Over the passing weeks, we fell in love the way every girl imagines at least once in her lifetime. We splashed each other under the summer sun, and we spent long, warm nights beneath thin linen sheets. We jumped off rocks into crystal blue water, and laid out in the bed of his truck under so many starlit skies. The world above us became our ceiling as we talked beside late night fires and woke up to so many glimmers of light peeking over the mountaintops with each sunrise. We played and we laughed and we dreamed about the world like it had no end in mind for us. It was strange in some ways how a girl from the city and a boy from the woods could carry on the way we did. But I feared nothing with his protection, and he dreamed beyond the treetops he stared at every night when he was a child.
Before him, I’d felt cared for. I’d felt lust and adoration and so many other things. But this love was so different – it was fierce and intense and all-consuming. It was passionate and deep and intimate and it left no room for pause or hesitation. That was the part that hit me the hardest. Before Cole, I second guessed everything. Honestly, even when I met him, I still did. I never felt sure enough about any decision I’d ever made. My heart ached when my mom passed and I held so much guilt when I tried to live life afterwards, like I didn’t deserve to move forward. I dwelled on my college major, torn between disappointing my father or myself. I hesitated when Ian wanted to move us towards a busy life I never dreamed of. But with Cole, there was no pause – no doubt that my dreams could in fact be the same as his.
We didn’t really talk about California. With Harvey somewhat out of the picture, at least not involved in Cole’s day-to-day routine, it almost didn’t matter. We didn’t have to discuss “someday” because every passing day started and ended with us together – and that was more than we needed. But one night, lying in the sand around a bonfire with Sam and Luke, spending her last night in Mountain Ridge together before she headed to Oregon, so many things changed.
“I can’t believe this is it,” I said for the millionth time as I squeezed her hand. The boys were throwing things into the fire, amused each time the flames grew higher. My eyes filled with tears and I so badly wanted to keep them back, but I knew I would fail.
“I would be so much more devastated about this if I was leaving you alone,” she said with a full heart. “But look at you, you are so deliriously happy. Just like you used to be before you started taking on everyone else’s guilt.”
“I can’t believe that doesn’t weigh on my mind every single day like it used to,” I said quietly. Honestly there were so many days that passed where I didn’t think about Ian or the accident at all. It would never be completely removed from my mind, I knew that. Nor did I ever want to forget it. Ian loved me right, and I knew I was better off for that. His memory didn’t deserve to be erased. I wondered sometimes if I was able to love Cole better because of what I’d learned from that relationship. But to finally feel like I could breathe again without it weighing so heavily on my chest, I felt so free.
“You will forever be my best friend,” Sam said with tears rolling down her eyes. “I know we said we wouldn’t fall apart, but there’s no way around this.”
Tears fell from my eyes as well, and we hugged so tight. In reality she was only going to be a nine hour drive away, or about an hour flight. It could’ve been more drastic, I knew that. But not seeing her at the clinic several days a week, and missing out on our beach afternoons, those were going to kill me. But she was right. This was so much easier to do now that I wasn’t on my own. I smiled at Cole through the firelight, fighting my tears, and he simply winked at me and smiled, as if to reassure me the world would still be okay.
Sam and Luke, as casual as they tried to keep it, didn’t look so casual as we said our goodbyes. She wanted to spend one last night with him, and I completely understood. We hugged again for at least five lingering minutes, and kissed each other’s cheeks one last time as we finally parted ways. She promised to call me as soon as she made it to Oregon tomorrow afternoon, and despite my tears and swollen eyes, I was so very happy for her. She was accomplishing everything she ever wanted, and I couldn’t have wished for anything else for her.
Cole wrapped a tight arm around my shoulders as we made our way back to his truck. His skin on mine lifted my mood, and I looked forward to the way he would hold me tonight whether I was an emotional mess or not. It didn’t matter to him. He loved me the same through all of my moods and I couldn’t have been more grateful for that.
As we climbed in his truck, his phone rang. His happy expression turned sour instantly as he read the name on the screen.
“Hello?” he said with some confusion. There was a long pause. The voice on the other end was too quiet for me to hear, but I gathered by Cole’s face that it wasn’t a welcome conversation. He let out a few ‘yeahs’ and ‘okays’ but that was it. When he finally hung up, he started up the truck and turned out of the beach lot towards my condo.
“Is everything okay?” I asked sincerely.
“No,” he said quietly. “That was Harvey.” He didn’t offer any more.
“Is he doing okay?” I replied with concern. Surely Cole had more to say about the call. He looked like he saw a ghost, but it was just a quick conversation.
“He’s fine,” Cole replied dismissively. “I know this is horrible timing. I know Sam leaving is hard on you. But I have to go somewhere tonight,” he said vaguely.
“Why are you seeing Harvey?” I questioned. As far as I knew, he really hadn’t dealt with him much since he told him he was done working for him. I was always a little skeptical about it, I couldn’t help it. They had such a strong bond, so it made sense that I would wonder from time to time if Harvey had any plans to pull Cole back into whatever he was up to. The unsettling pit in my stomach told me that was exactly what was happening. “Cole, please talk to me.”
“Syd,” he sighed, pulling the truck over on the side of the road. He ran his fingers through his hair and I could tell he was frustrated.
“No secrets, Cole. That’s how this works.”
“I know,” he said softly. “But I just don’t want to worry you unnecessarily. It’s probably nothing.”
“The look on your face doesn’t suggest it’s nothing,” I replied. “What’s going on?” I hated in that moment that I felt like we were back at the beginning – back when he was scared to tell me his secrets. Rightfully so, I didn’t understand them at the time. I was still baffled by how a guy like him, as sweet and honest as anyone I’d ever known, it didn’t make sense to me the way he was so dishonest in other areas of his life. But we seemed well beyond secrets. He had to know by now that nothing he could say to me would be so bad that I would change my mind about him. What I felt for him was an absolute certainty – no phone call could change that.
“Things are about to change,” he answered with a stern expression. “Everything is going to change.” He rested his head back on the seat and closed his eyes.
“Cole, you’re scaring me,” I said honestly, staring at his face. “Please tell me something.”
He looked over at me and I’m sure he saw the worry in my eyes. He slid towards me and wrapped me up, pulling me into his chest. He kissed my face and stroked my hair, appearing as if he was struggling to find the right words to say to me.
“Just say it. Whatever it is,” I urged.
He was silent for another minute or so, but then spoke softly.
“My dad is out of jail.”
CHAPTER 15
Cole didn’t tell me anything further. Instead he drove me back to my condo and walked me up to the door, kissing me as sweetly as he had so many nights before, but then he turned his back on me as he walked away towards his truck. The sound of his footsteps walking away from me felt louder than any of the other sounds around us. They echoed in my head, and my heart hurt. When Cole said things were about to change, I hoped he was just being paranoid or overly dramatic. But somehow within minutes from that admission, it became true. Everything felt d
ifferent. Something pulled his attention from me and he didn’t want to bring me into it – I knew that meant it was bad news. Perhaps something he couldn’t fix.
I expected some type of communication from him that night – a text, or even a phone call – but none came. My restless sleep turned into an early morning, and my shift at the clinic felt infinite. I checked my phone periodically, but there was nothing new. Sam eventually sent me a message that she was alive and safe in her new home, hours and hours away from me. I wanted to feel some tinge of happiness about it, but I couldn’t. I felt more alone than ever before and it ate at me.
Finally a few minutes before my shift was over, my phone rang and Cole’s name appeared on the screen. I answered it quickly.
“Hello?”
“Can I come get you?” he asked eagerly.
“What’s going on?”
“We need tacos,” he said lightly, taking some of the tension out of the conversation. “Everything I have to tell you can only be said over Antonio’s food.”
“It’s really that bad?” I commented.
“I told you, it’s my ultimate groveling food. I need to ask for a lot of forgiveness tonight, and I can only do that over tacos.”
My stomach felt uneasy and I wasn’t sure I would even have an appetite. “Can you meet me at my house in about a half hour?”
He agreed and we hung up the phone. I made the short walk home and took a quick shower to revive my stale mood. I put on a cute, relatively short sundress, hoping to take his mind off whatever was bothering him. I wasn’t sure a dress was enough to do that, but it was the only thing I could think of to do in that moment.
He pulled up in front of my house, right on time, and I headed out the front door as soon as I saw his truck. He wasn’t even fully out of the driver’s side yet before I walked up to greet him. I reached up and kissed him right on the mouth, flashing him a sexy look as I pulled away. “You have tacos and me tonight. Whatever this is, whatever is going on – we can fix it together.”
He smiled back at me and wrapped his strong arms around me, lifting me up and bracing me against his truck. “Trust me, you and tacos should be enough to fix everything, I know. Just promise me you’ll hear me out before you freak out.” He kissed me with the kind of intensity that made me feel like no one else was around. I kissed him back hungrily, and everything felt normal, just like it had the past couple months. A car passing by honked at us loudly, and I realized it probably wasn’t appropriate to have my legs wrapped around him like this while pinned up against his truck. I smiled coyly as he set me down. He opened up his door and I slid in through it to the passenger seat.
“I won’t freak out,” I said, still smiling at him as he fired up the truck and headed towards Antonio’s. “Whatever it is, we can get through it.” He was still smiling back at me and we probably looked like two idiotic love-struck teenagers, beaming in silence as we drove.
We pulled into the lot of the taco stand and climbed out of his truck. Cole ordered, just like usual, and we grabbed the food to go so we could watch the sunset from the table on the beach across the way.
He handed me my food and started talking. “So like I said, my dad is out of jail,” he began, unwrapping his tacos. “Apparently he got out a lot earlier than expected – good behavior or something like that, which is a first for him. Apparently he’s already gainfully employed too,” he said with a heavily sarcastic tone.
“Working for Harvey?” I assumed.
“No,” he replied, shaking his head. “Hence the problem. I guess he’s pissed, blaming Harvey for being in jail in the first place, so he’s been communicating with someone else while he’s been in. One of Harvey’s competitors I guess you’d say.”
There was a long pause and I had so many questions, but I knew Cole needed to tell me all of this in his own way. That’s how he worked best.
“Harvey needs me to do one last job,” he said hesitantly.
“Cole, I thought you were done with all of that.” I hated the thought of him being sucked back into that world. I always wondered if he was ever really truly going to be done with all of that.
“I know, and I am. I have been. And I will be when it’s done,” he explained. “But he needs me for one last thing. I have to do it.”
“You have to? Or you want to? Or you don’t have the choice to say no?” I questioned.
“Well for one, I owe Harvey this. I really do,” he said convincingly. His loyalty to Harvey mattered so much, I knew that. But I’d hoped Harvey could see how far he’d come – living a normal, honest life – I wished so bad that mattered. The fact that he wanted to pull Cole back into everything he was doing, it was disheartening. I’m sure he knew Cole would give in and do it.
“I understand why you feel so loyal to Harvey,” I replied. “I really do. I know he took you in and gave you a life and you feel like you wouldn’t have had one otherwise. I know he did so many good things for you. But the path he had you on Cole, you have to admit that it wasn’t a good one.”
“I know that,” he said quietly. “But this is big. And I hold a lot of responsibility in this. My dad went to jail because of me, so this whole situation is kind of my doing in the first place.”
“You didn’t take the fall for him, that’s not the same thing,” I clarified. “He’s in jail because he did something wrong. You shouldn’t have taken his place in that, no matter what Harvey wanted you to do.”
He shook his head as I spoke, seemingly uninterested in what I was saying. “That’s not really how it happened.”
“Well that’s the version you told me,” I stated, starting to feel frustrated by this conversation.
“That’s the version of the story everyone else knows,” he said softly.
“What do you mean?”
“I lied about it. I was the reason he got caught in the first place.” He hung his head, looking somewhat ashamed. “I left something of his at the scene.” There was a long pause. “He had nothing to do with the crime. I wanted him to get in trouble.”
“Why?” I asked quietly.
“Because I hated him,” he replied honestly. “Because I was mad at him for the way my life turned out. I hated him for everything that had happened to me. I blamed him for the way my life was working out even up to that point. Everything that happened with Britt at the time – I blamed him for that too. Obviously a failed relationship was nothing new to me, he taught me everything I knew on that. I was never good enough for anyone, he made that clear to me my whole life. And I certainly wasn’t good enough for him. He pushed that in my face every chance he got.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. I could tell by Cole’s voice that he had so much anger and resentment towards his father. It wasn’t a subject we talked about often, so I knew I didn’t know the whole story. He’d left him on and off for jail, that I knew – and Cole once mentioned how cruel he was, but I was sure I had no idea of all the things Cole endured in relation to his father.
“I saw it as an opportunity. I knew it was wrong, but I just hated him so much. I had an opportunity to punish him and I took it.” There was so much sadness in his voice as he spoke. I could tell he felt so much hurt towards his father. I couldn’t imagine that feeling, nor could I say what I would have done in his situation. “Syd, I know I’ve done so many horrible things. But you’re the first good thing I’ve ever known. All I want is to get out of all this. But I feel like no matter what I do, it will always just be hanging over my head. One minute I know the right people, and then in no time they become the wrong people. I have to get out of all this, I know that. If I can just do one last thing for Harvey, that can be it. Then it will all be over.”
“Won’t that just make things worse?” I added objectively. “Once you’re back in, won’t that make everything harder? I don’t understand.”
“Harvey is going to pay me fifty thousand dollars for this last job,” he said bluntly. “That’s enough to get out.”
“What do you m
ean? This doesn’t sound like something you can buy your way out of.”
“On top of what I’ve already saved, that will be enough to get that land in California,” he shrugged. “I feel like that’s the only way I can truly get out of this. I have to leave it all.”
His words hit me hard. Leave it all. All I heard in that was that he had to leave me. A knot formed in my throat.
“There has to be a better way,” I replied quietly.
“Come with me, Syd. Come to California with me.” He stared into my eyes as he said it, and they burned through me. He looked at me with that intense stare so many times – it was always full of so much emotion. They transfixed on me like a spell, and it was so hard for me to think in those moments.
“Cole, it’s too soon,” I said reluctantly. “It’s barely been a couple months. That’s a big thing.”
“I wanted to take you away from here within two minutes of meeting you,” he replied with a smirk. “That night at the clinic, I saw it in you then - your compassion and good nature. And then by the time you wanted to karate chop me in your living room, that was enough. I wanted to throw you over my shoulder and strap you to my bike and just head down the coast. I would’ve taken you away back then. And now, after these last two months… This has been the most normal life I’ve ever lived, yet it feels like something more extraordinary than what anyone else gets.” He reached out and touched my face, still keeping his eyes on mine. “I would never leave without you. But this mess I’m in with Harvey, what if I can’t stay here? What if moving on can only happen by actually moving away?”
“Are you sure you have to do this for him? Why can’t there be an alternative?”
“Because it’s the only way I know how to show him that he’s my father. He has been since I was twelve. It’s the one last thing he’s asking of me, and I owe him that,” he stated, intertwining his fingers with mine in his lap.
“Don’t they make Hallmark cards for that kind of thing?” I said lightheartedly, trying to break the tension. “I feel like a thoughtful handwritten letter could express some of what you’re feeling. I’m not sure some kind of heist or drug bust or whatever you’re planning, I’m not sure that conveys that same message.”
The Falling Kind Page 15
