Total pages in book: 183
Estimated words: 174715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 874(@200wpm)___ 699(@250wpm)___ 582(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 174715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 874(@200wpm)___ 699(@250wpm)___ 582(@300wpm)
I stare after him, stunned that he’s walked away. That’s not Cole, not with me. He stands. He fights, and now I’m standing, pacing, trying to understand what just happened. I replay the entire conversation and stop dead in my tracks. I used the worst tool possible to get to him today. I threatened to leave at least a part of our life, when losing me is what he’s battling and while I apologized I didn’t say what he needed to hear.
I race up the stairs and enter the bathroom to hear the shower running. I step into the bathroom to find Cole under the spray of water. I quickly strip and walk to the door, opening it and joining him. His hand runs over his hair, smoothing it from his face. “I shouldn’t have resigned. I don’t want to leave. I love working with you. I love every second. I was just worried about you. I was just—I need to protect you, too. Because that’s what we do. We protect each other. Cole, I—”
I never finish that sentence. He grabs me and pulls me to him, his mouth covering mine in a passionate, hungry kiss before he says, “Don’t ever say you’re leaving again. Not like that.”
“I won’t. I promise. But promise me—”
“I won’t promise not to make decisions based on you, Lori. I won’t. But I will tell you that having you in my life, worrying over you, isn’t a bad thing. It’s everything. Like you’re everything.”
His mouth closes down on mine again, and with a lick of his tongue, I’m against the wall, and he’s lifting my leg, pressing inside me. The fighting is over, and now the fucking begins. And that’s what this is. He’s driving inside me, lifting me and pumping inside me, and every angry word we’ve spoken today evaporates into passion and need. Into his mouth on my mouth, his lips on my lips, his hand on my breast, my nipple, everywhere. He is touching me everywhere, and when it’s over, we stand under the water, our foreheads pressed together in silence, that good kind of silence that says we don’t need words. We just need each other and there is a shift between us, an understanding that we can fight and we can disagree, even under terrible circumstances, but we are one, and that cannot be broken. I think in all our many separate broken pieces, we both needed to know that together, we’re whole.
Chapter sixty-eight
Lori
It’s a long time after that shower when Cole and I sit on the living room floor with Chinese food in front of us, me in one of his T-shirts, and him in his pajama bottoms. “So, it went well with Gabe Maxwell?”
“Actually, I saw Reid, his brother.”
“Oh,” I say. “He’s the one Cat has real issues with. She says he’s a lot like her father and that’s not a compliment.”
“I don’t know the details of Cat’s relationship with her father or with Reid, but her father is, or was before his stroke, one of the best corporate financial attorneys in the business. In that light, Reid is indeed like his father.”
“He has a heart. He hides it well, but tonight, I saw a little glimpse of what’s beneath. He’ll do right by the people we want to do right by and in a big way.”
I set my fork down, seeing a chance to get him to talk about what he never talks about. “Cat and her dad, I think—well, I think they are a lot like you and your dad. He wanted her to be like him. She isn’t. She never will be. They didn’t speak for a very long time, but he had a stroke, and she started to rebuild a relationship, a fragile one, but a relationship.”
He sets his fork down. “You want to know about my father.”
“I want to know how it affects you. It’s still fresh, Cole. Less than two years. I’m wondering if that box you thought sealed only opened because his death cracked it open. You were ripe for an emotional stumble. All this has to be a trigger for you. I mean—when did you start hating him?”
He inhales and lets it out. “You’re right,” he surprises me by saying. “His death is likely a trigger. Bastard that he is, he probably did crack open the box. He made me think about his life, my life, my mother.” He moves to sit on the couch, lowering his head and running his hand over his neck.
I quickly join him, scooting close, my leg and hip pressed to his. “When my mother had her stroke right after my father died,” I say. “I had this freak-out over being alone. There’s just something about no longer having a living parent on this earth that still steals my breath just thinking about it.”