by Jill Shalvis
“Shit.” He stood up and headed to the door.
“Hey,” she called after him. “My laptop!”
“I’m straying from routine,” he said.
He’d no sooner slid behind the wheel of his truck than Sam pulled up behind him.
Then Tanner in front, the two of them blocking him in.
“Been looking for you,” Sam said as he opened Cole’s passenger door and got in. Tanner helped himself at the driver’s door, forcing Cole over so that he was sandwiched between them, coming into such a close and personal relationship with the gearshift that the two of them should have gotten a marriage license first.
Tanner hit the autolock, as if Cole could possibly even move to escape without climbing out over the top of one of them.
“You know,” Tanner said conversationally, “when you’re alive, you answer your phone.”
“There are at least six ways to get ahold of me that don’t involve me having to speak to you,” Cole said. “Try one of them next time.”
Sam and Tanner exchanged a look, and Cole ignored it. And them. A mean feat given that they were practically in each other’s laps. Cole tipped his head back and stared up at the ceiling of the truck. “Am I…rigid?”
“I don’t know, man,” Tanner said. “But I’m really hoping not.”
“In general,” Cole said with a clenched jaw. “Am I rigid, as in unbending. Unforgiving.”
“Okay, that question makes a lot more sense,” Tanner said, relieved.
“Am I?”
Sam started coughing to hide a laugh.
Tanner didn’t try to hide anything, he just grinned.
“Shit,” Cole said. “Somebody let me the fuck out.”
“Not yet,” Sam said. “First things first. We give you shit about being rigid and unbending, but it’s just that. Shit. Your sister lied to your mom, and you helped her anyway. Tanner and I kept this from you, and you’re here speaking to us.”
“Barely,” Cole said.
“My point,” Sam said, “is that you’re not completely rigid and unbending.”
“Gee,” Cole said. “Thanks.”
“And secondly,” Sam went on, much more seriously. “There wasn’t a memo to fuck you over.”
Cole squeezed his eyes shut. “I know.”
“We only found out by sheer dumb luck about a week before the fire,” Tanner said. “Gil was at the bottom of a bottle. It was killing him. He was going to tell you. He didn’t because I stopped him.”
Cole looked over at the guy who he believed would always have his back, no matter what, to the end. “I’m trying to imagine under what circumstances you could have possibly believed I was better off not knowing,” he said with what he felt was admirable calm. Especially because he was imagining rearranging Tanner’s teeth.
“We were in the gulf,” Tanner said. “And in case you don’t remember, you were in the middle of upgrading the entire safety system and having a rough go of it. I told Gil that while we were on the rig wasn’t the time to tell you. That only a selfish asshole would assuage his own guilt right then.”
Cole tried to absorb that.
“Telling you would have cleared his conscience,” Sam said, “but it’d have wrecked you. And that was bullshit. Tanner convinced him that waiting was best.”
Cole took in Tanner’s hard expression and wondered exactly what the “convincing” had consisted of. “The week before the fire,” Cole said, remembering. “He showed up one morning with a black eye and fat lip.”
Tanner didn’t move, didn’t blink.
“That was you,” Cole said.
Tanner lifted a shoulder, the only confirmation Cole was going to get.
“We told Gil that he could damn well wait another two weeks until we were all on a three-day break,” Sam said.
Only that break had never come because there’d been the fire…
And then Gil had been gone.
Christ.
He let his head fall back. Two years and it still didn’t feel real. “I’ve been an asshole.”
“No worries,” Sam said. “It was your turn.”
“Maybe it can be my turn next,” Tanner noted almost wistfully.
“You are due,” Sam noted.
“I went to Olivia’s,” Cole said. “She wasn’t there. I need to find her.”
“She came looking for you after you left,” Tanner said. “I told her that even ass-hats deserve second chances after detonating the best relationship to ever happen to them.”
Sam snorted.
“You need to fix it with her,” Tanner said. “She’s good for your rigid ass.”
“Says the guy who avoids relationships like the plague,” Cole said.
“At least I know a good thing when it hits.”
Cole thought of how he felt when he was with Olivia. He called her Supergirl, but the truth was, she made him feel like Superman. With her he wasn’t just the guy who could fix anything, navigate, repair, referee, or mitigate.
With her, he was a better version of himself. “I need to find her,” he repeated.
“Maybe if you said please,” Sam said.
Cole stared at him. “You know where she’s at.”
Sam cupped a hand around his ear. “Did you hear ‘please,’ Tanner?”
“Nope,” Tanner said.
Jesus. “Tell me where she is and I won’t kill you both with my bare hands,” Cole said.
Sam and Tanner grinned, the asses. But finally they got the hell out of his truck.
Tanner leaned into the driver’s window. “The answer you seek is readily available.”
“What are you, a fortune cookie?” Cole snapped. “Just tell me.”
“She’s at her store,” Sam said, giving Tanner a shove with a laugh. “Genius here is referring to the fact that it’s all over Tumblr.”
“What’s all over Tumblr?” Cole asked, but they were walking to their respective vehicles.
“Oh, and I’d practice your groveling on the way,” Tanner called back.
Chapter 33
Cole drove straight to Unique Boutique. Normally he wouldn’t have been surprised to find the lot behind the shop full. Olivia usually had a lot of people coming in and out; she was good at drawing steady business.
But it was…he checked his phone. Eight thirty. She didn’t open until ten.
The back door was locked. Good girl, he thought, and headed around to the front.
That door was locked, too, and the CLOSED sign was still up. He peeked in the window and went still. The front room had been transformed. In the corner where she normally held Drama Days, everything had been cleared except for an antique bar stool smack in the center of the rug like it was on a stage.
Olivia sat on the bar stool wearing a gauzy top and tight, dark jeans with boots, all of which showed off her gorgeous body, looking beautiful and aloof.
She was facing the other side of the room, where chairs had been lined up and were filled by…people. Lots of them. There was Becca, Sam, and Tanner— Sam and Tanner? Cole squinted and stepped closer. His sisters were there, too. And so was his mom. And Lucille and her merry band of stealth geriatrics. All of them glued to a camera crew and a man standing before Olivia with a microphone.
Cole caught Sam’s gaze and jabbed a finger at the door.
Sam shook his head.
Oh hell to the no. Cole narrowed his eyes.
Sam gestured for him to go around back. Cole took another look at Olivia. She was sitting there, showing the world her I’m-tough-as-hell face, but something in her eyes reminded him of how she’d looked a decade earlier in all the videos he’d watched just the other day.
Alone.
So damn alone.
He’d been alone, too. Surrounded by people and yet utterly alone—until she’d jumped on his head.
He met Sam at the back door. “What the fuck?”
Sam shrugged. “You went the highway route, we took the streets.”
“I meant what t
he fuck, as in what the fuck are you doing here at all?”
“Becca asked us to come. Said they needed bodies for some sort of shoot. That’s all I know.”
“You didn’t ask questions?”
“When you have a hot fiancée who asks you for a favor in a voice that promises reward later, trust me, you don’t stop to ask questions.”
Cole pushed past him, strode through the back room, and came to a stop in the doorway to the main room. There were lights and cameras set up, centered around Olivia. And in that moment, he knew.
She’d agreed to the retro show for TV Land he’d overheard her and her sister discussing.
“Let’s have some questions from the audience to warm us up,” the guy with the mic was saying to Olivia in front of the cameras.
She smiled. It was the same smile from her past, the one that didn’t reach her eyes or come anywhere close to touching her heart.
And his own heart sank. “Goddamn it.”
Several audience members were vying for the microphone, wanting to ask Olivia a question. And unbelievably, first up was Cindy, his own sister.
“Do you have fond memories of the show?” she asked Olivia.
“Some,” Olivia said. “It was my childhood, after all. But a lot of bad things happened to me as a result of the years in Hollywood. Which is why I changed my name and…vanished.”
Cindy nodded solemnly, her eyes filled with understanding. “If I’d been in that show and gone through all you did, I’d want to change my name, too. By the way, thanks so much for the donation of that Dior dress for the after-school kids’ programs fund-raiser next week. You saved the day there. We have the bid up to twelve hundred dollars already. I can’t express enough how much that’ll mean to the rec center.”
Cole stared at Olivia, though he shouldn’t have been surprised. She was one of the most generous people he’d ever met. She gave her best, always.
He’d had a chance to give her his very best, to forgive her for a mistake she apologized for and regretted, and he’d failed her.
He wanted another chance. He wanted that badly.
Lucille hopped up. “Me next!” Her head came up at least a foot below the microphone. This didn’t faze her. “I have a question,” she yelled up at it.
“You don’t have to yell,” the interviewer told her. “Just speak in your normal voice.”
Lucille nodded. Then she proceeded to yell some more up at the microphone. “Why stop acting? Why not stay and continue on with another show?”
Olivia hesitated. “The people in my life at the time had all moved on. My agent, my manager, the show’s producers. But even without them, I wasn’t young enough or cute enough for the kid roles, and the only other roles I was offered were for adult film. I was going through a wild stage, but not that wild.”
The interviewer reached for the mic, but Lucille held on to it and took a step away from him. “For the record,” she told Olivia, “we’re all very glad you ended up here in Lucky Harbor.”
The interviewer finally wrested the mic from Lucille. “Time for someone else to ask a question,” he said, jerking down the hem of his suit jacket.
Cole strode to the front of the line to grab the mic, cutting off several people, including his own mother.
“Hey,” the interviewer started, only to swallow hard when he caught a good look at Cole’s expression. He lifted his hands in surrender and backed off.
“The people who left you,” Cole said to Olivia. “They were a bunch of idiots. Anyone who’s ever left you is an idiot.” He didn’t break eye contact. “Including myself.”
“That’s not really a question,” the interviewer said, but backed off when Cole gave him another hard look.
Lucille pumped a fist in the air. “Yes! I knew this was going to get good. Hang on, honey, stop talking a second.” She shoved a hand into the pocket of her neon green tracksuit and pulled out her phone. “I want to catch this on tape for my YouTube channel.” She paused, then turned to Cole. “Do they still call it ‘tape’ even though it’s not tape?”
He ignored her and stepped onto the carpet to take Olivia’s hand in his.
“What are you doing?” she asked, eyes wide.
“You came into the Love Shack, willing to be public about our feelings in order to talk to me. I wronged you that day, and I’m hoping to fix it. Fix us.”
“Speak up,” Lucille demanded, holding up her phone.
“Us?” Olivia asked Cole, looking like she was afraid to hope.
“Us,” he said firmly, and hauled her off the bar stool and into his arms.
Olivia was having trouble tracking this whole conversation because her heart was smacking up against her ribs with every single beat. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM. It was all she could hear.
Well, that, and the voice of the angel on her right shoulder saying, Oh my God, he’s back! He’s here! He’s looking at you like you’re more important than his next breath!
But the devil on her left shoulder was standing firm, shaking her head. Don’t believe…
“Is it hot in here?” Olivia asked the interviewer as she pulled free from Cole. Because she was sweating in impolite places, and yet her teeth were chattering a little bit as well. Worse, her brain had gone on an island vacay without a forwarding address. “Maybe we should take a little break.” Or better yet, cancel—
“I was wrong to walk away from you,” Cole said. “I was wrong to let you think that you didn’t matter to me. If you’ll let me prove it, I’ll never walk away from you again.”
A new sensation fluttered in Olivia’s chest, and she was desperately afraid it was hope, that cruel bitch.
Cole took in her expression and frowned. His arms banded around her tight, and then there were his eyes. Fierce. Protective. Determined.
Her heart squeezed. She knew that look; he was going to kiss her. Here? In front of everyone? No, she thought, he wouldn’t. As he’d mentioned, their last public appearance hadn’t gone so well—
But he hauled her up to her toes and laid one on her, the kind of kiss that had her coming alive, the kind of kiss that was both too fast and yet somehow also in slow motion so she could remember every detail of it, from the feel of the warm touch of his mouth to hers to the way his arms were so tight that maybe he was never going to let go.
When he finally pulled back an inch and met her gaze, she barely heard the applause of the room over the thundering of her own heart. She could hardly draw a breath for all the terrible, burning hope flickering to life within her.
Cupping her face, Cole tilted it to his. “I’m sorry. I let you think I was furious with you. I was angry at myself that I fell for you and then didn’t know if it was real or not. I used a previous hurt and betrayal as a reason to not trust you. I shouldn’t have walked out like that without giving you a chance to explain. Let me make it up to you, and I’ll start by telling you this—you’re so precious to me, Olivia. And worth fighting for.”
