The words were said in such a toneless way, it immediately washed away the majority of Cole’s irritation. He didn’t want to fight with Brooke. His buddies in the army had always ribbed him about him having a hero complex, and he realized how true it was in that moment. Cole wanted to be the guy who protected her and put a smile on her face, and the strength of that desire kind of scared him a little. “No worries. I’m just glad you’re okay.”
She let out a snort. “I wouldn’t quite go that far. I don’t think I’ve been okay for a very long time.”
She twirled her phone in her hand, and Cole wondered who she’d talked to and what had been said. But the coldness of her words struck him a little dumb. He must have hesitated too long because she looked over at him and apologized.
“I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t want to make my problems your problems.”
“Just spill it, Princess,” he said, hoping she heard the teasing in his voice.
She huffed a laugh, which made a sense of relief spread through him. Letting her head thud back against the wall, she stared up at the ceiling. “I’m a little…lost.”
“Well, with your navigational skills, that’s not all that surprising.”
Her laugh was fuller this time. “Ass.” She straightened her legs and let her phone rest on one of her thighs. “Have you ever felt like you’ve made so many mistakes that you’re no longer capable of doing anything right?”
God, did Cole know how that felt. There were so many things that plagued Cole’s mind, he wondered how he ever thought of anything else. But this wasn’t about him. He didn’t want to get into all the ways he felt he’d failed over the years. Maybe later, but not now. So he simply said, “Of course.”
“The singing… I never wanted any of that. Don’t get me wrong, it was cool for a while, but I’m not really built for it, ya know? You call me Princess, and I know that name fits in some ways, but the truth is I don’t like a lot of attention. I hate having to worry that people will recognize me while I’m out, or that one day I’ll be even more famous and I won’t even be able to go out and do normal things.”
“Like see the Rocky Mountains?” Cole asked.
Her head slanted to one side so she could look at him. “Exactly like that.” She smiled, but it had a sad quality to it that made his heart hurt.
“If it’s not what you want, why do you do it?”
She shifted again so she was no longer looking at him. “That’s the million-dollar question. I know I’m an adult, so saying I don’t have a choice is stupid, but it feels that way. My parents have run my career since before I was old enough to realize that they don’t particularly care what I want. And by the time I was old enough to see it, it was…too late. I’d committed to things I couldn’t have gotten out of even if I’d been brave enough to try.”
“That makes sense for the past, but what about the future? Going forward, you can make the decisions.”
When she didn’t reply right away, he looked over at her and saw a tear slide down her cheek. He wanted to wrap his arm around her but didn’t feel like that was what she would want. And in light of what they were discussing, he knew it was important for this to go in whatever direction she wanted it to.
“When you’ve given up control for your entire life, it can be really hard to get it back. Even thinking about it is overwhelming.”
“Hard doesn’t mean impossible,” he said softly.
“No. Not impossible,” she said on a breath. She didn’t sound so sure, but Cole didn’t call her on her obvious self-doubt.
“Are they who you were talking to?” he asked as he nodded his head toward her phone.
Brooke looked down at it as if she’d forgotten it was there. “No, my sister. She thinks I need to come home and face the music, so to speak. But…I need more time. I know running isn’t the answer, but until I have a better one, it’s what I’m going to stick with. I only need a couple more weeks.”
“What happens in a couple more weeks?”
Brooke started picking at the polish on her fingernail. “There’s a tour I was invited to open for. We’re supposed to announce the news and sign the contracts in two weeks. But”—she looked over at him—“I can’t sign it if I’m not there.”
Cole let out a breath. “I’m not tryin’ to sound like a dick here, but you are an adult, Brooke. You can just refuse to sign it.”
Brooke shrugged. “I can. But I won’t. My parents have an uncanny way of getting in my head. Always have. I can’t trust myself not to cave. The only way to keep them out of here,” she said as she tapped her temple with her finger, “is to keep them away from me entirely.”
They were both quiet for a minute. Cole was letting her words sink in. It wasn’t that he couldn’t relate to how deeply a parent could fuck up their child. Parental mind games weren’t foreign to him. It was harder to understand a grown adult running away instead of facing the problem head-on, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized his own actions could be interpreted in a similar way. And who the hell was he to judge anyway? No one was going to give him any awards for emotional maturity. “You wanna go back upstairs? My ass is falling asleep.”
Brooke looked at him like he was insane for a second before snorting out a laugh. “Yeah, mine too.”
He stood and then pulled Brooke to her feet. He kept hold of her hand all the way back to their room. They got ready for bed in silence, but when he slid into bed beside her, she turned toward him and laid her head on his chest. Wrapping his arm around her tightly, Cole gave her a soft kiss on the top of her head. “So I guess this means I’m stuck with you for at least two more weeks, huh?”
“Yup. At least.” She snuggled closer to him as if she were trying to burrow into his skin.
And damn if he didn’t like both her words and the feel of her beside him. But he couldn’t bring himself to cop to either thing out loud. Instead, he murmured “Okay” and hoped the way he held her was enough to say what his words didn’t.
Chapter Eleven
“Are we there yet?” Brooke had asked that same question at least five times in the last hour or so, mainly because she enjoyed seeing Cole roll his eyes or shake his head at her as he turned up the radio.
“You know how you’ll know when we’re there?” he asked over the Luke Bryan song.
It occurred to her that weeks ago she wouldn’t have known who sang this. And she definitely wouldn’t have enjoyed it. But somehow she was starting to like Cole’s choice in music almost as much as she was starting to like him. “How?” she asked back.
“We’ll actually be there. Unless you see a sign that says Arches National Park, we’re not there yet.
“Smartass,” she said with a laugh. “I thought you were gonna be serious.”
“I was. Actually,” he said, handing her his phone. “Can you look to see what the webcam looks like? We’re only about ten minutes away.”
“Webcam?” What the hell was he talking about? She took the phone from him as she waited for him to reply.
“The park has a webcam near the gate because it gets backed up sometimes. There’s an entrance road right off one ninety-one, and you’re not allowed to stop on the highway to wait to get into the park.”
“So do we just loop around or something until it clears?”
“Not sure if that’s easy to do or not. But check the webcam before you start panickin’.”
A few moments later, Brooke was on the park’s website scrolling through all of the tips and pictures. It looked absolutely beautiful, with natural stone arches of various textures and colors, beautiful sunsets. “It says the best time to go is the early morning or evening and that summer gets the most crowded. Did you see that when you looked on the site?”
“Yeah,” he answered casually.
“Then why are we here in the middle of the afternoon in August?”
Cole laughed. “Well, I don’t control the seasons, Princess. And I didn’t wanna leave any later this mo
rning because if we hit too much traffic, it might be too dark to go at all.”
She didn’t reply but continued to scroll for more information. “It says if the entrance road’s too crowded that it’s best to come back another time.”
“Check the webcam, Brooke,” Cole said again. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
“Says the person who brought us here during the absolute busiest time possible,” she said, causing Cole to laugh again. She was beginning to wonder if he did this shit for the sole purpose of driving her nuts, but she decided not to ask. The webcam took a while to load, but when it finally did, she turned the phone to face him. “Look. You see all those cars?”
Cole shot a glance in her direction. “Oh shit. It’s totally backed up,” he said, sounding way more shocked than he should’ve been. Then he shrugged. “We still gotta find someplace to stay anyway. Why don’t we come back in the morning or somethin’? We aren’t in any rush. And it’ll be better after a good night’s sleep. I’m beat anyway.”
“Your optimism should be way more impressive than it is,” she said dryly.
“Why thank you,” he said with a smile that couldn’t help but put one on her own face too.
Leaning against the seat, she rolled her head toward Cole. “Okay, tomorrow it is, then. She’d already grabbed Cole’s phone again and was using the GPS to find nearby hotels. She clicked on the one that had four stars and was only seven minutes away and hit Go. “Well, now I’ll need to figure out something to keep me occupied, since you’re exhausted and probably want to go right to sleep.”
“Whoa there a second. I didn’t say I was going to go right to sleep.”
The hand he put on her thigh had her hoping they found a hotel soon so she didn’t have to add the shoulder of a highway to her list of places she’d had sex in public. “Screw Arches Park,” she said. “Tell Mary Sue to speed it up.”
Cole barked out a laugh. “Trust me, if I could get Mary Sue to go any faster, I would.” He patted the dashboard gingerly, and it seemed to shake even more than it was already rattling from the high speed.
“She won’t go any faster?” Brooke asked. “All this time I thought you were just being cautious. I didn’t realize”—she leaned over to look at the speedometer—“that Mary’s max speed was sixty-seven. How old is this thing anyway? You never told me.”
“A lady never reveals her age.”
“Untrue. I’m twenty-four.”
“My statement stands,” Cole joked, and Brooke gave him a hard swat to his bicep.
“I’m a lady,” she said.
“You peed on the side of the road like fifteen miles back.”
Brooke laughed loudly, shifting in her seat so she could face him better. “Don’t pretend like you didn’t do that too.”
Cole shrugged. “I’m not. But I’m not the one claimin’ to be a lady.”
“That’s totally unfair. It’s a double-standard. Just because I don’t have a dick doesn’t mean I can’t go to the bathroom outside. What were we even talking about?” Brooke asked, wanting to steer the conversation in a different direction.
“Mary Sue.”
“Right. So you’re really not going to tell me how old your car is?”
“First of all, she’s not a car. She’s a truck. And second, she’s sensitive about her age. I don’t wanna embarrass her.”
“You realize she’s not alive, right? Because I thought you were kidding at first, but now I’m not so sure.”
Cole rubbed a hand over the worn leather of the steering wheel and let out a soft laugh. Letting an arm hang out of the window, he opened his hand so the air pressed against it as he drove. Suddenly he seemed to be somewhere else, like the road ahead of him might allow him to escape whatever he was thinking about.
“You okay?” she asked, mainly because she knew he wasn’t but didn’t want to ask a more specific question if he wasn’t ready to answer it.
Brooke watched Cole smooth his tongue over his teeth pensively. “She’s twenty-five,” he said, not letting his gaze leave the highway.
Something told her that if she remained silent, he’d fill it with whatever was on his mind, so she stayed quiet. Her eyes were on the road too, but she let them drift to Cole as he drove for another minute or so without speaking.
“My brother got her a few months before he passed.” That was all he said at first, but soon enough he spoke again. “Took him over a year of cuttin’ grass and baggin’ groceries before he had enough money to buy her. And then she didn’t even run. Least for a bit ’til he fixed her up.”
She remembered Cole mentioning his brother’s death, but all he’d said about it was that things had gotten worse after it.
“Brett didn’t even get a chance to really drive her before he died. Just up the street a few times even though my dad woulda lost it if he knew. Brett didn’t even have a permit, let alone a license. He died two weeks before he turned sixteen.”
Brooke hadn’t asked any questions when Cole had brought up his brother the first time, but now she found herself desperately wanting to know about him and about their father and about anything else Cole was willing to tell her. “What happened?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
Cole let his eyes leave the road long enough for them to focus on Brooke, and he wondered if she could see the pain behind them. He’d never told anyone the truth about what had happened that day, and he wasn’t sure he should now either. He’d held it in for over a decade—spent twelve years worrying about what might happen if anyone found out how Brett really died. But now he suddenly didn’t care. Maybe it was because he was so far from home or because Brooke had no connection to him or his life other than the short time they’d spent on the road together. Or maybe it was that she was so busy running from her own problems she wouldn’t give a shit about his.
Right now, the only thing that mattered was that he felt like if he held it in any longer, his chest might explode under the pressure. “It was my fault,” he said quietly after his eyes found the road again. Apparently finding a subtle way to begin the story wasn’t possible at that moment. Though logically he knew he wasn’t solely responsible for his brother’s death, Cole needed to say that sentence to someone more than he realized—like the weight of it was suddenly too much to carry now that he had the chance to put it down. And though his confession wasn’t the whole truth, the guilt he’d endured over his inaction that night made it true enough.
He didn’t look at Brooke because he was fearful of what he might see in her face or hear if he gave her the opportunity to speak.
So he kept talking. “My dad was an asshole. Is an asshole,” he corrected. “My mom died when I was four and Brett was seven. The memories I have of her are foggy, like some kinda dream I know I had but can’t quite remember. I do remember the funeral, though,” he said. “My dad drinking more that morning than I’d ever seen him drink in a whole day, him sobbing like a baby into the casket before the viewing. He didn’t know anyone saw him, and I think I was the only one who did.”
Cole considered pulling over on the side of the road to have this discussion because somehow it seemed weird to be revealing all this while driving down a highway. But he decided against it. Talking to Brooke about this was hard enough. He didn’t want to have to look at her the whole time while he said it. The road was a good distraction.
“You never said anything?” she asked. “Never to Brett or anyone else?”
Cole shook his head. “No. Wouldn’t have mattered anyway. I knew right then that things would never be the same again.”
Cole rubbed a rough hand over his forehead and then dragged it down his face before letting it settle back onto the cracked leather steering wheel. “My dad always had a temper, but I think my mom was able to get him to keep it in check. Brett always said he had a soft spot for her. And if she got upset when our dad was too hard on us, he’d back off. But without her around, his mean streaks got more frequent. And the alcohol only made things wor
se. His words turned into the occasional shove, and then…” He sighed heavily before continuing. “Then every argument turned physical.”
“You guys were so young,” Brooke said. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make it worse.”
“It’s fine. It was a long time ago.” He wished the assurance he gave Brooke made him feel better too, but he knew it wouldn’t. No amount of time and—now he was realizing—distance could repair the damage his dad had done. “We both tried to stay on his good side, but it was impossible. If he lost a job, it was our fault. If he stumbled walking down the steps because he’d been drinkin’, it was our fault. Everything was our fault.”
Brooke was silent, and he couldn’t blame her. There wasn’t much to say about his fucked-up life. Some of Cole’s close friends knew how violent his dad could get, but few knew the full extent of his rage.
“Once Brett was a teenager, he joined the football team and started working out. He got bigger. And when he could start fighting back, he did. Especially when our dad laid a hand on me. Brett always got annoyed with me, but that didn’t change the fact that I was still his little brother, and he did whatever he could to protect me. Anyway, the night he died, my dad had come home from the bar, or wherever the hell he’d been, to find the kitchen a mess. I mean, it was always a mess with three guys living there, but Brett had made dinner for himself and me, and the spaghetti sauce had boiled over and gotten all over the stove. I’d said I’d clean everything up since Brett had cooked, but I forgot. I went outside to play and then watched TV and fell asleep. I was twelve years old, but I still should’ve known better.”
Cole caught a glimpse of Brooke, and she looked like she wanted to say something but ultimately decided against it. “When my dad got home, he started yellin’ about how we had no respect for everything he worked to get us and a bunch of other shit. When he said our mom would’ve been disappointed in us, I jumped out of bed. I’m not even sure what I was gonna do. But I knew I couldn’t just lie there and let him bring her into that.”
Misadventures with a Country Boy Page 11