“Yeah.” He chuckled, sliding his hand up to rest between my breasts. “There’s been a lot of clues.”
“Want to help me out then?”
Cole’s lips coasted over the curve of my cheek. “For a while I thought you were the one who got away. That one day I would somehow piece it all back together, but I was wrong. You were the one.”
I might’ve stopped breathing.
He curled the tips of his fingers around my chin. “You are the one. Took me a long time to realize that. I kept telling myself that I was just focused on my job and that’s why I was never really there with Irene. Then I told myself that I hadn’t tried hard enough to make the marriage work, because it hadn’t been her. She’d done everything right. It had always been me. Me and you.”
“Cole,” I whispered.
His thumb swiped my lower lip. “When you left, you were still here. Like a damn ghost haunting my every step and thought. I never really moved on. Wasn’t going to. You had a piece of me.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I rolled onto my side and planted myself against him, burying my face in his neck.
“Irene didn’t know about you and us. Never felt right telling her about you. That’s why she believed it was the job, but it wasn’t. Just was that a big piece of me was always with you.”
“Oh God,” I murmured, clutching his shoulder with the hand that wasn’t wedged between us. Tears welled up in my eyes. “I . . . it was the same. It is the same for me.”
Somehow he managed to circle both arms around me, and our legs tangled together. Cole held me tight, and as I lay there, sated and happy, something occurred to me that should’ve many years ago. With every man I’d been with since the Groom, I held them back, built up walls that no one had really tried to scale or to knock down. I’d always believed that I’d been open, but I knew I hadn’t. Not until now. But Cole had seen that wall and he knocked at it until a crack formed, and that fissure spread, bringing that wall down. It was more than just him though. It was also me. I let him in.
I was ready.
The riot of emotions I was feeling were good, and a small smiled tugged at the corners of my lips. I was finally ready.
It wasn’t too much longer before I fell asleep and for the first time in a very long time, I slept without nightmares.
Chapter 21
Sunday was a surprisingly normal day despite everything that had happened. Cole was up before me, and that meant he had coffee ready for when I stumbled out of the bedroom. For that alone, he was truly a keeper.
He became even more of a keeper throughout the day. He helped out around the inn, taking care of small maintenance issues Mom hadn’t gotten around to hiring someone to fix.
After lunch—lunch he’d run out and grabbed for us—I found him in the bathroom of one of the rooms, half his body under the sink. One booted foot rocking to some unheard rhythm. Metal clanged off metal.
“What are you doing?” I asked, leaning against the frame of the door.
“Fixing a pipe.” His foot stilled. “Your mom mentioned she hadn’t been putting guests in this room because the pipe leaks after the water is turned on.”
I bit down on my lip but it didn’t stop my smile. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I don’t mind,” he replied. “Just a washer that needs to be replaced. Nothing major.”
“That’s sweet of you to do,” I said, my gaze traveling over his long legs. He was wearing jeans that faded over his knees. “Thank you.”
There was a pause. “Thank me later, babe.”
I started to ask how and then I completely understood how he wanted me to thank him. My entire body flushed hot. Memories of last night flooded me. “I can . . . I can do that.”
Cole chuckled from under the sink. “Oh yeah, baby, you can.”
Needless to say I was distracted most of the day.
Cole’s friend showed up in the later part of the afternoon, and he was there until the evening, wiring my apartment along with Mom’s. Both of us got a new key fob out of the deal.
No press showed up, but every time I heard the door open, I waited for that shady journalist to pop back up or for Detective Conrad to come by. Tyron never showed to ask more questions. Later that night, I admitted to Cole that I’d expected the detective to be around, but Cole explained that was common. Tyron had asked all that he needed to at the time, and if he’d missed something, he’d be back.
Cole knocked all thoughts of the detective out of my head when we were in bed. First it was with his hands, his mouth, and then every part of him. Then afterward, when we lay in each other’s arms, he did it again.
“I want you to meet my parents,” he announced.
I was running my fingers over his hand, tracing the line of the bones from knuckle to knuckle. My hand stilled. “Come again?”
“You never got to meet them before,” he continued. “And I want you to meet them.”
“I . . .” I trailed off, because I had no idea what I was about to say.
He threw his long leg over mine. “You’re not planning to go anywhere soon, are you?”
“No.”
“Then I think it’s a great idea for you to meet my parents.”
Mulling that over, I agreed after a few moments. No actual plans were made, and it still felt a little weird thinking and planning for the whole meet-the-parents deal when I was receiving severed fingers in the mail, but I knew it was important to continue living. Not just existing like I had been immediately after the Groom or, in reality, how I’d existed the last ten years. So it was okay to make plans and to live.
Cole woke me up Monday morning, before the first light of dawn had begun to splash across the floors, with his hand between my thighs and his mouth on my breasts.
So I wasn’t complaining.
Not when he flipped me onto my belly and lifted me up onto my knees with an arm around my waist—there was nothing but an excited gasp parting my lips. And when he entered me from behind, complaining was the last thing on my mind.
“Grab the headboard,” he ordered in a rough voice.
Doing what I was told, I held on to the smooth wood. The fullness was insane. He started off with a languid pace, but then he gripped my waist. A moan slid out of me as he started moving fast and hard. My hips pushed back to meet his thrusts. He felt great. Amazing, actually. One hand reached around, swiping his thumb along the knot of nerves, and I came apart, the rippling sensations rolling over me. Grunting, he pumped his hips and then buried deep.
Cole brought me down to the bed, his weight half on me, and I didn’t mind that at all as we both lay there, me on my belly, our bodies tangled together, being surrounded by his weight, his smell—everything. Completely sated, I was floating in that blissed-out half-awake state. His hand trailed down the center of my back and over my hip. “You okay?”
“I’m dead. But I’m dead in a good way,” I mumbled.
He chuckled. “I’m going to head out. Got to head to work. I’ll call you later, okay?”