All In (Cedar Mountain University #2)

by Ann Garner

  “Well, I hardly think you’d be laughing it up with your friends, but I see your point. I don’t think she’s going to listen to me any more than she will you, but I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

  Jacob is frowning at me even as I hear Cole say, “Thanks, Grace,” in my ear. I lift up enough to slide my phone back into my back pocket and try for a smile. “I need to head home.”

  “You can’t drive.”

  “What?” Sputtering out a laugh I add, “I only had one beer, like forever ago. I’m fine.”

  “It doesn’t matter how many you had, you’ve had something to drink and you can’t drive. I’ve had something as well so I can’t drive you.”

  “Seriously, Jacob, I’m fine to drive. I promise.”

  His hand clamps down on my wrist, squeezing slightly. “I can’t let you drive, Grace. I’ll pay for the cab, and I’ll get your car back to you in the morning.”

  His eyes are somber as they meet mine, his face set in stern lines, so even though I want to push the subject, I don’t. “Okay. I appreciate it.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The party is still in full swing when we head downstairs. Jacob follows behind me, scrolling on his phone in search of a local cab company. I look around the room, trying to spot Kelsey so I can let her know I’m leaving. I’d rather go back upstairs with Jacob, but I know that isn’t an option. Sometimes being a good sister, and friend, really sucks ass.

  I see Grant standing in the far corner of the room. Gone are his friends, and the blonde. He’s on his cell phone and I have a pretty good idea who’s on the other end by the look on his face. Our eyes meet and he nods his head once, before he ends the call and heads my way.

  “Hello, Grace.”

  “Grant,” I acknowledge him with a small nod of my head. “Was that Cole?”

  “Yeah. I’m going to head out and meet him back at the townhouse. He said you’re going to be with Delaney?”

  I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. “Yeah, Jacob’s calling me a cab.”

  Grant looks over my shoulder briefly to where Jacob is giving the address to the cab company. “I can give you a ride,” He says as his eyes come back to mine. “It’s on the way. It’ll get you there faster.”

  Frowning, I look over my shoulder to Jacob. He’s studying Grant while talking into the phone and he’s not even looking in my direction. I don’t want to upset him, and after everything that just happened between us, everything I just told him, I’m afraid accepting a ride from Grant is going to do just that.

  But Cole and Delaney need me. And Grant is the fastest way to get to them. Swallowing a groan, I turn back to Grant and nod my head. “Give me a minute. I’ll meet you outside.”

  He looks over to Jacob one more time, before turning around and heading out of the house. I can’t seem to make myself turn around to face Jacob right away. Momentary cowardice. I use it to draw in a breath, and then I turn around. He’s on his cell phone, and I hear him canceling the cab. He isn’t looking at me, and that makes me nervous. I want to touch him, to reassure him, but I’m not sure how he’d react and I don’t want to feel the sting of rejection right now. He thanks the person on the phone and then slides it back into his pocket.

  “It’s just a ride.”

  “Sure it is. Has he been drinking?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”

  He makes some sort of strange noise. “Check with him before getting in the car, Grace.”

  I step into him, as close as I can, and finally his eyes move to meet mine. “It’s just a ride.” I say again when he’s looking at me. “I meant everything I said upstairs.”

  His hands settle at my hips, and I nearly sigh in relief. If he’s touching me then he can’t be too mad at me. Right?

  “I have to go, Jacob.” I give in to the urge to brush my hand along his jaw. “Can I see you tomorrow?”

  “Of course.” Jacob drops his hands, stepping back. His eyes are ice cold, devoid of the heat of want they’d had in them only minutes ago. “Go on. Grant is waiting.”

  Fuck.

  It’s all I can think as he turns and walks away. And I can’t do a damn thing about it because I promised Cole I would come. And I can’t let either of them down again, not like I did before.

  When I step outside, Grant is leaning against the porch rail, idly thumbing through something on his phone while he waits. He doesn’t look up, and it gives me a moment to study him. Grant had always looked like he belonged on a runway somewhere. Classic good looks that border on pretty, and had caused him to take his fair share of ribbing from my brothers over the years.

  None of that has changed.

  But something has. I’m pretty sure it’s me.

  There is no tumble of my heart, no kick in my pulse. I don’t want to wrap myself up in him.

  I don’t see him and immediately picture my future with him, not like I had before.

  Shaking my head, I force myself to move forward, clearing my throat to get his attention. “Ready?” I ask when Grant looks up from his phone. Without waiting for an answer, I move down the porch steps, looking over the line of cars to find his.

  “How is Jacob?” His deep voice pierces the night air, slightly mocking as he poses the question. I immediately tense up, my eyes cutting back to Grant. “No.” I shake my head. “We aren’t talking about Jacob. In fact, we don’t need to talk at all. This is just a ride, Grant. Nothing more.”

  We stop next to his car and he opens the passenger door for me. I slide into the car without looking at him. He hesitates for just a moment before moving around the front of the car and sliding into the driver’s seat next to me. I shift to look at him as he starts the car.

  I can’t stop the words that tumble out, “Who was the blonde?”

  He lifts one brow. “So we aren’t talking about Jacob, but my date is up for discussion?”

  “You’re right. I don’t care.”

  Silence stretches between us. I’ve shifted back to look out the passenger window, crossing my arms over my chest and trying my best to ignore him sitting next to me. The air is thick with tension, building between us like an insurmountable wall. Nervous energy has me tapping my fingers absently on my knee. It’s a relatively short ride to my apartment from the frat house, but it feels like every second has been stretched into ten.

  “Alice Conner.”

  My head snaps around to him. “What?”

  “The blonde,” Grant says as he finally turns into the apartment complex. Thank God. “Her name is Alice Conner.”

  “I really don’t care.”

  Grant pulls into an empty space, leaving the car running. He turns to look at me. “I know you don’t, Grace. But I miss my friend.”

  Blinking, I say slowly, “Oh.”

  He laughs, bitterly. “Yeah. Oh.” Scrubbing a hand over his face he says, “I know I handled things badly, Grace. I wish, well, I wish a lot of things and none of them really matter.”

  “You told me you didn’t want me anymore.”

  “No!” The word snaps out of him, and I jump at the booming force of the sound. “No,” he says again, a little calmer. “I never told you I didn’t want you.”

  “It doesn’t matter how you worded it, Grant. The intent was the same. You didn’t want to be with me anymore. So I’m moving on.”

  “It just hurts to watch.”

  “Maybe you should have thought about that before.”

  Grant shakes his head, and the car is once again bathed in silence. Watching him, my gaze keeps moving to the white bandage. I tell myself not to ask, not to care, but the words slide out anyway. “What happened here?” I touch just above my own eye to indicate what I’m asking about.

  “It was nothing.”

  I wait for more of an explanation, but he doesn’t elaborate. “Ally said it took fifteen stitches to close.”

  “It’s nothing, Grace, just leave it alone.”

  I let out a huff of air. “Fine. Be an
ass.” I climb out of the car quickly, hurrying up the steps. The apartment is as silent as a damn tomb when I walk inside. Stopping in the living room, I bend down to unzip my boots, sliding them off my feet and wiggling my toes in the carpet. I lift my head back up, just barely biting back a scream as I catch sight of the shadowy figure sitting on the couch in the dark.

  “Damn it, Cole, what in the hell are you doing? You nearly gave me a fucking heart attack.”

  “She doesn’t want to see me right now.” Leaning forward he drops his forearms on his knees. “I didn’t want to leave her here alone. I,” he stops, swallowing, then changes course. “Sometimes when she talks about it she has nightmares.”

  I want to wrap him up in my arms and tell him it will be okay, but I know that this is something that is never going to fully go away. Not for either of them. Just as I can’t imagine surviving what Delaney had gone through, I can’t imagine how hard it must be for Cole.

  He didn’t know her then, but that doesn’t change the fact that he loves her now, and I know that it must kill him to see her hurting and to know that he can’t take it away for her.

  Dropping down on the couch next to him, I reach over and lace my fingers through his. I haven’t held his hand since we were little. His hand flexes around mine briefly, before his fingers tighten.

  “When she told me what happened all I could think about was how unfair it was. And how much I needed to show her that it didn’t matter, that it didn’t change the way I felt about her.” His eyes meet mine, and I’m not surprised to see that his are wet with tears. “I focused on that every day. On letting her know that I loved her and that she was everything I wanted, and that she wasn’t this dirty broken shell of a person she thought she was. I didn’t think about what would happen later, because I knew I had to convince her to keep giving me now.”

  “Cole, there’s no script for this. You’re doing what you think is best. You’re making her happy. That’s important.”

  “You said it the other day, Grace. She needs to talk to someone. Someone other than you or me, someone that can help her come to terms with what happened to her. How are we supposed to make any progress together if she’s not willing to let me all the way in?”

  “You make progress every day.”

  He makes a noise, a strangled laugh that breaks my heart. “No, we’re not. We’re at a fucking standstill, and her absolute refusal to even contemplate letting me be there for her during those three days is like going ten steps backwards. How can she ask me to pretend she isn’t fucking falling apart? How can she ask me to fucking pretend that I don’t know that she’s cramming sleeping pills down her fucking throat so she can drug herself enough that she won’t be haunted by that bastard?” His free hand clenches into a fist against his knee. “What happens if she takes too many? I don’t think she cared, not before.”

  “Oh, Cole, she isn’t suicidal.”

  “I know that, but I don’t think she every really cared if that was the result. Not before.”

  “Before she didn’t have you,” I point out.

  “Apparently, I don’t have her. Not all the way.” He shakes his head. “I’m going to go. She asked me to leave her alone, and I’m going to give her some time. I just,” he pauses, running a hand through his hair. “I couldn’t leave her here by herself.”

  “I’ll talk to her, but she’s pretty stubborn, in case you missed that. And she’s been dealing with this on her own for years. It probably terrifies her to lean on someone else, Cole, she never had the opportunity to before.”

  “Doesn’t make it hurt any less.” Cole leans over, brushing a kiss across my forehead before pushing himself to his feet. “Let her know I’ll talk to her tomorrow, okay? And that I love her.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  I decide to take a shower before going to find her. Cole said she wanted him to leave her alone, but I don’t think that’s really the case. I just don’t think Delaney knows how to handle having someone in her life that cares enough to not let her be by herself. Her parents hadn’t been shining examples of support, though her father was coming around somewhat.

  I thought it was too little too late, but then again, my parents had been there for me every step of the way. Maybe if they hadn’t been I’d be willing to take whatever limited attention they were willing to give.

  I don’t know the whole of what happened those three days that she was missing. Just what I’d found when I’d done a search of her name on the web. Delaney doesn’t talk about it much, and she doesn’t talk about it at all with me.

  Outside of the police, Cole is the only one who really has any insight to what happened those three days beyond what the news outlets had been able to piece together. I don’t think he has the entire story either. Delaney has never been the open book type, and I don’t see that as something that would magically change overnight.

  Running a brush through my hair, I think about Jacob. I can still feel the weight of his fingers sliding through my hair, holding me to him while using his very talented mouth to make me forget everything but him.

  Even though he’d told me he had never once doubted my reason for being with him, I knew my leaving with Grant so soon after everything couldn’t have been good. I didn’t want to lose whatever small foothold I had managed to gain tonight with him.

  I would have to offer him some sort of explanation tomorrow of why I hadn’t wanted to wait on the cab. But I didn’t like to tell anyone about Delaney because I know how much it bothers her for other people to know. Hell, she’d let my brother walk away just so she wouldn’t have to tell him.

  I didn’t have time to think about it now though. I need to go find Delaney to try and figure out what in the hell had happened between her and Cole. And how in the hell I was supposed to fix it.

  Finding her was easy enough. She is curled under a blanket on her bed. Legs drawn up to her chest, with her arms wrapped around them. She looks so incredibly small, like a child trying to hide from the boogeyman by making themselves as tiny and unnoticeable as possible.

  “Del?”

  I move quietly across the room to stand at the edge of the bed where I knew I fell into her line of sight. Her slight sniffle is the only response I receive. Crouching down I hesitantly reach out and lay a hand on her shoulders. “What happened?” I ask her softly.

  “He,” she sniffles again. “He’s upset with me. No,” she corrects herself, “he’s pissed at me because I don’t want him there.”

  “Why don’t you want him there?”

  “I can’t, Grace. I can’t let him see me like that. He saw a glimpse, just a tiny part of who I am during those three days last year, and just knowing that he’s seen even that tiny bit makes me sick to my stomach. Letting him all the way in, that’s not possible.”

  “He loves you, Del, none of the other matters.”

  “It does!” Tossing the covers back she practically bounces out of the bed and across the room, away from me. “It does matter. Because him knowing the truth and seeing it are two totally different things.”

  She looks so stricken, more so than I’ve ever seen her before. “Delaney, it doesn’t matter.”

  “You don’t understand, Grace. You can’t possibly understand. I can’t function during those days. I can’t, I don’t, I’m—”

  Shit, she’s crying again. I let her go, not moving across the room to offer her comfort. I don’t think touching her right now is the way to handle this situation. When she finally turns to me, she’s so distraught it’s heartbreaking.

  “Del—”

  Shaking her head, she interrupts me. “Most days I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on things. It’s there, like this dark gray cloud in the back of my mind, but I can deal with it. I can push it aside enough to get out of bed and to function. I can go through most of the day without thinking about it, without remembering his face, or what his touch felt like against my skin. And now, with Cole, it’s more than just functioning on a basic level. Ther
e’s happiness. He brings me happiness and hope.” She pauses long enough to drag in a breath, to lick her lips, and shift from one leg to the other. Her face is pink and splotchy from her tears. “But during those three days, Grace, during those days I’m not that person. I don’t function, I don’t have hope or happiness. I’m weak because that’s what he made me. And I don’t want Cole to see me like that.”

  Coming full circle in the room she drops back down on her bed, drawing her legs up once again. Her hair is pulled up in what you could loosely call a bun, if you were a generous sort of person. Half the brown waves hang around her face and shoulders, some of the strands stuck against her cheeks.

  What am I supposed to say to her?

  I would think the same way. I wouldn’t want to be seen or pitied. But I understand where Cole is coming from as well. It would simply break his heart if she didn’t let him in.

  “You aren’t weak, Delaney,” I whisper, moving towards her now. “You are without a doubt the strongest person I know. Because you do get up, Del, every day. You get up and you live.” Settling next to her on the bed, I brush at the hair on her cheek, making sure she’s looking at me. “Cole loves you. I love you. Nothing is going to change that. Nothing is going to take it away or diminish it. Every day, no matter what, we are going to be right here, next to you. Every day, Del. You can’t shut him out. You can’t expect him to love you like he does and to merrily go on his way while you’re here suffering.”

  “I know.”

  “I—You do?” I’m totally confused.

  “Of course I do. Knowing doesn’t make it any easier. He was so mad, Grace.”

  “Did he scare you?”

  “What? No, he didn’t scare me.” Delaney unknots her hair, pulling it all back up again on top of her head. “But I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “Sending him away probably wasn’t the best choice. Just saying. He looked horrible when I showed up. He only wants the best for you, Del.”