When the idea had come to me, I’d thought it genius. But the fact that she’d reacted so severely to just the sight of it made me question whether or not I’d totally missed the mark.
Her breath hitched and she reached out, shaking her head from side to side. Before she could stop me, I flipped her hand over and closed her fingers around the neck. She tried to hand it back.
“It’s yours,” I said softly.
Mari didn’t say anything, just held the guitar tighter and nodded.
“Dinner?”
She sighed. “Fine, but afterward can we stop pretending you give two shits about me?” She pushed her way out the door. I followed, catching up and moving in front. Mari stopped in her tracks to keep from running into me.
“It isn’t pretense. I actually do care, which is what I want to show you. It’s why I’m here.”
“And why should I believe you?”
I gave her a sad smile. “You probably shouldn’t. I just really wish you would.”
“Where did you park?”
I nodded to the side of the building. “Over here. The guys let me in the side door.”
“I still can’t believe those fuckers,” she mumbled.
We reached the car and I jumped in front to open the door for her. Her eyes widened slightly, but only for a moment before she pulled the mask down she’d been wearing since I’d caught up to her in the hall. She was doing everything she could to keep her emotions in check. I took the guitar from her and lay it carefully on the back seat. I hadn’t thought to pick up the case the guy in the store had told me was the best I could buy. It was still in the dressing room. Hopefully the guys would grab it before they left.
Without a word, she got in the car and I shut the door behind her, racing around the driver’s side, not wanting to give her a chance to change her mind. As the engine roared to life and I pulled from the lot, Mari kept her gaze focused out the window. It was too dark to see much. She must have been lost in her own head.
“It’s too late to go to this little Italian place I like, but there’s a great diner about fifteen minutes from here. Is that okay?”
“Wherever is fine.” Her eyes remained firmly glued out the window.
The silence was crushing. I thought about turning on the radio, but if Mari decided she wanted to talk I wanted to be able to hear what she had to say. Nothing left her lips the entire ride.
No yelling. No cursing. No screaming.
Nothing.
We pulled into the parking lot at the diner and I breathed a sigh of relief, knowing it would be very hard to escape one another when you were sitting in a booth. Eventually she would have to talk to me.
I hoped.
I stepped out of the car and went around to open her door, only to find her standing there waiting. I gestured for her to go first which was apparently the wrong move because she immediately narrowed her eyes and stormed into the diner.
I tilted my face to the sky and asked for any help anyone would give me. It looked like I’d need it.
I walked through the front door but couldn’t see her anywhere. For a brief moment I thought she might have run out the back door, until I spotted her hair over the top of a menu. The waitress had seated her right at the back corner, away from the other couples. Smart move.
The menu blocked her face from my vision when I sat down across from her.
“Mari?”
“What?”
“Mari?” I took hold of the top of the menu and lowered it to the table. “I asked you here to talk. Are you going to put barriers up all night?”
“With you I need four-feet concrete barriers to keep me safe. Besides, I have nothing to say. You’re the one who wanted to talk. So talk.”
The tone of her voice made it clear she wasn’t interested in much of what I had to say, but I’d waited weeks for this opportunity. I couldn’t let it go to waste. “I know—”
“Evenin’, what can I get you?”
“Coffee,” Mari chimed in immediately, her attention solely on the waitress. “Won’t be here long enough for anything else,” she mumbled under her breath.
“I’ll have the same. Plus, can we get two peanut butter pies?”
The waitress nodded and left the table to fill our order.
“Hungry?” Mari asked, scrunching her nose up.
“Maybe.” I’d ordered one for each of us, but I had no intention of telling her that. I had a feeling she’d want it when she saw mine. I’d seen her do it at the bar with her band mates. She’d turn down ordering something from the menu, then pick at whatever they got.
She didn’t say anything else and I tried to get my thoughts out again. “I know you don’t believe me. You think that anything that comes out of my mouth is either completely insincere or that I’m here to take pleasure in torturing you, but that’s not the case.”
“Why a guitar? How did the guys know about the guitar? I never told them.”
Okay. There was something she wanted me to know about her. “I know. Heath only gave me a few hints—like the fact you kept all the cards from the flowers I sent.” Her cheeks grew pink and her sleeve suddenly became very interesting. “He also told me that flowers weren’t enough, that I needed to make a grand gesture, unique to me, if I wanted to win you over.”
“And he told you to buy me a guitar since I’d been talking about getting one?” she snapped.
“Is that what you think? That I got the guitar because Heath told me to?”
“That’s exactly how it is.”
I reached out and covered her hand with mine, only to have her snatch hers away. “That’s not how it is. When Heath suggested I needed something unique to me, he didn’t tell me anything else. It took a few days to realize that breaking your guitar was my biggest crime against you. Not the only one, but the one I needed to make up for over all the others.”
Mari watched me, her eyes assessing, boring deep down, searching for something. “So you spent a couple hundred dollars on me, a girl you barely knew and one you didn’t care about at all when you could have had a chance to know me, and expected it to be all forgotten?”
“That might have been true when I was a dumb, self-absorbed asshole—”
“And you’re no longer a self-absorbed asshole?” she scoffed, picking at the corner of the menu. “History makes it hard for me to believe that.”
My stomach soured, like it always did at the thought of what I’d lost. “Let’s just say I learned a lot about myself and my life in college.”
With a roll of her eyes, she stood and pulled her phone out. “We all learned a lot about ourselves in college. Wanna know what I learned? To not put up with people’s bullshit anymore.” She started to walk away from the booth but I grabbed her hand and pulled her around to face me.
“Cole, get your fucking hands off me. I did what the guys wanted. I came, I listened, but nothing’s changed. Keep the guitar.”
She tried to pull away again, but I just couldn’t let her go. I wanted her to see the real me; the man I’d become. And yeah, it might have taken climbing a mountain of problems for me to get there, but I’d still gotten to the peak and found my way back to the bottom. It was probably the dumbest thing I’d done all night.
That didn’t stop me from pulling her closer and capturing her lips with mine, silencing any other protests she might have made. Her body stiffened, her lips unmoving beneath mine but I kept the connection, my heart pounding in my chest as I braced for her to push me away. Her hands lifted and landed on my chest. Surprisingly enough, she didn’t push me away. She slipped her fingers up around my neck, sinking them into my hair.
The moment her mouth opened, I slid my tongue inside and the fire that had ignited the night we were together lit up like an inferno. I cupped her ass, bringing her lower body tight against mine, knowing she could feel how hard a simple touch from her made me. I couldn’t get enough and almost whimpered when she tore her mouth away and dropped down into a seat, the breath coming fr
om her in pants.
Her eyes were glassy with a faraway look in them. Afraid of scaring her off, I sat back in my seat and waited until my legs were under the table to adjust myself out of her sight. She didn’t speak a word. The realization of where we were finally hit. I glanced around to see a bunch of eyes trained on us, some looking away when they saw me staring back. Even the waitress had stopped dead in her tracks, the tray of coffee and pies in her hand. She started forward again, an overly bright smile on her face.
“Here ya go. Do you need anything else?” She glanced back and forth between us.
“No, thank you,” I answered, watching Mari, who was still staring off into space.
I grabbed two packets of sugar and poured them into my cup while I waited for Mari to do more than just sit there, anything to distract myself from the taste of her on my lips. Whatever was going through her head, I hoped she’d share and talk to me instead of trying to run again.
I wasn’t stupid. I knew sexual attraction wouldn’t erase all the shit I’d put Mari through. She had every right to hate me, even though I wanted things to be different. But she couldn’t deny our connection, and that had to count for something.
Right?
Slowly, she moved her legs back under the table and turned to me, her eyes firmly locked on the table. Her hands wrapped around the mug like it would anchor her. “Why?” she whispered. “Why now?”
I may not have known her very well, but her real meaning wasn’t lost on me.
“Your voice.”
That brought her eyes up fast. “My voice? You’d never heard me sing a note until a few months ago.”
“Exactly. I hadn’t been facing the stage when you started to sing. The sound of your voice made me turn around. I may have been stupid and blind before, but trust me when I tell you my eyes are wide open now. You’re fucking gorgeous.”
She opened her mouth to say something. I held up a hand and continued. “I know that doesn’t mean shit under the circumstances. But it’s all tied together. I wanted to get to know you from that first night. It wasn’t until I figured out who you were that I understood why you’d given me the cold shoulder. I thought about all the hurt I caused you and wanted to find a way to make up for it. To try and heal some of the pain . . . if I could.”
“How did you figure out it was me?”
Her asking questions was a good sign. At least I knew she was listening.
“Something that happened in the hallway a few weeks ago. Two of the football players were harassing one of the girls. After I reamed their asses for treating someone that way and benched them for the next game, I couldn’t get the moment out of my head. How I wished someone had put an end to my shit. One game on the bench would have been enough to get me to see.” She narrowed her eyes. “Maybe it shouldn’t have needed to come to that, but my only defense is that I was a dumbass back then. It wasn’t until I was on my way to see you that everything fell into place.” I glanced down at her neck, where the same pendant hung. “I remembered your necklace.”
Her hand shot to her throat, her fingers touching the cool metal of the flower. “My necklace?”
“Yeah, for some reason it stood out to me. I notice you play with it whenever you’re nervous. You used to do the same thing in high school.” I didn’t take my eyes off her for one second. Mari might say she didn’t want to speak to me, but her body language spoke volumes.
She ran her finger around the rim of the mug, her lips drawn into a tight line. She didn’t look up, didn’t move except for that one finger. When I was almost positive she was going to bolt again, she lifted her eyes from the glass and pinned me in her gaze. “Did you say you benched two football players for giving a girl a hard time?”
“Yeah?” Where was she going with this?
She gave her head a brief shake. “I’m confused. Weren’t you supposed to be some big NFL player? I remember it being in all the papers before I left.”
My breath caught for a moment. Even though she’d hated me, she’d still paid attention to what I was doing. “Let’s just say things didn’t work out the way they were supposed to.”
She lifted a brow. “Then what do you do?”
“I’m a teacher.”
CHAPTER 14
Mari
My mouth fell open. A warning. A red flag. Some kind of advanced notice still wouldn’t have been enough to hide my shock.
The guy in front of me had defied teachers and rules at every turn. He’d done whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted to. He probably would have done a lot more had there not been consequences to his actions—like losing his scholarship. And even after everything I’d learned in the last few minutes, I still couldn’t quite equate the idea of this Cole and the one I knew being the same person.
“That surprises you.” He picked up the mug and took a sip of the coffee, his eyes on me through the steam.
“It does. You didn’t just make my life a living hell.” He winced, but I refused to take the words back. “You did everything you weren’t supposed to, damn the consequences.”
And yet, that didn’t seem to be him anymore. This Cole worried about the ramifications of his actions and seemed to understand that he deserved them for his behavior. But it hadn’t been until Cole mentioned benching the two kids for harassing another student that my anxiety at being there with him had started to ebb. The Cole I knew would have laughed with them, made a few comments of his own, and sent the boys back to class without any consequences.
Let him apologize. Let him grovel. Let him beg. You need this more than you realize.
Heath’s words rang out in my head and I finally realized how right he was. Cole’s story created a lightness in my chest that hadn’t been there since I was a child.
“I’ve learned a lot over the last few years. There are consequences, and I’m answerable to them as much as anyone else.” He glanced down at the table, absently playing with the fork.
“I’ll be honest, part of me wants to forgive you, while another part is screaming at me to get up and storm away.”
He brought his eyes up, bracing for whatever I might say. “Which side are you going to listen to?”
“Neither.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Neither?”
I sighed. “Honestly, a guitar and some flowers aren’t enough for me to forgive you completely. It took a long time for me to get to this point. A point where I can look in the mirror and love the person I see there. A few small gestures don’t make up for all the hard work and tears it took for me to get there.” The corners of his mouth turned down. “But . . . I am willing to give you a chance to prove you’re not that guy anymore. One chance. That’s what I can give.”
His shoulders relaxed and a smile touched the corners of his lips. “One chance is all I need.”
He picked up a fork and handed it to me, along with the second piece of peanut butter pie, one of my favorites. “What makes you think I like peanut butter pie?”
“I can’t imagine anyone who doesn’t like peanut butter.” His hand froze with his fork halfway to his mouth. “Shit, you aren’t allergic, are you?”
“No, it’s actually one of my favorites, too.” I speared the first piece and lifted it to my lips.
He winked. “See. Who doesn’t like peanut butter pie?”
“Why did you order two if you weren’t going to eat both? Not that I’m not grateful that you did.”
A light blush tinted his cheeks. Okay. Weird. I honestly never thought I’d see Cole blush. “What’s the big deal?”
“It’s just that . . . I’ve spent a lot of time watching you over the last few weeks. I’ve learned a lot about you.” He ran a hand over his face. “Now it almost sounds stalkerish. After every show, I stayed and watched you at the bar. I wanted to know more about you. A hint about what I could do to reach you.”
“You watched me?”
He looked away.
Now I was intrigued. He’d watched me for weeks. God only knew what he
’d seen. “And?”
“You’re not a fan of beer, or making decisions about food. Usually when the guys in the band order, you end up tasting theirs and ordering the same. So I ordered two pieces of pie to save you the trouble.”
It was sweet, in a weird, roundabout way. Knowing that he was paying attention made me feel a little self-conscious, but I pushed it to the side and we ate our dessert in silence, until Cole spoke up again.
“Tell me about yourself. About the band.”
My gut reaction was to shut down but I buried that quickly. Talking to Cole would be good practice for the interviews the label wanted to do after our first single was released. If I couldn’t tell someone I knew my story, how would I tell a complete stranger? And it gave me the chance to be totally honest with Cole about what happened after I left, a chance to see if he could truly handle hearing about the fallout of his actions.
“Let’s see. I guess I’d have to start when I left for college. I met Sawyer in Freshman Seminar. Honestly, I was a mess. Afraid to trust anyone.” The corners of his mouth turned down. Reality might have been worse than his memories from school. “When he found out we were both music majors, he was determined we should be friends. I wasn’t all that keen on having friends but some way, somehow, he pushed his way in. He spent years helping me rebuild my self-esteem, freeing the person I’d buried way down deep to keep her safe.”
“Mari,” he whispered, but I shook my head, needing to continue.
“Sawyer has been my rock. He’s shown me the world in a new light. Helped me find the courage to change.”
He’d stopped eating but still held the fork in his hand. He pointed it toward my hair. “So he’s the reason for the short hair and tattoos?”
“Not really.” I lifted my hand, absently twirling my fingers in my hair. “I’d always wanted to cut my hair, I just didn’t want to add any more fuel to the fire. I figured the less I changed about myself, the more I could blend into the background.” I shrugged. “Keep people from noticing me.”
Rock Me (Jaded Ivory Book 1) Page 12