Cooper

by Lagomarsino, Giulia

“You stay the fuck away from me. We have nothing to discuss. You don’t ever go near Kayla again and you don’t approach me for any reason. If you see me in town, you turn the fuck around and leave. Do you understand me?”

  I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. How could I promise to walk away from the man I loved? He was asking too much, like asking me to stop breathing. He slammed me back against the shelving again and I started crying hard, not able to believe that it had really come to this.

  “Do you understand?”

  I nodded as my vision blurred. He was there, and then he was gone. Just like that, out of my life. I ran for the end of the aisle and watched as he walked out of the store without so much as a backward glance.

  ✯✯✯✯✯

  “Sweetie?”

  I was still standing there, staring at the door where Coop had walked out. I couldn’t tear my eyes off the door. I kept hoping and praying that despite his harsh words that he would turn around and tell me he really did love me and he couldn’t live without me. He would tell me he was sorry, that he didn’t really mean anything he said, and then he would ask me to come home with him.

  “Sweetie?”

  I felt Delaney’s arms wrap around me and then she came to stand in front of me, blocking my view of the door and severing my connection with Coop. He was really gone.

  “He left me,” I said softly as a few tears slipped down my cheeks.

  Her eyes turned sad and she nodded. “I know, sweetie.”

  “He was here.” My voice cracked and another tear slipped down my face. “He was here and he…now he’s gone.”

  “I know this sucks, but you will get through this.”

  “How?”

  She sighed quietly. “I don’t know, but I’ll be here, okay?”

  “He hates me,” I cried. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I don’t know how to make it right.”

  “You can’t.”

  I knew that, and that was what was breaking my heart. There was no way for me to fix this. I had broken us and there was no way for me to come back from that. Coop would be out of my life forever and I would have to move on without him. Could I stick around here without him, knowing that there was every possibility that I would run into him and have to walk away? I had to. I couldn’t leave, because even if I only ever got to look at him, it was better than never seeing him again. Maybe in time he would talk to me. Maybe in time he would take me back.

  “Sweetie, he’s not going to.”

  My eyes finally met hers and I realized that I said that out loud. Her eyes were pitying, but she wasn’t running from me. She was standing beside me, which meant that she didn’t hate me. Not yet, anyway. I swiped at my eyes and glanced around the shop, seeing several people staring at me, pretending to shop. I looked back outside and saw that it was dark. How long had I been standing here?

  “How did you find me?”

  “The manager took your phone when you didn’t respond. He knew you used to work for Reed Security, so he found Cap’s number. But he was in a meeting, so he sent me.”

  I nodded and finally took the first step toward the door. It hurt, not just because I had been just standing there for hours, but because I was walking away from the last place that I had seen Coop. The last place he touched me, even if it was in anger. But I had to keep walking. I couldn’t just stay in the hardware store for the rest of my life. Delaney led me out of the store and back home. I forgot about my plans and went to my room. I just wanted to go to sleep and never wake up.

  I felt the bed dip as Delaney sat down beside me. She ran her hands through my hair and it was soothing, making me just a little better. “I know this hurts, but Becky, you have to move on with life. You can’t just break down.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “I know. And I know this sucks, but you can talk to me.”

  What would I say that she hadn’t already heard? I already told her everything that happened, and I was sure that Tony had more than filled her in. Would I just keep repeating to her all the shit about how my heart was breaking? That I didn’t want to get up and do anything because it hurt too much?

  “Maybe tomorrow,” I said, pulling the covers up to my shoulders. And maybe that was true. Maybe tomorrow would be a better day. Maybe tomorrow it wouldn’t hurt so much. Maybe tomorrow I would work on forgiving myself.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Coop

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  I barely turned to see Cap storming toward me before he swung and knocked me on my ass. I didn’t even have time to think about defending myself before he swung again and again. I finally realized that I was getting my ass kicked and decided to fight back. I flung him off me and tackled him to the ground, but he rolled me and got in another punch before I got him in the jaw.

  I felt arms wrapping around me, pulling me away from him and saw Cazzo pulling Cap away from me. I fought to get back to him and kick his ass. I had no clue what I was being attacked for, but I was still itching for a fight.

  “How the fuck could you do that to her?” Cap spat.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about Becky! I’m talking about you slamming her into the fucking shelves at the hardware store with your fucking hand wrapped around her neck!”

  The arms behind me released me and shoved me to the ground. I barely caught sight of Jackson standing there before his boot caught me in the stomach.

  “What the fuck?” he spat.

  “She keeps fucking trying to talk to me, to make this better. But she can’t make this better,” I shouted as I got to my feet. “Do you know what it’s like to have the woman that-”

  “Don’t even start that shit again,” Cap interrupted. “I get that you’re pissed and you can’t forgive her, but you don’t ever fucking put your hands on her again. I’ve given you everything you’ve asked for. I banned her from the fucking property. I haven’t told her anything about Kayla. I haven’t passed on her messages to you. But she’s fucking dying over there and you just fucking crushed her.”

  “She fucking deserves it!” I shouted. “She deserves so much more than that!”

  “Right,” he said sarcastically. “Because you’ve never made a fucking mistake in your life.”

  “Not one like the one she made.”

  “Yeah? And so she deserves to be shoved around and treated like shit by you? She stood in that fucking hardware store for hours. She was fucking staring at the door you walked out of. You fucking broke her, and she was doing a good enough job of that on her own!”

  “So, I’m supposed to just forgive her? Forget what she did? My kid could have died!”

  Cap shook his head at me and took a step back. “What the fuck happened to you, Coop? You went from a man that couldn’t stand to be around anyone to a man that was actually fucking happy. Now you’re just pathetic. I wouldn’t even call you a man, because no man would do what you just did to the woman he used to love, or any woman at all.” He shook his head again and picked up his phone that had fallen on the floor. “She made a mistake, but we’re all human, Coop.”

  Cazzo gave me a harsh look before leaving and Jackson had already turned his back on me. The slightest twinge of guilt settled in my stomach, making me think that just maybe I had gone overboard with my anger toward Becky. Were they right? Had I been too harsh with her? Fuck, I was a mess and I couldn’t think straight about this anymore. The only one that I really felt was on my side was Tony.

  I swiped the blood that was dripping from my mouth and headed off to find him. I wasn’t sure why he was defending my actions to the other guys, but I had heard it for myself. And he told me about how he went off on Becky when he was over with Delaney one day. At the time, I had been proud that I had a friend defending me and my daughter so ruthlessly, but now I was wondering if he was doing it more out of loyalty than righteousness.

  “What happened?” Tony asked as I walked up to him.

&nbs
p; “I need to know something. Do you think my anger toward Becky is justified?”

  “Are you fucking kidding me? How can you even ask that? There’s no fucking way that you should forgive that bitch.”

  I flinched at the name, something that really shouldn’t happen if I hated her as much as I said I did. “But why? Do you feel that way out of loyalty to me? Or is it because you actually think what she did was unforgivable?”

  He seemed to consider this for a moment, but when he spoke, there was no hesitation in his voice. “The way I see it, we’re supposed to protect one another. You have to trust that the person you’re on a team with has your back and your best interests at heart. The same goes for a relationship. She not only broke your trust, but you can’t tell me that a single thing she did was in the best interests of you or Kayla. It was underhanded and not only put Kayla at risk, but the rest of the company. I used to think I was a pretty forgiving person, but after seeing the way Kayla looked that night, and seeing how it tore you to shreds, there’s not a single ounce of sympathy in me for Becky.”

  I nodded, but something about that didn’t sit right with me. It sounded exactly how I had been feeling, and if I didn’t know better, it was like it was a recording of me. So, why did it feel off? And then it hit me. It was because everything about what he said was about a malicious person, but I knew who Becky was, and she was the most loyal person I knew. There wasn’t a malicious bone in her body.

  For the first time in weeks, I felt shame and a deep hole in my chest for how I had acted. I was cruel to the woman I loved, and even if she was wrong, did she really deserve what I had dished out? I couldn’t say that I was proud of how I handled things, and I was beginning to think that my seventeen year old daughter was smarter when it came to the art of forgiveness than I was.

  ✯✯✯✯✯

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked Kayla. “I could have her come here.”

  “No.” She took a deep breath and blew it out. “I want to do this. I need to leave the property at some point.”

  “But you don’t have to do this. It could be later or we could go someplace more public. And you could wait a little longer to see her. Hell, you don’t have to-”

  “Dad,” she said in exasperation. “You said I could go see Becky, so let me do this.”

  I put the truck in drive, though I really didn’t want to. Hell, I wasn’t sure why I agreed to this when I was still so fucking pissed. But something about the way Tacos repeated my inner thoughts made me realize that maybe Kayla needed this just as much as Becky did.

  “I don’t know for sure that she’ll be home,” I reminded Kayla.

  “You could just call her,” she grumbled.

  “I don’t have her phone number anymore.”

  It was a lie. I had her number memorized and it would be etched in my brain for the rest of my life. That’s what sucks about falling for someone so hard; there’s no escaping her.

  “Right, well, like I said, you don’t have to come in. I just want to talk to her, and I don’t think she’ll be comfortable with you inside. Especially if you’re going to glare at her every five minutes.”

  “It wouldn’t be every five minutes.”

  “Fine, every thirty seconds.”

  I rolled my eyes. My kid knew me too well. “Like I said, we’re not staying long, so say what you need to and then we’ll go home.”

  “You know, I could wait in the truck and you could talk to her too. Maybe there’s something the two of you need to talk about.”

  My grip tightened on the steering wheel and I clenched my jaw tight so I wouldn’t start spouting all my shit about hating Becky. “There’s nothing I need to say to her.”

  She sighed heavily, but didn’t say anything else as I drove to Becky’s house. I pulled in, slightly disappointed to see that her car was here. It was the middle of the fucking day. What was she doing home? I had counted on her being gone to work at this point, and hoped that I could just have Kayla leave a note for her.

  Kayla was out of the truck before I could stop her and rushed to the door. Instinct told me to go check out the house first, so I shoved the door open and caught up to Kayla just as the door was swinging open. Becky looked shocked to see me, and I was afraid she was going to start crying or begging for me to come back to her. I shoved past her without a word and quickly walked through the house. The normally clean house was a mess. Papers were all over the fucking place, food containers littered the living room table, and her desk was covered with shit. You couldn’t even see her computer. And then there was her bedroom. I wasn’t sure when the last time she did laundry was, but by the looks of it, all her clothes were currently on the floor.

  I quickly finished checking the house and then shoved past Becky and Kayla without a word. As I got out to my truck, I found that I couldn’t sit inside and wait for Kayla. I was too worked up at the moment. Seeing Becky’s house in such disarray was disturbing to say the least. And her desk…Rob’s words came back to me, when he told me that she couldn’t work on her computer. Was she working at all? By the looks of it, she wasn’t doing much of anything, but causing a mess. It gutted me to know that she was this upset, even though a large part of me felt she deserved it. This was Becky we were talking about. She had been my sunshine, but now that light had been snuffed out.

  Delaney’s car pulled in next to my truck and she got out, shocked to see me standing there. “Uh, hey. What are you doing here?”

  “Kayla wanted to talk to Becky.”

  “Oh,” she said, her face falling in disappointment. “I thought maybe you were here to…” Her face pinched as she thought and I desperately wanted to know what she was thinking. I wasn’t sure why I cared, but it was along the same lines as that feeling in my gut, telling me that what was happening here was wrong.

  “What?”

  She shrugged. “I was just hoping that you could talk to her.”

  “About what?”

  “Well,” she laughed humorlessly. “I would go for a talk about cleanliness at the moment.”

  I blew out a breath, shaking my head slightly. “How long has it been like that?”

  “Pretty much since that night. I go and clean up after her, but I’ve been working a lot this week. It’s worse than it usually is.”

  “What about her job?”

  “What job?” she asked in mock confusion. “She hasn’t been to work in weeks. Don had to replace her.”

  That tight pain in my chest was strangling me now, and it took everything in me to remember why I couldn’t feel bad for Becky.

  “Maybe you should talk to her.”

  “You…” She laughed at me, like I was in on some joke with her. “You think I haven’t tried talking to her? I talk to her every day. Cap has been over here countless times too, but we’re not the ones that can help her. Only you can do that.”

  “I can’t,” I said fiercely. “I won’t. She did this to herself. The rest of us have to live with her decisions, and she needs to also.”

  “The difference is that you and Kayla have each other. You have a whole bunch of people supporting you. Becky has no one.”

  “You just said she has you and Cap.”

  “Yeah, she’s known me six months and I’m not here during the day. And Cap comes over when he can, but it’s not like he can drop everything to be with her. She needs someone to kick her ass and motivate her to get back to life.”

  “It can’t be me. Why can’t you see that? I can’t even fucking look at her right now, but you want me to go in there and make her feel better?”

  “Well, somebody has to. She’s fucking drowning! Can’t you see that? Do you even care? Are you so self-righteous that you can’t see that the woman you love is killing herself slowly?”

  Was she? She was messy and she wasn’t working, but that didn’t mean that I had to step in and save her. I was nobody to her anymore. Anything I tried to say to her would only come out in anger. That would only make everyth
ing worse for her.

  “Look, I get that you care about her, but I’m not the guy to make this better. If I go in there, I’ll say a bunch of shit that will only hurt her more. You have to find another way.”

  She was about to say something else, but I’d had enough. I stormed for the house and threw the door open. “Kayla,” I barked out, making both her and Becky jump. “We’re leaving.”

  “Wait,” Becky said, hustling off to her bedroom. Kayla shot a glare at me, so I fucking waited, even though I didn’t want to. She came back out with a small gym bag and my lock box for the gun I had stored here. She didn’t look at me as she walked over to me and shoved the items in my direction. I grabbed it from her, trying my best not to look at her, but I couldn’t help it. Some sick part of me wanted to really see her. I felt Kayla slip past me and I heard the door close.

  Becky stayed stock still in front of me, her eyes averted to the ground. I could see the tears on her face and the slouch to her shoulders. She was fucking hurting, and as much as I tried to ignore that, I just couldn’t. I cleared my throat and took a step back.

  “I’ll bring Kayla by next week.”

  I turned and walked out the door. It was all I could give her right now. I just prayed it was enough to help drag her out of the hole she had dug for herself to hide in.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Becky

  “What did he say?” Delaney asked as soon as she walked through the door. I was still stunned. I just stood there, trying to figure out what just happened and what I should do.

  “He…he said he would bring Kayla by next week.”

  “But what else did he say?” she asked impatiently.

  “Nothing.” I shook my head slightly as I replayed those words over and over in my head. There hadn’t been anger in his voice, but it wasn’t friendly either. It was just…Coop. A sob tore from my chest, ripping me in two. Deep down, I knew it was a good thing that he was at least letting me see Kayla, but it was almost more painful. She was everything to Coop, and I was nothing. Seeing her reminded me in every way of him, and I didn’t know how to keep seeing her without being able to see him and touch him. I was nothing but a nuisance to him. I saw how he looked around the house and judged me for how I was living, but I couldn’t give anything else right now. I had no energy. I had no will to push myself further than in front of the TV, which was a step up from the bed.