The color faded from Sloane’s face, bleak grief and fear exposed in her eyes.
“Whatever it is, you can’t do this to yourself.”
“No, Cooper.” Sloane aimed a razor-sharp glare at him, but her lower lip trembled. “You don’t understand. You can’t even begin to understand.”
He closed the distance between them. “So that’s what this is about? You won’t tell me because you think you know what it’s like to be me?”
“What it’s like to be a Cooper, you mean?” Sloane indicated the room with its uplit floors and rich furnishings. “If you don’t like working for your dad, then quit. You can change that. I can’t—” Her eyes widened for a second. “But apparently you aren’t concerned about the way your life is going or else you’d have stood up to him by now.”
His mouth fell open while she plugged her thumb drive into the computer as if nothing had happened.
“I need to take a walk.” He climbed the steps three at a time then burst through the door so forcefully it slammed against the wall. Which he hated because it was exactly what his father would have done.
He kept his head low, ignoring the people in the hallway, until he took the rear entrance into the greenhouse—a warm, misty sanctuary of glass and fragrant green and bright, jewel-colored vegetables.
Cooper must have had a target painted over the lapels of his blazer. Because Sloane knew exactly where to aim to slice him the deepest.
He filled his lungs and allowed the humid air to replace the anger and lingering frustration.
It was true that Sloane had witnessed an unedited version of his father running all over him that night at the bar. Real-life footage Cooper never let anyone see. Of course, she didn’t know the full story. The leverage his father had on him, the complicated push-pull that ensured he’d work two jobs until the day he died. The pain that drove his father’s ruthless tenacity—
Sloane.
Cooper had left her with his father.
He raced out of the greenhouse. A shortcut would get him to the pit through the instructor entrance on the main floor. When he opened the door, he saw his father standing over Sloane, his face purpled, fists balled at his sides.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She was indignant, unafraid as she shrugged past his father. “I think you’re getting your facts mixed up, Mr. Cooper. I don’t have designs on anyone. I’m only here because Marian asked for me, and Cooper needed my help with the restaurant.”
“Oh, I’m not delusional. I heard with my own ears that there’s something, probably a fat check, in it for you!” His voice rose another decibel. “My son—”
“Your son has more talent and courage in his pinky finger than you could ever have. That’s what you’re delusional about.”
Cooper swallowed hard. She was fighting for him. She believed in him.
“If you can’t see how online marketing can help J. Marian, then don’t hire us,” Sloane continued. “In the meantime I will do everything I can to make sure Cooper’s restaurant is successful.”
His father laughed, a low and foreboding sound. “That’s sweet and all. But I don’t trust a single word coming from you.”
“And why’s that? Because you think I’m out for money? I have plenty of money.”
No. Cooper recognized the sinister triumph in his father’s smile. With that first question, Sloane had all but doused herself with gasoline in the face of a lit match. His father definitely had some ammunition. And she’d all but locked and loaded it.
“Maybe I’ll ask Aaron Jacobsen’s parents how much I can trust you.”
“Aaron?” Sloane choked out the name as her posture seemed to deflate.
Sloane’s Achilles’ heel. This was it. But how on earth did his father know? And why was he using it against her?
“H-how do you know about Aaron?” She sank into a chair in the front row, looking like she was going to lose her breakfast.
“Hey!” Cooper, finally spurred into action, moved to shield her from his father’s view. “Back off. Have you lost your ever-loving mind?”
His father squared his shoulders. “You don’t know this girl from Eve.” He looked toward Sloane in disgust. “She’s like the rest of them—out to get what she wants.”
Cooper flexed his hands to restrain himself from physically attacking his father. Two years ago with a little alcohol in him, this situation would’ve, no doubt, ended a much different way.
“Don’t ever talk to her like that again,” Cooper commanded. “In fact, don’t ever talk to her again. If you have something to say, you can say it to me.”
Graham Sr. deflated, as if Cooper had actually punched him. He definitely wasn’t used to having someone stand up to him. Yet he recovered quickly, contempt radiating from him. “Do your research, son.”
“I like my chances just fine.”
“Suit yourself. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” His father started up the far aisle and disappeared through the doors. The slam of metal against frame echoed in the room.
Sloane released a shaky breath and buried her face in her hands.
She didn’t deserve this. She’d done nothing but help him. Nothing else mattered. Whatever it was, Cooper didn’t want to know. Not after witnessing what it cost her.
“I’m so sorry.” He knelt next to Sloane’s chair, gripping her elbows. “I don’t even know where that came from.”
Her lips moved with soundless words, eyes filled with an untold anguish. Then she burst out of her seat, nearly knocking him over, snatched her bag and started up the stairs.
“Sloane!” Cooper caught up to her in long strides. “Please don’t go.”
“No, Cooper.” Her voice echoed against the walls of the empty auditorium. “Your father’s right. Not about the money part or whatever he thinks he overheard, but—” Sloane’s face contorted. Angry, then defeated.
“You can tell me.”
“If I tell you about Aaron, I can never take it back.” She maneuvered out of his grip. “It will ruin everything.”
She had no idea. If she saw him the way he saw himself, through a tunnel made of destruction and empty bottles, she could never believe that.
“I can guarantee—” he gave her a sad smile “—your worst has nothing on mine.”
She shook her head; tears pooled in the corners of her eyes. “He was my best friend.” Her words seemed to tumble out by their own free will.
“And I killed him.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“WHAT—” COOPER CLEARED his throat. “What did you say?”
A sob escaped Sloane as she stumbled toward the door.
No. She had finally given him an inch and he wasn’t letting it go. He matched her steps until he was looking her square in the face. “I don’t believe for a minute you killed anyone.”
“It’s true.” She evaded his gaze. “Now you know.”
Cooper searched for the perfect response, but got nothing. He was sure about one thing, though: Sloane was no murderer.
“Let’s take a drive. Clear our heads.” He held the door as an invitation. “You don’t have to say a word, but there are a few things I need to clear up with you.”
She remained where she was, her jaw working as she deliberated.
“Please, Sloane. Just hear me out.”
She nodded and walked toward him with her head down. She might be reluctant, but at least she was going with him. At least she tucked her hand into the crook of his arm when he offered it to her.
Cooper sorted the events of his past into messy piles. He decided where to start as he navigated the Defender from the dimly lit garage into the full midmorning sun.
“There’s a reason my dad gave me so much trouble that night at the bar, Sloane. The same reason I didn
’t drink.” His voice was gravelly. He reached into his pocket then handed Sloane his wallet. “Look. In the first slot.”
She slipped out a large coin, gleaming black and blue. “‘To thine own self be true.’” She ran a fingernail over the Roman numeral two. “What is this, Cooper?”
“It’s a sobriety coin,” he said. “I haven’t had a drink in two years.”
She shifted, but remained silent.
The right words didn’t want to be found. “There’s, um, a reason I started drinking. Not that it’s a good excuse or anything, but—” Just spit it out. “I had a little sister, and she passed away.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her turn in his direction, looking at him for the first time since they’d gotten in the car.
“Her name was Jordan Marian Cooper—the J in J. Marian.” It had been so long since he’d talked about his sister that he’d underestimated how hard it would be, much heavier out loud than in his thoughts. Even after all the years.
Sloane’s hand, shaky and tentative, covered his. “What happened to her?” The little squeeze of her grip calmed him.
“She was diagnosed with leukemia when she was twelve—Owen and I were sixteen,” he said. “She fought it for about a year, and it went away. But it came back.”
“Wow, Cooper. I’m—I—”
Cooper stopped at a light and laced his fingers through Sloane’s. It’s going to be okay. Were the words meant for her or him? He gave her hand a light squeeze, then returned his to the steering wheel.
“You don’t need to feel sorry for me.”
“I didn’t want people to feel sorry for me, either,” Sloane said. “I didn’t feel like I deserved their pity. But I felt it everywhere I went. In the stares people seemed to think I didn’t see. In the cheerfulness they forced when they wanted to pretend everything was normal. That’s why I haven’t been back home.”
“That’s why I moved to Paris.” He paused. “And I’m about to show you another reason.”
“What?”
He turned right at the next intersection and eased between two cars at the curb. He swallowed hard as he gestured past Sloane. “Do you see that building? Where that man is?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
Several shops lined the street, and a man leaned against a brick wall under an awning that read Cleaners. He wore an apron and nursed a cigarette between his fingers. “That was Marianelli’s—the restaurant my family built before Jordan got sick. It had her last painting in it—this amazing mural that filled an entire wall. And I burned it down.”
“You...what?”
“Yep. It was right after she died, and I had so much to drink that I don’t remember it. I was angry and ended up passing out with the burners on.” He let his head fall to the steering wheel. “The firefighters pulled me out, but the restaurant was a total loss. All those memories with my sister.”
Sloane remained silent. He felt her hand find his again, and he lifted his head.
“That’s when my father decided I needed to go off the grid for a while and calm down before I could cause any more damage.” He straightened and shifted the Defender into gear. “I guess that’s one way to find out you like cooking. Maybe not the easiest.”
Sloane made a face, and Cooper could sense the pretense between them lifting like a curtain.
“So, how did you get past it?”
He checked for traffic and pulled onto the street. “I didn’t get past it. But I sure tried everything I could think of. Spoiler alert, nothing works.”
Sloane laughed, a short, bitter sound. “Yeah. You’ve got that right. But how are you so happy? Normal? Unless you have any unhealthy tics, disorders or something else I don’t know about.”
“I’m not normal.” A collection of faces spun through his mind.
His mother telling him he wasn’t to blame—although her eyes said something different—then picking him up from the airport and treating him like a king.
Jake and the hurt in his voice when Cooper blew him off for the last time only to welcome him in, no questions asked, when it was too difficult to stay sober.
Simone pushing him from her doorstep causing him to fall backward into the fountain after he’d crashed her dinner party totally wasted. The little nod of relief she gave when he showed up after midnight and, over a cup of her beloved tea, broke down for the first meaningful time since his sister’s death.
“I wouldn’t have made it without letting really good people in on what I was going through. People who pushed me to take responsibility for my actions, and to try to do right by those I hurt so I could live with no regrets. And grief counseling.”
“Grief counseling? Really?”
He nodded. “I started going to a group at a church once I got out of rehab. Talking with them helped me see I’m never going to truly be over it and that it’s okay. Knowing that is the first step to healing.”
Sloane looked unconvinced. “Hmm.”
“It’s hard to explain—it took me a long time to get it. Once I realized that it’s an active process you have to work through, I started having more good days than bad.”
“I see,” she said. But her jerky movements made it clear that she didn’t.
He pulled into a parking spot in front of Simone. “It’s like with the alcoholism.”
He saw her flinch at the word alcoholism.
“I have to guard myself against giving in to it because the desire to drink doesn’t go away,” he said as they crossed the street. “There are days when I’m more susceptible to it than others. But every day is different, you know?”
“So what happens when you have a bad day?”
Cooper unlocked the front door and let her in ahead of him. “Well, it’s a cycle. For me, some kind of stress or memory leads to the craving. I tell myself I can have just one drink—that I can say no anytime I want. But I can’t. One drink leads to another and I regret it. Then it’s back to some kind of stress or memory because of my regret.” He flipped the light switch in the dining room, throwing his keys on a table next to a mound of paperwork that was waiting to be signed and faxed.
“So I try to break that cycle in a healthy way. Talk to someone I can trust. Go play basketball with Owen. Lock myself in the kitchen with some loud music and make a bunch of bread.”
“Sounds familiar.” Her tone was dull as she sank into a chair. “That must be nice for you. I can run for hours—as you noticed the other night—but it does me about as much good as a Band-Aid on a broken leg. That feeling that I’m half crushed in the car...it never goes away.”
Cooper took the chair across from her and leaned forward. “You can’t outrun the pain, Sloane. Recovery isn’t a sprint, and it’s not even a marathon. It’s the movement you make every day.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “Even if you only crawl.”
When he opened his eyes, Sloane was staring at the picture of Simone. “Do you ever miss her?”
“All the time.” He cleared his throat. “I wish she could see all of this. But we had plenty of time to say goodbye. We knew it was coming.”
A tear slid down her face, her gaze still on the portrait. “I didn’t get that chance.”
“If you’re ready to tell me about it, I’m all ears.”
Sloane swiped at her cheek. “Why don’t you ask your father? He seems to know everything.”
“My father doesn’t know anything.” Cooper scowled. “He’s just—I don’t know what he’s doing.”
She rested her chin on the table and picked at the wood. “He overheard me tell your mom something on the night of the soft opening—which explains the terrible look he gave me. I’m pretty sure he thinks I have a devious plan to get VisibilityNet a huge contract with you.” She blew a stray stand of hair out of her eyes and sat up. “I know they’d love it, but I c
ouldn’t care less about that.”
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know you can’t wait to be done with us, but why, Sloane?” He was flirting with the line between persistence and overstepping his boundaries. But he was sure the honesty would set her free. And he so wanted to be that outlet for her, to witness that breakthrough. “Tell me what happened.”
Sloane squinted at him, calculating. “Chicken.” She stood abruptly and hobbled in the direction of the kitchen. “I’m gonna need some chicken.”
* * *
“I’M STILL THINKING. Just give me a minute.” Sloane kept her voice steady despite the tears spilling down her cheeks as she chopped a sweet onion into tiny, uniform pieces.
Cooper set a bundle wrapped in butcher paper on the cutting board, next to a pile of ingredients waiting to be prepped. “Take your time. Anything I can do to help?” He sank onto a stool opposite her. His focus was so intense she could almost feel it wrapped around her.
“No.” She picked a piece of onion skin from the cutting board and flicked it into the stock pot. “Aaron liked his onions chopped really finely, almost like a paste so he couldn’t tell they were there.”
“Even when they’re cooked down?” Cooper asked as she added a few tablespoons of butter to the heated pot with a healthy drizzle of olive oil.
“Even cooked down.”
The edges of the butter melted into tiny bubbles against the cast iron. Sloane smashed two garlic cloves with the flat of the knife then peeled off the skin. “His mom always added lots of garlic, too. She made this for us when we got sick.”
It was kind of freeing to talk about Aaron with someone, even if it was just about how he liked his food while she was cooking his favorite meal. Even if talking about him in the past tense was still odd and unnatural. Even if it was with a man she’d been working with for weeks but only really knew today.
Sloane worked in silence for a few minutes, stealing glances at Cooper. He leaned forward, chin in his hand. Still studying her. Still waiting patiently for her to say something. But he gave her room to breathe even though she knew he was dying to hear her story.
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