by Brooks, Abby
It was over.
Her time with Cole. Over. Even if they pieced things back together again, it would never be the same. He didn’t trust anyone. Never had and swore he never will and just as he started to trust her, she had pulled the rug out from underneath him.
But not just her time with Cole. Everything. The whole stupid bet with her brothers. The apartment. The job at the diner. Driving around in Ellie’s rust bucket.
She was done.
The end.
After she got home, she would pack up her things and head back to the guesthouse on her parents’ property with her tail between her legs. She would admit that she failed. That she wasn’t capable of living on her own and go back to being the spoiled only daughter of Frank and Diane Moore.
A tiny slice of doubt cut through the numbness. A tiny voice that said she didn’t want that. That she was happy here, on her own and she didn’t want to give it up, but Lilah squashed it flat. She thought of Maggie up their in her room. She should at least say goodbye. Maggie had enough people bailing on her. Lilah didn’t want to be one of them.
She wandered back into the hospital, keeping her eyes open for Cole. If he was in the room, she would just turn around and walk away. Maybe figure out how to send Maggie a card. Because there was no way she could look at him and not want to scream at him. Not want to run at him, flailing her fists into his chest, and Maggie didn’t need that.
Lilah peeked into Maggie’s room and relief released a breath she hadn’t known she was holding when she found Cole wasn’t there. A whisper of disappointment muttered something in her ear, but she ignored it and walked up to Maggie’s bed. She was asleep, her eyes closed, her face tilted slightly to the side. The beeps and hisses of the machines kept up a rhythmic pattern of worry. A constant reminder that things weren’t okay.
Lilah took Maggie’s hand. “I just wanted to say goodbye,” she murmured. “I didn’t want to just disappear without seeing you. Didn’t seem right.” She shrugged and swallowed, tears thickening her throat again. “I know that if you let Cole take care of you, you’re gonna be okay. And please, Maggie, let him take care of you. He’s good at it. And he loves you. Hell, I love you. I feel closer to you guys in these few months than I’ve felt with anyone. I don’t open up easily, but I did with you and Cole.” Her voice broke on his name.
Tears pooled again, making the image of Maggie waver as if the room was filled with water. “I’m not gonna be around but don’t you ever doubt that I loved you. That I loved him…” She trailed off. Took a long shuddering breath. “Thanks for being my friend, Maggie Bennett. You saw me for who I am and liked me anyway. Everyone else pretends to like me for my parents’ money. You were the first thing that felt real in my life. You … and then Cole …” And now the tears were hot and embarrassing and she needed to get downstairs in time to meet the cab anyway.
Lilah wiped her eyes and sniffed. Leaned forward and pressed her lips to Maggie’s hairline, just a whisper of contact, so careful not to put pressure on the spreading bruise. She released Maggie’s hand. It would have been nice to leave with some dignity, but there was no hiding her red eyes, circled in black smudges, the remainder of her makeup. She was sure her nose was swollen and red, her mouth lined in white, her cheeks blotchy and stained.
She would just have to keep her face down and hope no one felt like asking her if she was okay. She turned and headed for the door, already looking at her feet, intending to slip into the hallway and disappear before anyone saw her.
And ran right into Cole.
He seemed bigger than ever. Cut from stone. A mountain of a man glaring down at her. He put his hands on her shoulders as she bounced into his chest. Simultaneously pushed her away and kept her from falling down. She held his gaze for a fraction of a second and saw nothing but cold. Frozen water. Ice so cold it burned. And then she pushed past him, twisting to fit through the door, and ran through the hall.
Dignity be damned. She just needed out of here and didn’t care who saw her. She wanted him to chase her. To call after her. To come barreling down the hallway and grab her by the shoulders. Yell at her. Anything.
Because anything was better than nothing. Anything meant that he cared.
But, even after she slowed down to a walk, even after she leaned against a wall to catch her breath, Cole never came after her.
25
Cole stood outside the door to his mom’s hospital room and listened to Lilah say goodbye to Maggie. He couldn’t hear all her words over all the damn noise that just came hand in hand with being in a hospital, but he could hear enough. And he could hear her crying. It sent little splinters of pain radiating out from his heart. He wanted to rush in and take her in his arms. Wipe away the tears and make it all better. The two women he wanted to protect most in the world were in that room, each of them in pain, and he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
Lilah had lied to him. She had taken advantage of his need to help her. Wormed her way into his life, probably laughing with her family about the simple shrimper who thought he knew so much about.
Fuck! He had never felt so dumb in his whole entire life. He thought they had so much in common. That even though she had said she came from a happy family, that he was going to uncover some series of hurts in her past that looked a lot like his. She had been so helpless. How was he supposed to know that came from her having everything she had ever wanted instead of never having enough of what she needed?
And yet, here she was, crying in his mom’s hospital bed. Saying things like goodbye, words like love. Telling her that she had never been close to anyone the way she had been to them. How could she even mean that? But what good could come of lying to a woman passed out in a hospital bed.
When Lilah stopped talking, he realized she was about to leave. He didn’t want her to find him snooping. Didn’t want her to turn the corner and see him there, struggling to make sense of the anger and hurt and frantic surges of desperation making all his thoughts seem like accusations. So he just walked right in. Tried to play it cool like he had just now come back from the cafeteria.
She ran right into him and the look on her face when she realized who he was thickened his throat. Hell, just the look of her face in general was enough to make him feel like as big an asshole as his dad. Her blue eyes swam in tears. Nose and mouth swollen. Cheeks blotchy. But worst of all was the agony.
He had seen that look on his mom’s face more than once. Seen it when her husband called her names. Broke her heart. He knew that he was the reason Lilah had the same look in her eye’s, but damn it! She had lied to him. Everything he thought he knew about her was built on the basis of a lie. Their whole damn relationship was built on some fucking bet between her and her jackass brothers.
He knew he should say something, but didn’t trust that his words would be helpful. Didn’t trust that he would make sense. So he stared at her in silence and her face crumbled and his heart continued cracking in half until she pushed past him and ran out of the door.
He had heard her say goodbye to his mom. And there was a whole hell of a lot of goodbye in her eyes just now. Could he stand a life without her? Could he stand a life with her? How could he ever go back to trusting her when it was a miracle that he had even opened up to her in the first place?
He had taken a chance because his mom had finally moved out on her own. Her courage gave him courage. If she could change, then so could he. She signed a lease and he opened his life to Lilah.
What fucking fools they were. Nothing in life changed. There was no going against who you were. All you could do was put your head down and weather the storm. His mom hadn’t changed. She had just stretched herself to the limit, like a rubber band pulled between two fingers. When she had reached her breaking point, she had just snapped back into her old life, her old excuses. Ran back to that asshole and got the shit beaten out of her as a consolation prize.
Cole crossed his arms over his chest and stared down at Maggie. She looked so small i
n that bed. So frail. So old and tired. He had seen pictures of her when she was younger and in each and every one, she had this massive smile on her face. It was so wide. So unassuming. It lit up her eyes, danced in her eyebrows.
As the years passed and Maxwell Bennett started showing up in those pictures, that smile diminished. It grew smaller, tenser. More forced. It never touched her eyes until one day it just disappeared altogether. And that light? Yeah. He hadn’t seen that in years. Her eyes showed her fear and pain even if she did her damndest to keep it all hidden.
“Damn it, Ma,” he said, looking down at the broken creature in the bed. “Why’d you go back?” He wanted to touch her, but couldn’t for the life of him figure out where he could put his hands that Maxwell Bennett hadn’t already. “I was so happy when I thought you finally stood up to his ass. Put your foot down and told him just where he could go. Now look at you.”
He pulled her blanket up, spread it out so it covered her better “I thought you changed. Turns out you didn’t.” He stared down at her face, fighting a surge of disdain for the woman who would go back to a man like his dad. As guilt hollowed out his stomach—how dare he think such things about his mom?—a thought jumped into his head. One that was uncomfortable and foreign. One that didn’t make a whole lot of sense because he couldn’t quite get his head wrapped around it.
His mom needed to make a change in her life. She tried and failed and went right back to what was comfortable and here she was, more banged up than he could ever remember.
Is that what was going to happen to him? He tried to change. Let Lilah in. Let himself feel things for her that he had avoided for his entire life. Was he being just like his mom? Running back to what was comfortable by pushing Lilah away? Would he end up more broken than ever if he didn’t hold onto what he built?
Maggie stirred in her bed. Groaned and shifted her head. Opened her eyes and tried to focus on him through the fog of painkillers pulsing through her body.
“Hey, Mom,” he said, dropping all thoughts of Lilah and leaning over her. “What do you need? What can I do?”
Maggie frowned and swallowed. “Where’s Lilah?” she asked, her voice sounding like her throat was barbed wire.
“Gone.” Cole didn’t explain. There would be time for that later. His mom didn’t need to be worrying about anything but getting better right now.
“Well go get her back.” Maggie peered up at him with her good eye. “If I’m gonna be holed up in here, then I want my family with me.” She grimaced and tried to clear her throat.
Cole shushed her and buzzed the nurse for some ice chips, his heart and mind swirling in confusion.
26
Lilah stared out the window of the cab on the way home from the hospital. Her tears had used themselves all up so all she had left was this numbness thrumming through her body. This awful nothingness that didn’t make sense to her. She should feel something, right? Shouldn’t she be seething? Angry at Cole for getting mad? Anger at herself for not telling him about her parents sooner? Sad because it’s all over? Happy to be going home?
Anything?
Anything at all?
She watched a cloud floating high in the sky. It looked like a boat. And then it didn’t. Lilah let out a sigh, her breath hitting the window and fogging it up.
I guess my life is like that cloud. First it looked like something. Then it didn’t. Comparing herself to something so frivolous didn’t feel good. Lilah wanted to be heavy and real. She wanted to be the concrete holding up her apartment complex. The heavy struts keeping the rust bucket moving. Not some damn puff of air that changes its shape at the whim of the wind.
She paid the cabbie and tipped him generously. That’s one lesson she had learned the hard way. Tips were the difference between power on and power off for some people. The difference of a full fridge or a rumbling belly. The difference between paying your bills on time and freaking the fuck out. Whatever happens next, Lilah would always tip everyone. Well.
She climbed out of the cab and trudged up towards her front door. Her whole life felt fragile. Like the sidewalk was shifting sand and her apartment was melting snow. What shape would it take now?
Going back to live with her parents sounded awful. Quitting her job at Lou’s felt like giving up. But she couldn’t live next to Cole and she couldn’t work where he ate. So that left the rest of her life as one big question mark.
Who was she going to be now that she couldn’t be Cole’s Lilah anymore?
She pushed through the front door and didn’t know what to do with herself. She considered calling Ian and telling him she was done but something bitter rose up in her chest and forbade her to go through with it. She considered calling her mom and telling her she was moving home, but that wasn’t going to fly either.
So for now, she curled up on the couch and cried. Big aching sobs that tore through her body, pulling out her deepest fears. She cried in a way she never had, never once in all her life. Years of an aching heart, of building sadness, of growing self-loathing worked their way to her surface and poured out of her soul. Her life in her parents’ guesthouse might have looked perfect to anyone looking in, but there was no joy in living off other people’s success. No joy in never having to lift a finger. No joy at all.
But here? In this apartment with the smattering of things she worked her ass off to buy? With the electricity that she fought to keep running? The food she learned to prepare? Goddamn there was joy here. There was sex on the couch and music and laughter. There was the power of handing herself over to another person and knowing that he would take care of her.
Cole was here. Everywhere. Each room held a dozen memories of their time together. He was in the open sky. The languid sea. A bath filled to the brim with frothy bubbles. He was late nights and stupid jokes. He was completion. Physical, emotional, spiritual completion.
And he was gone.
And so she cried until she ached and then she cried some more. When the tears were gone, she stayed curled up on her couch until she drifted off to sleep.
* * *
A door slammed shut and startled Lilah awake. She sat up, eyes wide. Fear lanced through her when she realized she wasn’t alone. A man stared down at her, his eyes stormy and cold.
Cole.
Fear melted into relief and then right back into fear again. He turned away from her. Crossed the room and leaned against the wall, staring out towards the patio.
Lilah tried on a dozen things to say and none of them sounded right and so she said nothing. Just watched him and waited for him to say what was on his mind.
“Mom sends her love,” he finally said in a voice she didn’t recognize.
“How is she?” The question was surreal. So important and inconsequential to this moment in time.
“She’s broken,” he said. “And I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to fix her.”
His words were so raw that Lilah ached for him.
“I don’t know anything right now.” He turned to her, his eyes on fire. “I came home to get a bag so I can stay with her at the hospital. But I ended up here.”
Lilah stood, nerves singing her body into motion. “I want you here. I feel naked without you.”
Cole closed the distance between them. Wrapped his hands in her hair and crushed her mouth with his. His fingers dug into her scalp and his teeth clashed with hers, his tongue a weapon. Lilah flung her arms around him, her hands claws. She dragged her nails down his back. They caught in his shirt, bunching up the material.
Cole growled. “I can’t lose you,” he said. He licked and bit down her jawline to her neck, tugged on her ear with his teeth.
“Then don’t.” Lilah ground her hips forward.
Cole fisted his hands in her hair and twisted her head up so she could see his face. “But I don’t trust you.”
“I’m so sorry.” The words were a rushed whisper, three words said as one. “I need you, Cole.”
His hands were at her breasts, kneading an
d squeezing. He was the wild animal come to life. She pulled his shirt over his head and yanked down her shorts and panties in one brusque movement. She fought with the button on his jeans, her hands shaking, her movements frantic. Cole pushed away her hands. Grabbed the bottom of her t-shirt and pulled it up. He slid it behind her down her arms, and then gave it a twist and tightened it, pinning her arms to her back.
He freed his cock, not even bothering to pull his pants all the way down. Lilah dropped to her knees, arms bound by her own shirt, and took him into her mouth, straight to the back of her throat. She bobbed her head, back and forth, looking up at him, needing to see if she was giving him pleasure or not. He looked down, his face still hard, his eyes glinting and hooded with lust. He rocked his hips forward, fucking her mouth.
God, yes, she thought. I need this. I need you.
He pulled himself out of her, a string of saliva clinging to his cock. “Stand up.” He reached down to help her, holding her by the shoulders as she got to her feet. He untangled her arms from the shirt and she wrapped them around him, clinging to him like she could make him stay if she just held on tight enough.
He lifted her and she wrapped her legs around his waist. He grabbed his dick and slid into her, filling her, completing her once again.
“Oh fuck, Lilah, it feels so good to be inside you.” He pinned her against a wall, driving into her, his breath hot on her neck. It was hard and it was fast and she was a raw nerve, feeling everything he said and did to her as if it were magnified.
She came without a word. Without even a sound. She just dropped her head to his shoulder and lost herself to the moment. Sensation piling on top of sensation. Tears squeezing out of her eyes. She kissed his neck and he came, pushing into her. She felt him spasm inside her, his whole body flexing and filling her all the more.
He held her there for a few seconds, panting and silent, pinning her to the wall and supporting her with his own weight. She wasn’t ready for him to put her down, but he did and she immediately felt hollow.