by Naima Simone
Was that it? Was Cole running from his own thoughts, desperate to get out of his head?
“I was visiting my wife and son,” he said, his voice ground glass and gravel.
Pain blasted her in a fiery backdraft.
She swayed, the world expanding then contracting like a snapped rubber band. He’d been the person in the cemetery. The man standing under the tree, alone. Grieving.
Lovely, kind Tonia. His love since high school.
She was dead.
And son. Another wave of stunned pain swelled and broke over her. Her hand rose toward her own belly. Cole had not only lost the love of his life, but a son, too.
Only a hard hand clasped above her elbow prevented her from stumbling backward.
“Sydney.” The sharp whip of her name penetrated the roar clouding her head, steadied her trembling knees. Cole gripped her other arm, and she lifted her head, scanning his frown and the worry darkening his eyes. “Sydney, are you okay? Do you need to sit down? Can I get you—”
“No, no,” she interrupted him, shaking her head, embarrassment and pain mingling like the best of friends. “I’m fine. I just...” She trailed off.
What could she say? What was there to say in this situation? She flashed back to when Carlin died. The platitudes of “I’m so sorry for your loss” and “She’s in a better place” and “God works in mysterious ways” had bombarded her, and Sydney had wanted to howl her fury and agony at every person who’d uttered those inadequate condolences. They’d been acid poured into an open wound.
Because Carlin had belonged there with Sydney, with their parents who loved her more than anything—more than the daughter they’d been left with. And what merciful God would allow a thirteen-year-old to suffer for years from cancer only to take her away? Sydney hadn’t—didn’t—call His ways mysterious; she called them cruel.
“I didn’t know,” she finally murmured. “I’m sorry. How long?”
“Two years.” Those shadows in his gaze thickened, swallowing the gold for a moment.
She nodded. Licked her suddenly dry lips. “I don’t know exactly the depth of the grief you’ve suffered, but with...” Again, she trailed off. She might have thought of Carlin over and over again since she’d crossed the town limits, but she hadn’t spoken her sister’s name in eighteen long years. “I won’t lie and promise you that it goes away completely. But it does become tolerable after a while. And then there will be the day when you only think about them five times instead of fifty.” The corner of her mouth lifted in a faint half smile. “And then, there will come the time when their memory brings more happiness than pain and guilt. When you get there, you’ll let me know how it feels, okay?”
Because she hadn’t yet reached that plateau. But Cole had always been strong, seemingly indomitable. With the huge, loving Dennison clan behind him, she had zero doubts he would get there. She should know. His sister Leontyne had been a wonderful friend to Sydney before she left Rose Bend.
His lashes briefly lowered, and he squeezed her arms before releasing her. “How long are you in town?” he asked, not answering her question. “Leo is going to lose her mind when she finds out you’re here. Maybe you can do something about dragging her away from the inn. God knows, she’s twenty-seven going on seventy-seven with all the responsibility she piles on herself.”
“Leo? I-faked-the-swine-flu-to-get-out-of-work Leo?” Sydney gaped. “Did Rose Bend drop into an alternate universe while I was away? And did you check the seams along her hairline to make sure it’s really her and not some body-snatching clone?”
He snorted, and though it wasn’t a laugh, for a second, the shadows thinned. “You know what? I didn’t check. I’ll have to get Wolf to help me yank her away from the laundry and hold her down so we can make sure.” An evil glint gleamed in his gaze, and Sydney laughed at the image of Cole and his older brother wrestling Leo to the ground. That would be a battle she’d pay ticket fare to see.
“Whatever you do, don’t tell her I suggested it. I know some things might’ve changed here, but somehow I’m doubting her bloodthirsty need for payback is one of them.”
“Not even a little bit,” he agreed. “But back to you. How long are you here? A week? Two?”
The sigh escaped her before she could trap it. “I don’t know,” she hedged, glancing down and sweeping her hand down her baby bump. Just touching her rounded stomach comforted her, grounded her. “But since I have a good part of my life stashed away in my car, I’m guessing more than one or two weeks,” she drawled with a soft chuckle.
But like before, her teasing slammed against a wall of silence.
Wary, she tipped her head back.
Stark agony widened his haunted gaze, tautened his light brown skin and flattened his full lips into a grim line.
His gaze fastened on her belly.
Understanding crashed into her. He’d lost a child; she couldn’t imagine how that affected him. How he could bear being around children when all he probably thought about was his son who should be there with him.
“Cole,” she whispered.
“You’re pregnant,” he stated the obvious, tone flat.
Just moments ago, delight had colored his voice, his smile, his eyes. Now, there was nothing.
An ache bloomed in her chest. As inappropriate as it might be, she missed that happiness. How many people in this town would greet her return with joy instead of curiosity, side-eye and gossip? She could count them on one hand and still have about two fingers left over.
Before she left this place to go to her parents and face their disappointment, she needed that pleasure lighting his amber eyes again.
Hell, even his pain was preferable to this, this...emptiness.
“Yes.” She lifted her chin. Curling her hand around her stomach, she cradled the swell. As if protecting her baby from his coldness. His rejection. “I’m a little over four months along.”
His expression remained shuttered, a smooth, blank mask. But the muscle along his jaw bounced like a jackhammer.
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” she murmured. Then, on a sigh, she swept her hand over her head, fingers bumping into the large, bound puff at the top. “Listen, Cole...”
“Welcome home, Sydney,” he interrupted. “I need to go, but it was good seeing you again.”
He didn’t grant her the opportunity to reply. With a last nod, he pivoted on his heel and strode away, back down the rise, past the cemetery, disappearing from sight.
She continued to stare at the empty path for several seconds. What the hell had just happened? Spinning back around, she focused her gaze upon the now rapidly setting sun. But the peace and solitude of the view and the churchyard had vanished like early morning mist.
“It’s going to be okay,” she quietly reassured her baby as if he or she could hear her fervent words. Some books said babies could hear in the womb, though probably not this early in her pregnancy. But Sydney could still pretend the words were for her child instead of for herself. Pretend that Cole’s abrupt switch toward her hadn’t caused hurt to echo through her.
Lifting her shoulders high, she rolled them back. Envisioning his aloofness and cold dismissal tumbling away from shoulders that already carried too much. She didn’t have room for anything else.
So, Coltrane Dennison would have to take a back seat to her pending single motherhood, enduring her parents’ anger and frustration, establishing a new home, a new future. Finding her place.
Forcing her shoulders to remain straight, she followed the path Cole had taken. Past the church. Back through town. To her car.
To her reckoning.
Another thing pregnancy had apparently transformed her into: dramatic.
Shaking her head, she slid into the driver’s seat and cranked the engine.
Still... If this first encounter was any in
dication of how her return to Rose Bend would go, she would need to buckle up.
Because this ride was going to be bumpy as hell.
CHAPTER TWO
COLTRANE SLAMMED HIS wrapped fists into the punching bag. The jarring impact of each blow vibrated up his wrists and arms, settling into his shoulders. Bouncing on the balls of his feet, he circled the suspended bag. His brain comprehended that he jabbed the equipment over and over. But in his soul—where he disappeared when the pain, grief and anger swelled so high he imagined drowning under its destructive lure—he swung at the Fates, at Life, at the merciless universe that had flipped his world on its ass. Then laughed.
He drew short of cursing God.
His biological mom and his adoptive mom were both stalwart Catholics, and going off on God was a blasphemous line he couldn’t bring himself to cross. Besides, he wasn’t some biblical Jacob, wrestling with the Lord until He blessed him. Cole had already been cursed, condemned. Instead of giving him a disjointed hip, God had left him dislocated from the fairy-tale life he’d lived with his wife, Tonia, and their soon-to-be-born and already adored son. Cole’s existence had been broken into two halves. Heaven and hell.
And hell was this gray place, devoid of joy, of peace. He’d become a full-time resident of that place.
His hard breaths reverberated off the cement walls of his rental cottage as he shifted away from the swinging bag. He dragged an arm over his forehead, swiping away the sweat dripping into his eyes. Usually, exercise grounded him, allowed him to release the overwhelming emotion that built up inside him like a seething, rumbling volcano. Right after Tonia and their son—Mateo Seamus Dennison, named after both of Cole’s fathers—died in childbirth, and Cole had sat, curled up in the corner of the nursery they’d decorated together, with a gun clasped in his hands, he’d admitted he needed to find a way to relieve the pressure, to release his grief and rage. The next day, he’d turned the gun in to the local police station, moved out of the house he’d shared with Tonia into one of his parents’ rental cottages and hung the punching bag in the garage. And he’d thrown himself back into his family law practice.
That’s where he should be now. Or down at the town hall where he had his own office as Rose Bend’s newly elected mayor. The town’s first nonwhite mayor. Damn, he’d been in the position for almost a year now, and at times, he still asked himself, How in the hell did I get here? But he knew the how and the why.
He was no longer a husband whose purpose was to protect his wife and their world. So now, he’d channeled that instinct into protecting the community that had been so important to both of them. He intended to do everything he could to make Rose Bend grow and continue to be a safe, beautiful and thriving haven for its residents.
Everything he did came back to Tonia and Mateo.
Besides, his law practice and mayoral responsibilities kept him busy and, more importantly, distracted. At least during his waking hours. It was those lonely, seemingly endless hours of the night when the silence deafened him, and the right side of the bed taunted him with its cruel emptiness. Then, his mind raced and refused to slow down. That’s when the memories—no longer kept at bay by duties, phone calls and people—crept in. He recoiled from the pain of them, even as he stretched ravenous fingers toward them.
Grief was like a drug.
It trapped him in its claws, dragging him down so deep, he couldn’t see his way out of it. Didn’t want to. Didn’t want to leave the dark bosom even as it slowly asphyxiated him. Slowly stole who he once was, until he was an insubstantial shadow of his former self. Because grief, in its way, was solace. It was connection to the ones he’d lost. While mired deep in it, he could forget the real world where Tonia and their son no longer existed. He could remain in the alternate universe of the past where he’d been happy. Whole.
Every morning, he had to claw his way back from the abyss.
So far, he’d won the battle. But there were days when he emerged more scarred and worn than others.
Today had been one of them. And though he should’ve been down at city hall going over the last-minute details of the town’s annual motorcycle ride and rally, he’d been at Tonia’s and Mateo’s graves. And then he’d bumped into Sydney Collins.
Grinding his teeth together, Cole advanced on the punching bag once more and jabbed at it. Again. And again. As if each punch would drive thoughts of the woman he hadn’t seen in almost a decade from his mind. The beautiful, wild, hurting girl she’d been had matured into a stunning woman.
Thick, dark brown hair that formed a crown of curls on top of her head. Smooth, walnut-brown skin. Big, chocolate eyes with a dense fringe of long lashes. The mouth that had been too sensual for a girl now fit...and would have a lesser man imagining all the things the woman had learned to do with it. The petite frame with curves a blind man couldn’t miss.
And she was pregnant.
A ghostly hand seized him by the throat, squeezing, and his trembling arms dropped to his sides like three-hundred-pound weights. He staggered back a couple of steps, his feet as heavy and unwieldy as his suddenly useless arms.
“Whoa, Cole. Jesus. You all right?” A big, hard hand steadied him as his brother appeared before him, a frown tugging down his thick eyebrows over green eyes swimming with concern. “What the fuck, man? Here.”
A bottle of water smacked Cole in the chest, and Cole reflexively closed his fingers around the room-temperature drink. Shaking his head, he concentrated on shrugging off the sense of suffocation and drew in a breath, twisting the cap off the bottle and downing a gulp. The liquid slid over his dry tongue and down his tight throat. Like a man crawling out of a desert, he guzzled the water, not stopping until only a drop remained.
“Thanks,” he said, tossing the bottle toward the recycling bin claiming the far corner of the garage. The plastic hit the rim before tumbling inside. He flexed his fingers, opening and closing them repeatedly before nabbing the end of the wrap. Unbinding his hands, he glanced at his brother, who watched him through narrowed eyes. “What’re you doing here?”
“Apparently saving you from ass-planting it.” Wolfgang Dennison stalked over to the one window and jerked it open. A refreshing, fragrant summer breeze immediately filtered in. “It’s like a damn sauna in here. What’re you trying to do? Pass out from the heat? You sure as hell don’t have any weight you can afford to lose.”
His brother’s critical gaze scanned Cole, and he clenched his jaw, imprisoning the clapback that scaled his tongue. The worry threaded through Wolf’s voice aided Cole’s restraint. His older brother by two weeks loved him, as Cole did him. So instead of saying something sharp, he focused on finishing the removal of the black wrap from his hands.
“I hate to break it to you, but all of us can’t be lumbersexual-Aquaman-wannabes,” Cole drawled.
Wolf’s mouth, surrounded by a thick beard, quirked at the verbal jab. “Oh, but your scrawny ass wishes you could be.”
They grinned at each other, and the love and brotherhood that connected them as tightly as if they’d been born from the same mother weaved through Cole like a cooling balm.
Cole’s biological mother, Abril Burgos, and his adoptive mother, Billie Dennison, had been best friends since they’d been children growing up in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood. They’d done everything together, including getting married to men they loved, moving to Rose Bend and becoming pregnant. The two women had even planned their children’s names; as music fanatics, they’d decided to name their babies after the greats. Hence, Wolfgang after the famous composer and Coltrane after the jazz saxophonist. When Cole’s parents’ car had been T-boned on the way to pick him up from Billie’s house after a date night, Billie and Ian, her husband, had adopted Cole since Abril and Mateo had named them his guardians.
Though he owned pictures of his biological parents, he’d always considered the Dennisons his parents. And Wolf, as well as the c
hildren that came after him, his sibling. Maybe not by blood, but by love, loyalty, sacrifice and devotion. And choice.
Still... Damn good thing both Cole and Wolf had been popular when they were younger. Or else, with names like theirs, they would’ve been fighting every day.
“Not that I don’t enjoy staring at that thing on your face that you call a beard, but what brings you by?” Cole asked again, tossing his wraps on the weight bench against the wall.
He glanced over his shoulder, and once more noted the concern that flashed in Wolf’s eyes. Cole stifled his tired sigh. His family had been his rock after losing Tonia and their son, but sometimes his family’s worry could be smothering. Well, that wasn’t exactly accurate. Cole’s guilt over causing them anxiety because he couldn’t seem to move forward—that was smothering. At times, it was easier to just retreat than glimpse the pain and fear he inflicted on them.
“Let me guess,” Cole continued, snatching up a towel and rubbing it over his head and face. “Moe sent you over to check on me.”
For as long as Cole could remember, Billie Thomasina Dennison had been “Moe” to their large clan and most of the town. Family lore maintained that Cole had thoroughly jacked up the word “mother” when he’d been a toddler, and he’d shortened it to Moe. It’d stuck, so now nearly everyone called her by the nickname.
“Maybe,” Wolf as much as admitted with a shrug. Cole and his brother might both stand at six foot four, but with their father’s muscled weight in his shoulders and chest, Wolf was huge. Didn’t help that he spent his days hauling and working with wood as a carpenter. The lumberjack crack wasn’t far off. “But if you answered your damn phone, I wouldn’t have had to drag my ass over here.”
Cole arched an eyebrow, slapping the damp towel over a shoulder. “It’s literally a five-minute drive down the road, not a journey to the middle of the Earth.”
