by K. M. Scott
I waited for a response. Any response. Her telling me to go away. Her telling me she never wanted to see me again. The mere thought of her saying that made my chest ache.
But I got nothing. So I tried again.
“Diana, please. I want to explain. Just give me a chance to tell you the truth. I promise I’ll go away if you say you don’t want to see me after I tell you everything. Just give me a chance.”
My head pounded as I stood there waiting for her to answer. Then things began to get blurry. I didn’t care. I had to talk to her. I had to tell her the truth.
The door opened a crack, making my heart race, and I saw her blue eyes full of sadness staring out at me. Slowly, she opened it more, and inch by inch revealed her beautiful face now all blotchy and red from crying.
Because of me.
“Diana, please listen to me. I need to talk to you. Please, will you let me in so we can talk?”
Suddenly, she opened the door all the way and took a step out into the hallway toward me. Lifting her hand to my face, she touched where Ethan had hit me.
“You’re hurt. Who did this to you?”
I didn’t answer. Either she knew and I didn’t have to, or she didn’t and I had no right telling her how her brother justifiably beat the hell out of me.
She ran her fingertips over my swollen eye, making me flinch, so I quickly set to pleading my case. “Can I come in? I just want to talk. Just let me set the record straight.”
Her touch lingered on my skin as she asked, “Is it true what my sister told me? That you lost your club?”
I lowered my head. “Yes. I lost it a couple months ago.”
Diana didn’t say anything but took my hand in hers and gently pulled me into her room. I lifted my gaze to see who was there with her, but I saw no one.
“Where is everyone?” I asked, surprised I’d get the chance to talk to her alone.
“They left. I sent them home. I wanted to be alone,” she said defiantly.
“Just give me a chance to explain, Diana, and then if you want me to leave too, I will.”
Lifting her chin, she struggled to hold back her tears. “I can’t believe you lied to me. Did you do that so I’d sleep with you? Because I’m not some desperate thing, Cole. I might have slept with you even though you lost your club. Did you ever think of that?”
I reached for her hand and held it tightly so she couldn’t slip away from me. Looking into her watery blue eyes, I said, “I didn’t lie just to get you into bed. I know everyone’s telling you that, but I didn’t. I swear.”
“Then why?” she asked, her voice sobbing under the words.
Lowering my head, I admitted the truth. “I wanted you to be impressed by me. I wanted you to think I was successful, because if I was, then I’d be worthy of you. Just like in high school. I wanted you to think I was someone you should be with because I’d done something special.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks as she stared at me. “I was crazy about you back then. All you had to do was talk to me and I hung on every word. I told you that I used to make excuses to get the chance to watch you play football instead of going home or to my friends’ houses.”
Wiping away her tears, she shook her head and pulled her hand from my hold. “You had that entire day we spent together to tell me the truth. You knew I was just as crazy about you now as I was back in school. I showed you with everything I did and everything I said that I never told another soul in this world.”
“I wanted to, but it never felt right. Christ, Diana, maybe I didn’t want to ruin that day. Maybe something in me subconsciously was afraid if I told you that I didn’t have the club and I was losing my place that you’d be disgusted by me. I don’t know. All I know is I wanted you to think of me as someone you could be proud of.”
Her eyes opened wide, and a look of horror came over her. “What happened to you, Cole? Your business and your home? My family thinks you only came looking for me because you have nothing. How can I ever believe that’s not true?”
I scrambled to find the words to convince her that I didn’t give a damn about the Stone money. “Have your lawyers draw up whatever document you want that says I don’t get a thing. I’ll sign it. What I felt for you was never about your family’s money. Fuck, Diana! Look what money did to my family. My mother left my father, probably for some richer guy, and my father went to jail for stealing other people’s money. Now I’m practically broke and have to start over at twenty-eight. I’ve spent my entire adult life throwing money around to impress everyone, and what’s it got me? I had nothing worth anything real until I found you again. I don’t want your money or your family’s money. I just want you.”
Diana burst into tears and sobbed. Shaking her head, she said over and over, “How can I believe you? How can I when everyone says you’re always lying?”
My heart broke that I’d done this to her. I was the one who hurt her, and I was the reason she was crying. I couldn’t put her through any more of this.
“I’m sorry, Diana. I know we can’t be together now, but I love you and I never meant to do this. I hope someday you can forgive me.”
“You love me?” she asked, her beautiful eyes wide with surprise.
I nodded. I loved her. I probably always had and just wasn’t mature enough to realize it.
“I love you, Diana. No one else in the world has ever made me feel like you do, like you always have.”
She dried her eyes and took a deep breath. “Take me away from here. I can’t be here anymore. Will you leave with me?”
“How? You’re afraid of cars.”
“I’m more afraid of staying in this room and never living like a normal person, Cole. Take me away from here. Please.”
As much as I knew what lay ahead of us would be wrath of her family and every accusation they’d make against me, I couldn’t say no.
I loved her.
Chapter Sixteen
Diana
Two hours in Cole’s car left me exhausted and shaky, but I quietly celebrated my first attempt at conquering that fear while he parked the car in front of his grandmother’s cabin. All the way there, he’d held my hand and kept me grounded when I thought I would jump out of my skin. When I rocked back and forth and told him I couldn’t stay in the car anymore, he pulled over to the side of the highway and talked me down from my craziness. When I thought I could do it, he got back on the road until I couldn’t stand sitting there in that seat for another second and he pulled over again. Over and over for all those miles between Manhattan and that tiny town in the Poconos, he dealt with my fear with nothing but kind words and support.
I looked over at him as he turned the car off and wondered if he regretted saying yes when I asked him to take me away. What man wanted to deal with the kind of emotional baggage I brought with me?
“You okay?” he asked, leaning over to kiss me on the cheek. “Remember what I said about not expecting too much of this place. It’s no Richmont hotel.”
“That’s exactly why I love it already.”
“Think cobwebs instead of silk sheets,” he said before lifting my hand to his lips to gently kiss it.
“I’ve never liked silk sheets. I’m more of a regular sheet kind of girl.” I cradled his bruised and swollen face and looked into his dark eyes. “Don’t worry, Cole. I just need to get out of this car and into the fresh air.”
“Oh, God. I’m sorry. Hang on. I’ll be right there.”
He hurried around the car and opened my door. I stood up on shaky legs and took a deep breath of air that smelled like pine trees and leaves. Closing my eyes, I held Cole’s hand and tried to let go of all the anxiety that had churned up inside me.
“Are you okay?” Cole asked in a voice full of worry.
I felt better than okay. Opening my eyes, I nodded and looked up at him. “I love it here already. I love the smell of nature every time I breathe in. I love the sound of the birds up there in the trees. It reminds me of the woods from all those y
ears ago.”
Cole smiled and shook his head. “I never paid much attention to all of that. I just remember how damp it always seemed when we met.”
“Close your eyes sometime and let yourself enjoy everything here. It’s so relaxing, and I need that.”
He shut the car door behind me and wove his arm through mine. “I’ll have to try that. For now, I want to get you inside. That drive here was pretty rough.”
Just as I’d suspected. Seeing my anxiety up close and personal had bothered him. God, why did I have to be such a mess?
I clung to his arm as we walked up the three wood stairs to the front porch of the cabin. Big enough for two yellow Adirondack chairs and a small table between them, it looked out on the road that led to the cabin and woods full of pine trees for as far as the eye could see.
Cole opened the screen door that squealed like it hadn’t been used in ages and then turned his key in the front door. It opened up into a large living room designed sometime in the 1960s. A pale green, boxy sofa that looked as uncomfortable as it was ugly sat in the middle of the room flanked by two uglier end tables barely big enough to hold a glass and a book. The furniture reminded me of some of the dreadful designs for the European Richmont hotel redo Tressa had showed me.
I stopped to take it all in, and Cole said quietly, “I told you not to expect too much. I think my grandmother bought the furniture in here sometime before she first saw the Beatles in concert at Shea Stadium a million years ago.”
“It’s lovely,” I said as sweetly as I could so he didn’t know how unwelcome the place looked.
Not that it mattered what the aesthetics of the cabin were. This place meant far more for what it represented. Freedom.
Freedom from the person I was back in that hotel room I’d lived in for far too long.
Freedom from my fears, or at least the chance for me to work on overcoming them.
Freedom to do what I wanted with my life.
“You’re a terrible liar, Diana. If you don’t like it, we can find some place to spend the night while we figure out what we want to do,” Cole said with a smile.
“No, it’s wonderful. I’d like to lay down for a little bit, and then when I get up, I need to call my family.”
Neither of us had mentioned anything about that on the long drive there. Ethan was like a ghost travelling with us who popped up every time I lifted my head and looked over at Cole’s bruised and battered face. The rest of my family were never too far away in my mind as I heard their claims about Cole repeat in my head mile after mile.
None of it changed my mind about going away with him, though. I knew he wasn’t perfect. Neither was I. If he could deal with my issues, I could deal with his. As for my family, I hadn’t decided what to do yet.
Cole led me to the bedroom, which looked like it had furniture from the 1860s instead of the 1960s, and put my bag down over near the dresser. I’d expected cobwebs and dust, but the cabin was clean, even if it looked like it had been transported through time.
Pointing at the white coverlet draped across the white sheets on the bed, he said, “I can find you a different blanket, if you want. I think I remember that being on my grandmother’s bed when I was a kid.”
He sounded embarrassed, so I smiled and kissed him on the cheek in the hope of showing him everything was just fine. “I don’t need anything fancy. I just want to get my bearings before I call my family.”
“Do you want me to leave you alone?” he asked with worry in his eyes that I couldn’t place. Was he worried what I thought of the décor of the cabin or about me?
“I’d like the company, if that’s okay. That ride was a lot for me, believe it or not. It’s the first time since the accident that I’ve been in a car.”
His face lit up from a smile that made him look so handsome, even with his face all busted up. “Okay. Let me lock the door so wolves and other woodland things don’t just wander in, and I’ll be right back.”
While he handled that, I sat down on the softest mattress in the world, nearly falling into the middle of the bed. As I wriggled my body to a sitting position, I laughed out loud harder than I had in so long. Tonight, I’d sleep with Cole on this terrible mattress and I’d love it. It sounded ridiculous, but I didn’t care because I was free to choose what I wanted to do, including sleeping on this bed.
Cole stopped in the doorway and kicked off his shoes. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah. It’s good. A little soft, so be careful or it might suck you in and never let you out again,” I said as I patted the bed next to me.
He sat down far too hard, and the bed nearly tossed him right off the side, but I caught him by the hand and pulled him back before he landed on the floor. “See? This is one crazy mattress. Perfect for me, I guess.”
Taking me into his arms, he wrapped them around me and pressed his lips to my ear. “You aren’t crazy,” he whispered. “You’re perfect.”
I covered his hands with mine and closed my eyes, loving the feeling of security his arms around me offered. “Perfectly flawed,” I whispered back.
“Perfect.”
And at that moment, I didn’t feel messed up or crazy or anything but safe and happy. Blissfully happy.
Cole squeezed my hand, but I saw in his eyes real worry. “Are you sure you don’t want me here with you for this?”
I shook my head and smiled at how much he wanted to protect me. But this was my family. I didn’t need protection from them. They loved me like I loved them. They just needed to see that I wasn’t that scared little thing who hid herself away from the world anymore.
“Thank you, but I need to do this on my own.”
“Okay. I’ll be right in the bedroom. If you need anything, just call my name.”
“Everything will be okay, Cole. They just want the best for me. I need to show I know what that is.”
He smiled, but concern made it hard for him. I knew what he feared, but he didn’t have to worry.
I took a deep breath and inserted the key for my phone into the screen to call each of my family members. One by one, they appeared in boxes on the screen in front of me. Ethan and Summer, Tressa and Killian, and my father. Each one knew it was me calling and quickly answered, their expressions all full of the same concern they always had for me.
“Daddy, where’s Mommy?” I asked before I got started on what I had to say.
“She’s driving into the city from the house, honey. I don’t expect her for nearly an hour yet,” he said quietly, always so calm for me.
“Okay. Then I’ll have to say this without her. I know you can easily find me just by tracking my phone key, but I don’t want you to do that.”
Before I could say another word, they all started talking at once. Summer asked if I was okay, and Tressa wanted to know what happened. Ethan said something that sounded like a veiled threat to Cole, and my father began asking what happened to make me leave the hotel so hastily.
Nobody would listen to me at that rate, so I aimed the remote at the TV and put everyone on mute, except for my father. “I’m not going to listen to you all bark questions and comments at me, so you’re all on mute. You can hear me, but I can’t hear you.”
My father sat silently behind his desk in his office at work, stoically waiting for me to say what was on my mind. After I took another deep breath, I began to speak.
“Daddy, I had to leave. I hope you understand.”
He nodded, but those deep brown eyes I’d always found security in looked so sad. “I just want to know you’re safe, honey.”
I’d wanted to be so strong, but now that I faced him, I couldn’t stop the tears as they rolled down my cheeks. “I always wanted you to be proud of me, Daddy. I never wanted to be the person I was—so scared of everything that I closed myself off from the world. I got into a car today and didn’t fall to pieces. You would have been so proud of me, Daddy.”
“Oh, honey. There’s never been a day in your life that I wasn’t proud of you,
sweetheart. If I ever made you think I wasn’t, I’m so sorry.”
“I just need you to understand why I left. I love you all, but I have to live my own life.”
My father sighed, like he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. “We all want you to be happy, Diana. That’s all we’ve ever wanted.”
“Cole isn’t making me do anything I don’t want to do. If you’re angry at anyone, it should be me, not him. I asked him to take me away. He’s only doing what I asked him to do.”
“No one is angry. We’re just worried because we love you, honey. Every one of us.”
I hated that I’d done this to them, but especially to my father. “I know, but I need to do this. Please understand. I want to be happy. Cole makes me happy. When I’m with him, I feel normal. I want to be normal again, Daddy.”
Scanning the screen, I saw Tressa and Summer crying with me. Ethan, like my father, remained stoic, but I knew my words affected the two of them by the way they winced to hold back the emotion. More than anyone else, they had felt the pain of what I’d gone through all these years. As much as I deserved happiness, I wanted that for them too. I didn’t want them to forever see me as someone they always needed to protect because I was such a mess.
“All I ever wanted was for you to be happy,” my father said with a gentle smile. “That’s all a father could ever hope for his child.”
And with that, I knew everything would be okay. As much as it might have terrified him, he wasn’t going to come take me back to my old life. Wiping the tears from my cheeks, I smiled back at him. “I love you, Daddy. Thank you for trusting me.”
“I’ve always believed in you, Diana. We all do. Please remember that, and when you’re ready, we all want you back in our lives.”
For the first time in my life, I signed the words I hoped would make him feel better. Don’t worry. I’m okay.
My father nodded once more and signed back what he always said to me, the words that had forever given me the strength to go on. I love you. Always remember that.
