by Cassie Cross
“I’m gonna go ahead and bow out of this,” Tristan said, grinning as he leaned back in his chair. “I’m the very last person who should be giving anyone relationship advice.”
“Very true,” Cole replied, clinking the neck of his bottle against Tristan’s.
Cole thought maybe his father would speak up, but he didn’t. Instead, surprisingly, it was his brother.
“Just keep her happy,” Scott said, shrugging, like that was the most obvious answer in the world. “If she does whatever she can to keep you happy and you do the same, and you compromise over the things you’re both unhappy about, then what else is there?”
Cole pondered that for a moment. Wasn’t that what he had been doing? Putting Abby’s happiness and well-being before his own? He already planned on doing exactly that for the rest of his life. It was then that he began to realize that he might not need as much advice as he thought he did.
It was then that Jack’s phone rang, the shrill ringtone cutting through the calming crash of the surf behind them. Jack looked at the screen, then stood. “Sorry, I have to take this.” He pressed a button and brought the phone to his ear, then did something he’d been doing for quite a long time. He walked away from his family.
Whenever the familiar bitterness Cole felt towards Jack welled up in his chest, Cole always did his best to tamp it down. It seemed wrong to be angry with his father for putting his business first, when that business had provided Cole and his brother with the kind of lives and privilege that other people could only dream of. He and Scott had never wanted for anything, except for a father.
As if his brother knew exactly what he was thinking, Scott stood, and hung the tongs on the side of the grill. “Another piece of advice,” he said, tipping his beer in the direction their father had just walked off in. “Don’t do that, okay? Don’t let frivolous, material shit take you away from the things that really matter in life. Spend time with Abby, with your kids. Don’t let anything else in life dictate how much time you spend with them.” He walked over to where Cole was sitting, and patted him on the shoulder.
“Where are you going?” Tristan said, an exaggerated note of panic in his voice. “Those steaks I bought for dinner are things that really matter in life, and they need to spend some time on that grill, grill master.”
The corners of Scott’s mouth quirked up into a half smile. “I’ll be back to show you how the master does it, Blackwell. First I’m going to go see my wife and daughter.”
Tristan let out a small laugh as he nodded.
Cole sighed, realizing that if he needed someone to look up to as he entered this new phase in his life, it should be his brother. After all, Scott’s always been the first person Cole turned to when he needed advice. Hell, he was the one who told him to get his shit together where Abby was concerned. Cole had only ever thought about his future family in abstract terms; he’d have a wife, a few kids. Then, when he started to think about the future, he saw Abby beside him. Lately he’d been able to picture their children; small and smart and beautiful. All Abby, and the good parts of him, too. And for the first time in Cole’s life, that dream didn’t seem too far off.
“Cold feet?” Tristan asked, clearly teasing him. That was kind of their thing. Only this time Cole wasn’t in the mood to be teased; not about Abby, not about spending the rest of his life with her.
“I’m just thinking.”
“That’s never good.”
Cole offered his friend a withering look. Just as he was about to open his mouth to say something he would most likely regret, Becca walked onto the patio. “Hey,” she said, looking at Cole before her eyes drifted over to Tristan for a moment. “Your future wife is surrounded by scrapbooks and just fell down a Cole Kerrigan baby photo rabbit hole. You better pull her out now or kiss your wedding goodbye. She’s on the verge of becoming a weepy mess, and I think only you can save her.”
Cole heard Tristan snort as he stood. “Becca,” Cole said, holding a hand out to Abby’s friend, “this is Tristan Blackwell. We’ve been friends since…what was it, fourth grade?”
Tristan looked wounded. “Third.”
“Tristan, this is Abby’s best friend, Becca.”
Tristan stood and reached for her hand. “Nice to meet you, Becca.”
Becca smiled. “You too.”
“Excuse me,” Cole said as he stepped down off of the patio and walked towards the house. “You should tell her about that time you slipped a laxative into Mrs. Praeger’s tea. She’d like that.”
“A laxative?” he heard Becca say as he stepped into the house. “Do tell.”
COLE LEANED against the doorframe to Abby’s room, watching her as she stared out the window at the surf breaking along the beach. She was curled up on the window seat, a blanket flung over her legs, the woven grey cotton spilling over onto the floor. She had one of his old scrapbooks in her hands, clutched tightly against her chest. Several others were next to her, in a neat stack on the floor. She was lost in thought, something she did quite often. She had such a brilliant mind, and sometimes everything caught up with her at once. This seemed to be one of those times.
Cole knew Abby well enough to understand that she needed her space when she got like this, but it was the sun glinting on her face, revealing the tears in her eyes that finally drew him to her. He walked very purposefully, not wanting to startle her. She probably already realized that he was in the room, but he wanted to be careful just in case. She turned to him as he approached, offering him a sad smile as he sat down. He reached over and slid his hand down her calf, just wanting some kind of contact with her, needing to touch her, hoping he could pull her from her thoughts.
Gently slipping his fingers around Abby’s ankle and situating her leg across his lap, Cole began kneading the ball of Abby’s foot, hoping that would relax her into telling him what was bothering her.
“We’re getting married tomorrow,” he said, very softly. “How can you possibly be sad? Are you having second thoughts?” He had difficulty speaking the last part of that sentence even when he was teasing her, but he made himself smile at her anyway.
She looked over at him, her eyes still swimming in unshed tears. “Yeah,” she replied, her voice a little thick from crying. “I was just sitting here thinking, ‘Abby, you’ve found this wonderful, thoughtful, loving man. What are you thinking actually marrying him?’”
“You forgot handsome,” he said with a wink.
Abby reached over and slid her fingers between his. God, Cole loved the warmth of her. The softness. He thought about it sometimes when he was at work, missing her. Let his thoughts linger on the lushness of her skin, the way her hair smelled. The way her hand felt when it was wrapped around his.
“Handsome,” she replied, tapping her chin. “How could I possibly forget handsome?”
“And rich.”
“So rich,” she teased, moving closer. She snaked her hand along the ridge of his collarbone until her fingertips found the hair at the nape of his neck. Her fingers glided through it, tugging a little, and Cole closed his eyes, trying to commit this feeling to memory. “Look at me Cole.” Abby’s voice was so gentle that he probably would’ve done anything she asked of him just then.
Cole opened his eyes as she cupped his cheek, and he leaned into her touch.
“You know how much I love you, right?” she asked.
He wrapped his fingers around her wrist and brought the palm of her hand to his lips, placing a kiss there. “Of course I do. Now tell me why you’re upset so I can fix it.”
She sighed. “There’s nothing to fix.”
“Try me.”
She took a deep breath. “You know how I feel about your family, don’t you?” she asked, gripping his hand. “And I don’t want to hurt you, okay? I really don’t want that, but before we get married, I…I have to say this.”
Cole swallowed against the lump in his throat, even though he was pretty sure he knew exactly where this was going.
“I h
adn’t seen any of these before,” Abby said, opening the scrapbook in her hands to a page somewhere in the middle. “Your mom wanted me to pick out a few, for some kind of collage or something she wants to give us, I don’t know.”
Cole turned his head to get a better look. The page was full of pictures from Cole’s freshman year in high school, when the soccer team for the prep school he’d attended won the state championship. He was in a ton of the pictures, laughing, smiling, lifting the trophy over his head. His parents were nowhere to be found that day; they had stayed at their penthouse in the city if he was remembering correctly, having committed themselves to attending a fundraiser that evening. Not that he thought they would’ve attended even if they hadn’t had something else to do. His nanny, the woman who had practically raised him, the woman who wasn’t biologically his mother but had mothered him in every conceivable way, was the one who had taken these pictures. She’d taken nearly all of the pictures in every one of these scrapbooks.
Abby didn’t wait for Cole to respond before she continued. “All these pictures, Cole. All of them are of you and Scott and your nannies. Or of you and your friends. Your parents aren’t in any of these. Not at your soccer games, your football games. They aren’t in a single one of them.”
Cole could hear the hitch in her voice; he knew she was upset. He was sad for her, for her realization that this was the way he’d grown up. He’d had a blessed childhood in every way but one: the people who brought him into this world weren’t ever around to see it. Growing up, that was just the way Cole thought things were. As a matter of fact, it was more rare to see a parent show up to these games; it was always the hired help who did the dirty work, who raised the little ones until they were ready to go out into the world alone.
Abby closed the scrapbook and put it aside, then took both of Cole’s hands between hers. “I know we’ve only ever talked about having kids in an abstract way, never really got into the nuts and bolts of how to make that work. Cole-”
“I know what you’re worried about,” he said softly, soothingly. He didn’t want her to waste one second of her life worrying about something that was never, ever going to happen. “We are not going to be those kinds of parents, Abby.”
She gave him a sad, resigned smile. “People don’t set out to be like this, Cole. They have the best intentions, you know? They don’t have children thinking that someone else is going to raise them. They don’t plan to be at fundraisers and charity events while someone else watches their children grow up.”
“Abby,” Cole said with a soft sigh. He’d thought about having a family with her more times than he could count, but he’d never felt the want rise up like this before. Everything was so close now, he could practically reach out and take it. In a year or two, this hypothetical family they were talking about raising could be real. “Our children are not going to be raised by nannies.” He looked deep into her eyes and squeezed her hand so she’d know how serious he was about this. “After knowing how it feels to look up into the stands and not see the two faces you were looking for, do you think there’s a single thing that could keep me from a recital? From a soccer game?”
Abby laughed, her eyes shining with tears. “With my store, and the company…Cole, we’ll have to make some sacrifices.”
Cole shrugged, like it was the easiest thing in the world. “So we’ll make them.” He could see them now, little brown-haired girls with his eyes and Abby’s smile, giggling in the back seat of the car as he drove them to the beach to spend the weekend playing in the sand. He couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face.
Abby smiled back. “I don’t just want kids, Cole,” she said, pulling him to her. “I want a family. Promise me that’s what we’ll have.”
Cole leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to her lips as he threaded his fingers through her hair and held her close. “I promise.”
CHAPTER FIVE
JUST BEFORE dinner, when the kitchen staff was setting places at the picnic table on the back deck, Becca followed Abby inside the house to the guest bathroom right off the foyer.
“You better?” Becca asked as Abby washed her hands, working the soapy lather into giant bubbles. It was the first chance they’d had to talk about Abby’s little crying jag earlier while she was looking at the Kerrigan family scrapbooks; the one that sent Becca out looking for Cole and sending him to her room.
“I’m better,” Abby said, nodding as she dried her hands on the pristine white towel that hung from the towel rack. “It was just a minor freakout.”
Becca sighed, then pulled Abby in for a hug. “I love you, so I mean this in the best possible way, okay? But are you dense?”
Abby couldn’t help herself, she had to laugh. “What do you mean?”
Becca took Abby’s hand in hers and walked her through the house, coming to a stop at the giant bay window in the sitting room that overlooked the beach. Scott was standing not too far from the house, holding his daughter in his arms. Cole was right behind them, making funny faces at Alex. She was squealing laughing, so loud that Abby could hear it through the window, and she got this far-off look in her eyes, imagining him making their own children laugh like that someday. Three shrieks of laughter later, Scott was handing Alex over to Cole, and she immediately began pawing at Cole’s face, tiny hands all over his cheeks as he playfully nipped at her fingers.
“Look at him holding that baby, Abs,” Becca said, smiling. “Do you think there’s a single thing in this world that could ever keep a man like that away from his own children? There isn’t a business meeting or a fundraiser that would stop him from being there for them.”
“I know,” Abby said quietly. “I just-”
“You don’t see how much he’s changed, do you?”
Utterly confused, Abby’s brows scrunched together.
Becca rolled her eyes, a little exasperated. “The way he looks at you, Abby. Hell, even the way he talks. He used to be so goddamned uptight, don’t you remember? He used to stand all stiff and like, recite words like he was reading them off of a teleprompter.” Becca straightened her posture and schooled her features into a stone-faced mask. “Abby,” Becca said, her voice all formal and tight as she imitated Cole. “I assure you that if I did cause offense, that was certainly not my intention. I’d like to offer you my utmost apologies.”
“He didn’t sound like that,” Abby said, laughing, even though she knew that he…yeah, he did sound like that sometimes.
“Yes he did and you know it. Now he’s just all light and stuff, and that’s because of you, okay? So if you’re worried about the kind of life you’re going to have with him or if you think he’s going to somehow shirk his responsibilities once you two have a family, then you don’t know him like I think you do. And that would mean that I don’t know you like I think I do, because the you I know would never marry a man who would do that.”
Abby smiled through the tears in her eyes, because Becca was right, just like usual. “I just needed to hear him say it, you know?”
Becca grinned at her best friend and tucked her under her arm. “Yeah,” she sighed. “I know.”
“WELL?” SCOTT asked, looking at Tristan with wide eyes, waiting for Tristan’s review of his grilling techniques.
“It’s not the best I’ve ever had,” he said, tapping his fingers along the arm of the deck chair he was sitting in. “But it’s close.” Tristan leaned back into his chair, the light from the fire in the pit to the left of them casting long shadows over his face. Becca wasted no time rolling her eyes at him, a sight which made Abby smile.
“Have you ever even cooked a steak?” she asked, kind of teasing, kind of not. “Or cooked anything for that matter? Like, do you even know what a microwave is?”
Tristan smiled a huge, genuine smile. “You mean those big shiny boxes with doors and numbered buttons on them? You can cook food in those?”
“I saw him make popcorn once,” Cole said, as Abby settled back against his chest, relishing in the
warmth of him. They were sharing a chair, and Abby was perched on Cole’s thigh, his arm wrapped around her shoulder as he held her tight. “It was one of those foil things, I think? It…did not end well.”
“Didn’t end well how?” Becca asked, leaning forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “Was there bloodshed? Tears? Mass destruction?”
“All of the above,” Scott said, laughing.
Sara joined in, cradling a sleepy Alex to her chest. “It was at the apartment we were sharing in college. Cole and Tristan came to the city from New Haven for a quick visit during mid-terms. They were drunk and hungry and too damn lazy to turn on the stove,” she said, glaring at Tristan. “Held the popcorn thingy right into the fireplace, which made it catch on fire, popping out little fiery kernels onto the carpet, which set off the fire alarms and the sprinklers.”
Tristan and Cole gave each other a conspiratorial glance, both trying so hard not to laugh. Sara swatted at Tristan. “You destroyed my favorite Picasso!”
Abby looked over at Becca, who mouthed ‘Picasso?’ with wide eyes. Becca clearly wasn’t used to being around people that had so much money they just name-dropped artists like Picasso in casual conversation. Truthfully, Abby wasn’t sure if she’d ever get used to it either.
“I said I was sorry. I replaced it!” Tristan yelled through laughter.
“This is why all of our property is insured to the hilt,” Olivia said, glancing over at the house. Abby’s eyes followed hers, and she could make out Cole’s father standing in the kitchen, phone pressed to his ear. It seemed to be a constant fixture there these days.
Just then, Alex stirred in Sara’s arms, starting to get fussy.