aw, Annalise,” Tegan said as she hugged her. “I really think you should reconsider staying here, or let me or Cole go with you so you’re not alone. Or just stay here,” she repeated. “My vote is definitely stay here. No one is making you go.”
Leesa wiped her tears and drew her shoulders back, gathering her courage yet again. “No one has to make me go, Teg. I could no sooner turn my back on Andy than I could look the other way for any of my students.”
“That’s really selfless of you, considering the kid slaughtered your life.”
“No, it’s actually very selfish of me. I’m doing this for me. I need to make sure he’s okay because I have a feeling that’s the only way I can be okay.”
Later that evening, Leesa packed up her car and drove over to Cole’s house. It was humid and the air felt heavy—or maybe that was just her heart.
She followed the sounds of his guitar down to the beach and found him sitting by the water, strumming a melancholy tune.
“Hey,” she said as she sank to the cool sand beside him.
He set the guitar down and pulled her in for a kiss. “Hi, angel. You know, before you came into my life, it had been ages since I’d played the guitar.”
The comment was so far from what she’d expected to talk about that it took her a second to process it.
“Oh, well, you play so nicely. I’m glad you’re playing again.”
“I had forgotten how much emotion playing stirs up. I was inside the house, and even though you’ve only spent a few nights here, it felt empty without you around. Playing the guitar made me feel closer to you.”
They sat in comfortable silence, as the waves rolled gently in, swishing loudly against the shore, then rolling gracefully back out. Cole laced their fingers together and brought hers to his lips, kissing the back of her hand as he’d done so many times before that she’d memorized the feel of his soft lips pressed to them and the minute scratching of his upper lip against her skin.
“I wish you’d let me go with you. I hate the thought of you going back alone.”
His eyes were so serious and his voice was so tender that she felt herself wavering about leaving him at all. She wanted to get past whatever her mind was having trouble letting go of, even if she couldn’t quite grasp what that was. She needed to try.
“I don’t want you tangled up in my mess.” She leaned her head on his shoulder. “Wouldn’t it be easier for you to get involved with a normal girl who doesn’t have eight hundred pounds of baggage on her back?”
He tipped her chin toward him and kissed her softly. “Angel, you’re better than normal, whatever normal means. You’re spectacular. And there’s no creature, real or imagined, that could scare me away.” He kissed her again, and she felt herself melting into their closeness. “Open your eyes,” he whispered. “Look at me so I know you hear me.”
She did.
“I don’t want someone else. I feel like I’ve waited my whole life to meet you. When you’re ready, I’ll be here, whether it takes a day, a week, or a year.”
She touched her forehead to his and closed her eyes again before asking, “You’re not upset with me for wanting to go back?”
“I support whatever you need to feel safe. And if you think you’ll find the answers there, then I support the trip.”
He gathered her in close, and she wondered what she’d done to get lucky enough to have found such a supportive man. Listening to the steady beat of his heart, breathing in his now familiar scent, her throat thickened. Was she really going to leave him behind? Did she have the strength to get up and go? To drive the few hours to Towson and face what she’d run from? She knew she had to. Staying here and pretending everything was okay had seemed like an option, when really, it was only a bandage on a wound too deep to ignore.
“I’ll miss you,” she finally managed.
“I’ll miss you, too.” He kissed her again and held her gaze as he cupped her cheeks in his warm hands. “Whatever happens, know that I’m here, and my family is here. Tegan’s here. We’re all here for you, and…” He paused, searching her eyes as his brows drew together. The warmth in his eyes grew stormy. “Damn it, Leesa. I wish you’d let me be there with you. For you. It doesn’t make you any less determined if you let me be there to support you, and saying ‘I’m here for you’ doesn’t give you arms to walk into at the end of the day. It doesn’t allow me to stand up for you if you need me to, or to give an icy stare to someone who looks at you the wrong way.”
She nearly lost her resolve right then. She’d never been with a man who was willing to fight for her, and she didn’t want to lose him. But she knew, even though her heart was swelling and aching in alternating beats, that she had to do this alone. The only way to keep a sob from breaking free was to try to tease herself out of the emotion.
“Aw, my alpha boyfriend wants to get all tough and protective.”
“I’m serious, Leese. How am I supposed to get through each day knowing you’re facing everything you fear most?” He caressed her cheek and slid his fingers into her hair, holding tight. “I don’t want to suffocate you. Okay, maybe I do.” He smiled.
“Your patients need you, and your partner doesn’t need your extra caseload.”
“Let me worry about that,” he insisted.
She shook her head. “You think you can handle it, but you weren’t there. You have no idea what it’s like to face the types of looks I faced. As bad as it was that Chris left me, I can’t really blame him. That’s not something I want you to see, Cole. You know me as Leesa Avalon, a waitress with a past. Let me remain that person in your mind until I can be Annalise Avalon, a woman without any labels. Let me clear my name and then you can decide if this is what you want.” As she said it, she realized that was exactly what she needed.
“Annalise. Leesa. You can be anyone you want to be. I just wish being here with me was enough.”
“It is enough.” She clutched his hand, but she knew her claim wasn’t true. Now that her need had clarified itself in her mind, she needed that, too. Maybe even more, so that she was starting from a place of stability rather than a place of escape.
Cole must have sensed her lack of faith in her words, too, because he rose to his feet and reached for her hand. He gathered her in close, to the place she fit so well. The place that had somehow felt like home, and as they walked toward her car, he said the words that nearly brought her to her knees.
“Angel, when being here with me is enough, you won’t need to leave.”
Chapter Eighteen
LEESA STOOD ON the sleepy street where she’d grown up, looking at the small, bungalow-style home she and her father had shared. It was a funky little house with a roofline more typical of the Dutch style than of bungalows. A wide peak rose above the front door and the bay window to the right of it. The left side of the house was shrouded by bushes and a pine tree that shadowed her second-floor bedroom window. The other bedroom window sat high in the peak, not quite centered. She took in the neatly trimmed yard—maintained by a lawn service while she was away.
Away. Boy did that sound strange in her head. She hadn’t even gone away to college, having attended Towson State. She’d never strayed far from her hometown until she’d felt pushed out. She opened the trunk of her car, retrieved her suitcases, and lugged them up the front walk, the familiar cracks in the sidewalk bringing with them a hint of familiarity.
She i
nhaled the scent of pine, mulch, and home and crinkled her nose. The scents smelled funny. Had she already gotten used to smelling the sea in every breath? Was the air here thicker, more polluted? Or was that just her heart tugging her back toward Cole?
She tried to brush off the thought as she pushed open the front door and stepped onto the worn and scuffed hardwood floors. The same floors she’d used as dance floors for her Barbies. The floors she used to curl up on in front of the fireplace while her father read to her. The floors she’d crossed in her first pair of high heels. The floors her father had taught her to dance on. Her heart squeezed at the memory. She had too many father-daughter memories to count. Half the time, while her friends were out testing their newfound hormones in high school, she’d been home playing games and watching old movies with her father. How could she leave this all behind?
Guilt threaded around her as she set her bags by the door and walked through the hall, trying to ignore the way the house felt like a shell, with no heartbeat keeping it alive. She walked through the living room, her eyes skirting over the wall of books surrounding the tiny fireplace. She hadn’t changed much after her father had passed away, keeping the same furniture that was permanently molded to his middle-aged frame. She picked up a pillow and closed her eyes as she brought it to her nose, inhaling deeply. She didn’t expect to still smell her father’s scent. She could barely conjure up his voice any longer without listening to the sole voicemail she’d saved on her phone, but still, she tried. She inhaled two, three times, smelling nothing but old fabric.
Setting the rust-colored pillow back in place, she ran her finger along the bookshelves, eyeing the titles. Her father was an avid reader and had enjoyed reading everything from Stephen King to self-help books and anything in between. He wasn’t a well-educated man, but he was brilliantly savvy and intelligent in ways that couldn’t be learned in a classroom. As an insurance salesman for twenty years and a manager for six before he became too ill to work, he could negotiate with the best of them and his work ethic was unparalleled by most men. Well, except Cole. He seemed to put as much into his work as he does into his family and…and me.
Surrender My Love (Love in Bloom: The Bradens): Cole Braden Page 17