But just when she was about to succumb to her fate, there was a crash from somewhere across the room. At first, she assumed the ceiling was caving. Except that didn’t explain why a shadow was peeling through the fire and moving towards her. Then there was nothing until she woke up in the hospital cocooned in a level of pain that she didn’t think was possible. They had her hooked to an IV and oxygen tank. Her arms were wrapped in gauze and held down by ice packs. By far, it had been the scariest experience of her life, but she had survived.
Now she just had to find a way to get into her apartment without her keys, the ones she must have dropped at some point in her rush to get Meggie out of the building and that were no doubt lost forever.
Chapter Three ~ Cole
Cole got as far as the city limits before the guilt consumed him, restraining him from going any further. Images of Beth lying pale and hurt on that hospital bed tormented his every thought. They speared through him like knives, until the pain wrenching through him was nearly physical. In that moment, he didn’t give a shit that she’d broken his heart. He didn’t care that she had walked away and started a life without him. He loved her. He would always love her. That kind of love left no room for anything else.
His gaze flitted to the clock on his dashboard. It was after four. She would have been released from the hospital. She would be home. That was the direction he faced his car.
While he wasn’t sure what he would say when he got there, he had to make sure she was all right. It didn’t even matter that there was a possibility that another man might be there. Okay, it mattered. It mattered a lot. In fact, the very idea of another man touching her, being with her filled Cole with an anger that swallowed him whole. The sheer hatred he felt for this faceless person terrified him. But he would be civil. He would be the bigger man. He would not break his fist into this other man’s face. He wouldn’t.
He would try.
The apartment building sat in a low, three story crouch amidst a street full of houses. The white exterior was scarred a violent smear of black. Windows were shattered outward from the heat. Debris and a small mountain of cushions littered the lawn. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize this was where Beth had injured herself.
He walked to the door and peered at the panel. He knew which one was hers; her name was written in a neat script next to it. He traced it with his finger. It was such a small thing, yet it kicked him hard in the gut.
Get a grip!
Pulling his hand away, he took a step back. Then another. He was about to turn away, when the door opened and a small, blonde woman smiled at him.
“Is it not working again?” she asked.
Cole blinked. “Sorry?”
She gestured with a narrow chin towards the panel. “The intercom,” she explained. “It hasn’t been working very well since the fire. Are you here to see someone?”
“Beth Doan.” Her name poured out before he could think twice about it.
The woman’s smile brightened. “Is she a friend?”
A friend? The thought almost made him laugh.
“We go way back,” he said instead.
Nodding, she stepped out of his way. “She’s in apartment two-ten.”
Thanking her, he ducked around her before he could give in to his temptations and bolt. His feet carried him up the stairs to the second floor landing and the seemingly endless corridor looming long and narrow ahead.
The place reeked of a campfire. The walls were charred about halfway before the fire had been put out. Water squished beneath his boots as he started forward. The keys to his car jingled a nervous beat at his side. His gaze darted from door to door, counting down the numbers until he found himself facing hers. His palms dampened. His stomach writhed. He started to turn away.
A knock sounded. It was so unexpected, Cole jumped in surprise to find it was his hand rapping against the wood. He stared at it in horror. But it was too late to do anything now, except wait and pray to God it wasn’t a guy who answered. Cole wasn’t sure he could stand it.
His prayers were answered.
The door wasn’t opened by a man. It was opened by Beth … clad in nothing but miles of beautiful, flushed skin and a towel. Her generous breasts swelled up over the top where her bandaged arm pushed them up while holding the scrap of fabric in place around her. They teased him, reminding him just how the nipples were the exact shade of pink rose petals and how sweet they tasted when he had them in his mouth. But more than anything, he remembered how perfectly they fit in the palm of his hands. How perfectly she fit under him with her legs around his ribs and her walls a tight fist around his cock. Those were memories he had sworn never to revisit. Yet one glance at her in a towel and his pants were several sizes too small and he was cutting a hole in his cheek trying to stifle the groan lodged in his throat.
“Cole?”
Her low murmur drew his gaze away from her chest to brush over her full, pouty mouth and he was shot through with the memory of them wet and swollen from his kisses, or ravaged by her own teeth as he slid his way down her hot little body to the place between her sprawled thighs.
Shit this was a bad idea!
“What are you doing here?” she was asking him when his mind finally crawled out of places it had no right to venture again.
He stuffed five fingers through his hair. “I came to see if you were okay.” He shot her an accusatory glare. “Do you normally open the door in a towel?”
She met his frown with one of her own. “I was waiting for someone.”
The boyfriend, Cole thought with a sour taste in his mouth. Who else would she be waiting for in a towel?
He took a step back. “I won’t keep you then.”
“Cole—”
Whatever she was about to say was abruptly cut short by the shrill of the phone somewhere deep inside her apartment. She muttered a curse and darted a quick glance over her shoulder, then back at him.
“Come in,” she said hastily before darting out of sight.
Cole hesitated, but curiosity got the better of him. His need to see her life without him propelled him in.
The foyer opened straight into the sitting area and the calming hues of powder blue and soft cream. There was a kitchen immediately on his right and a small alcove on his left that held a glass, clutter bowl perched on a small table and an ornate mirror behind that. Further in, the polished hardwood became a plush carpet that spanned the length of the sitting area. The cream color of it matched the sofa, loveseat, and armchair that sat in a circle around a glass coffee table. Sunlight spilled through the single wall of windows and sparked off framed photos of Beth with her friends. One that sat on an end table caught his eye and Cole moved to it without thinking. He was only barely aware of Beth’s murmuring voice drifting from the other side of the long counter separating the kitchen from the rest of the room. The person was on speaker phone, but he couldn’t hear what they were talking about, and it didn’t matter.
The frame was simple, black with a fine, gold trim. Inside, behind the stubbornly polished glass, Calla sat in her pretty pink dress, her blonde curls pinned at the sides by little sparkly butterfly clips. The fake background of trees made her look like a fairy princess. But that wasn’t what puzzled him. It was the fact that this was a school photo. It had only been taken a month ago. And there were others, scattered throughout the place of Calla and Willa. There was even one of Sloan, Lily, and the girls, the same one Lily had given Cole a year ago. What the hell were they doing there?
“Lily sent them to me.” Beth stood behind him. He hadn’t heard her getting off the phone.
Cole stared at his daughter’s smiling face a moment longer before gingerly setting it back down.
It made sense. Beth and Lily had always been close, and just because she wanted nothing to do with him, didn’t mean that friendship went away.
“I like talking to the girls,” she murmured quietly. “I miss them sometimes, and Lily.”
What about me?
He wanted to ask.
Instead, he moved away from her to wander the rest of the room. There were several framed photos on the wall, photos he recognized as Lily’s pieces. He stopped when he got to the open doorway of her bedroom. He paused to stare at the unmade bed. The walls were a soft purple, offsetting the pale gold of her comforter and the tan brown of her sleigh bed. He couldn’t help wondering if she’d had other men in that bed. If they had held her down as they rammed inside her, making her wail and beg for more. The possibility of it had him turning away and he found her watching him, studying him the way he was studying her new life, like every inch of it was a clue to the person she had become.
“How did you find me?” she asked after a moment.
A week after she had walked out of his life, a card had arrived in the mail for one Bethany Doan. It declared that her mail was to be redirected from his address to one in Vancouver. Cole had stared at the thing for so long that the address had permanently burned into the back of his eyelids.
“Change of address card,” he mumbled, feeling only slightly ashamed.
She looked neither upset nor surprised, simply pensive. “Oh.”
“Are you happy here?” he went on, needing to know.
Rather than answer him, Beth nibbled on her lip and turned towards the kitchen. “Are you hungry, or thirsty?”
“Beth…”
“Yes.” She gave her head a shake, her shoulders a little too tense. “Yes.”
God he wanted nothing more than to slip up behind her and pull her into his arms like he used to. He wanted to bury his face into the curve of her neck and just stand there with her pulse beating against his lips. The world had always felt like a safer, better place when he did.
But those days were over and gone. She wasn’t his anymore.
“I should go,” he decided at last.
Her quiet inhale filled the silence as she turned slowly to face him. Her eyes were weary, like the whole process of standing there was exhausting her.
“Thank you for coming,” she said. “You didn’t have to, but you did and I appreciate that.”
The prim and proper way she said it made him want to grab her and shake her. It infuriated him that she would ever think he wouldn’t. That he could ever know she was hurt and not run to her. How could she not know how utterly lost he was when it came to her?
I love you, damn it! He wanted to scream at her. I will always love you.
But like the coward that he was, he gave an inclination of his head and started for the door. His gut knotted tighter with every step he took away from her. The voice in his head growled in frustration, screaming at him that he should never have come. The pain had nearly been gone. He had worked so hard to perfect his mask, like her leaving hadn’t shattered everything in him. Four years of pretending to be happy destroyed in a single day and all because she had buried herself so deep within the folds of his soul that dislodging her would severe the thread keeping him alive. She had managed to enslave him so completely that the thought of not loving her anymore devastated him. Meanwhile, she had moved on without a single shred of effort.
His pride hurt. His head hurt. But more than both, his heart hurt.
Desperate to escape, Cole wrenched open the door and nearly ran into the pint-sized woman standing on the other side. Enormous brown eyes blinked behind bright, red glasses. Lips the same shade of crimson as her dress, hair and shoes parted into a surprised O. Clutched to her hand, a girl of four also peered up at him with eyes the vast blue of the ocean.
“Rosie!” Beth hurried around the sofa to join Cole at the door.
Rosie’s eyes went from Beth still in her towel to Cole and back again. “Uh, we can come back if…”
“No!” Cole and Beth said in unison.
“Cole was just on his way out,” Beth added.
“Cole?” Rosie’s head tipped to the side, reminding Cole of a very bright bird. His name seemed to finally register something in her mind, because her eyes widened behind her glasses. “Cole!”
He wasn’t sure he liked the entertained way she said his name.
“Rosie, come inside,” Beth prompted quickly. “Hey, Meggie.”
The little girl waved, but said nothing.
“She’s still adjusting,” Rosie hissed in a low whisper as she led herself and the girl past Cole towards the sitting area.
Beth clicked her tongue, her eyes a velvety green filled with sympathy. “I have some cookies in the cupboard if you like?”
The girl shook her head.
Rosie gave Beth a look that said very clearly, see?
Beth sighed. “I have everything ready in the bathroom.”
Rosie waved her comment aside with a flick of her red tipped fingers. “No rush. I’m staying with Robert and his … friend, and the less time I have to spend there, the better. I swear, the only reason he even offered was because of Meggie, which I know I should be grateful about, but seriously, we were married for five years. Doesn’t that count for something?”
Beth touched her friend’s arm with a bandaged hand. “I’m sorry, sweetie.”
Rosie shrugged. “Whatever. So, anyway, I’m going to set this little pipsqueak up somewhere and come help you.”
Smiling, Beth moved away from her. “Thanks, Rosie. It won’t take long.”
She hurried towards the bedroom without a single glance in Cole’s direction. It was only after she had left that Cole realize he had been dismissed.
Bottling back his hurt and annoyance, he turned to leave.
“So you’re Cole.” The words were said with an accusing sort of drawl that had him pausing.
“You’re Rosie,” he countered, turning to the woman.
She nodded once. “Yup, and that’s Meggie. We live … lived, next door.”
It was Cole’s turn to nod slowly. “I’m sorry about what happened.”
Rosie eyed him a moment before turning her attention on the girl still clinging to her hand. “You know where Beth keeps your things, don’t you, Megs?” At the bob of the girl’s head, Rosie relinquished her hold. “Why don’t you go play? Mom needs a word with Mr. Cole.”
Meggie examined him with eyes much too mature for her age before turning her back and wandering off towards the windows and the tiny cabinet tucked away in the corner. She sat and opened a drawer, but pulled nothing out.
“Is she okay?” Cole wondered.
Rosie exhaled loudly. “She hasn’t been the same since the fire. I’m just so thankful Beth was there, or…” She broke off with a hitch in her voice.
Cole frowned. “Beth?”
“Yeah,” Rosie looked at him. “Meggie was trapped in the bathroom. Beth jumped into the fire to save my baby.” Her shiny, bright eyes went back to the little girl. “I owe her everything.”
That explained the burns and why they were so severe around her hands.
“She almost died doing it, too,” Rosie went on. “She got Meggie and my mom out through the window, but got caught herself. The place was entirely up in flames by the time the firefighters got to her.”
Cole’s heart gave a jolt of panic at the words. His insides iced over at the thought of being called for her body instead. The very idea of a world without Beth sent the room spinning and his vision blurring. His ears rang as the coppery tang of bile rose up into his throat. He stared at the little girl, disgusted with himself for hating her; it would have been her fault if Beth had died in that fire.
But she didn’t, the voice in his head reminded him. Beth was alive. She was only in the other room.
Rosie was still speaking, oblivious to the torment she was inflicting upon him.
“I just feel so bad that I have to leave her like this after everything she’s done.”
Cole blinked, bringing his mind back into focus. “Leave her?”
Rosie shrugged. “It’s not intentional or anything. Robert, my ex, lives in Maple Ridge. We’re staying with him until our place is repaired, which could be months. The commute is
just too far for me to make every day to see her.”
“Is there someone else?” he wondered.
“I suppose,” Rosie murmured. “But I doubt she’ll call any of them. She’s so stubborn.”
That was his Beth.
“What about her boyfriend?”
Rosie blinked. “Her boyfriend? What boyfriend?” She snorted what could have passed for a laugh. “Does it look like she has a boyfriend?” She waved a hand in the direction of all the photographs scattered throughout the room.
It hadn’t occurred to him earlier, but there were no pictures of Beth with another guy. Not one. And somehow, that knowledge lifted the weight crushing his chest.
“What about you?” Rosie prompted. “Where’s your girlfriend?”
Gaze fixed on the open frame of Beth’s bedroom, Cole answered almost absentmindedly. “I don’t have one.”
“Really?”
He wasn’t given the chance to react to the interested purr when Beth returned, still clad in her towel and bandages. She gave a visible start at the sight of him.
“Cole?”
Feeling like an intruder, he opened his mouth.
“I thought you were leaving,” she said when he could think of nothing to say.
“That’s my fault,” Rosie piped in. “We were chatting.”
“Oh.” Beth murmured before turning her attention to her friend. “Ready?”
“Should you be getting your arms wet?” Cole blurted without thinking.
Beth motioned towards Rosie. “That’s why I asked Rosie here to help me.” A small smile curled the right corner of her mouth. “I smell like a chimney after Christmas.”
That tiny gesture pulled on every one of his heart strings. It made him want to go to her and trace that smile with his fingers, then his mouth.
Bye-Bye Baby Page 4