Cole

by Tijan

  I started dry heaving, but no—I couldn’t. It wasn’t over. There was no more stalling as Dorian bent to grab me, taking hold of my ankle again. He was going to drag me to his car, but as he started to turn back around, I swung. Everything in me wanted to cry, curl up, and give up, but I didn’t.

  I swung with everything I had. I was on the ground. I couldn’t run away. I’d have to crawl, but I knew I had to fight. I had to make him hurt, even just a little bit. I swallowed blood, tears, and bile as I followed my swing with my entire body. I flipped all the way over, breaking his hold. I connected with his face, but even as I felt the contact, I knew it wasn’t enough.

  He fell back, but just barely.

  I fell against the wall once again, and I could only sit there a moment, stunned. When I lifted my gaze, I knew he was going to kill me. He was going to shoot me right here and now.

  His eyes burned with rage, and his hands balled into fists. He stood staring down at me, envisioning all the ways he could hurt me—I could feel his thoughts. A cold shiver went down my spine. A red mark had already started to form on his cheek where I hit him. I got a little satisfaction from that, but it was small.

  So fucking small. I wanted to scream.

  “You bi—” Dorian started for me, but someone appeared just behind him. She swung, hitting him in the back of his head, and unlike my hit—hers counted. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he whirled around, holding on long enough to see who’d struck him.

  Dawn stood there, holding a pan in her hands. She was panting, but as he took a step toward her, she got him again, hitting him across the face and spinning all the way around from the force. She paused—her cheeks puffed out in concentration, her forehead wrinkled—then swung a third time. Right at his crotch.

  Dorian fell, slamming into the cement of the parking lot.

  Dawn looked back at me. “Cast iron skillet. Figured it was the best to knock him out.” She let go, and the pan fell to the floor with a clang.

  I frowned, trying to make sense of everything. Sia’s words came back to me, “He has security guards on you.”

  “Are you a guard?”

  “No.” She grinned, looking almost ready to teeter to the ground herself. She raked a hand through her hair, making it more of a mess. “Just the building’s shut-in. It paid to be nosy this time, huh?”

  I wanted to laugh, but all I could do was cry.

  Liam…

  I should’ve run. I didn’t.

  I should’ve hidden. I didn’t.

  I should’ve cried. I couldn’t.

  I should’ve raged, thrown something. My hands never left my side.

  I should’ve done something, anything.

  But I sat in my apartment, and I waited. That was what I did.

  Jake and Sia showed up not long after Dawn knocked Dorian out. She called them, and they came down. Jake called an ambulance, and the cops right after that, and soon the parking lot for The Mauricio was filled with flashing red and white lights and uniforms walking around. The police took Dorian into custody, but I had no doubt Cole would get him eventually. Someone found Ken and loaded him into the ambulance. Dawn went with him, crying because apparently she always brought supper down to him every Tuesday night. They sat and ate spaghetti together, every week for the last seven months.

  The paramedics tried to take me with them, too, but I refused. They checked me over and couldn’t find any new injuries that alarmed them enough for a trip to the hospital, so I stayed back. There was a conversation I wanted to have. And I wasn’t moving until it was done.

  So here I was, a few hours later, and I finally heard the elevator start. My panel beeped, and then the door opened. Sia and Jake had been here earlier, but I made them leave. I knew it wouldn’t be long before Cole arrived, and I didn’t want them here.

  I had them leave my bedroom door open, though. I wanted to hear him coming.

  And in a way, I did, but I didn’t.

  I heard the elevator.

  I heard when he overrode the code to open my door.

  I heard the door open.

  I didn’t hear him.

  There was no sound—as he walked down the hallway, passing the kitchen, turning by the living room—until he was standing in my bedroom doorway. Suddenly he was just there, and even though I was expecting him, my heart still jumped in my chest.

  This man, who stared back at me with a fierce light heating up his eyes, his hands balled into fists against his legs, didn’t look anything like the tender lover I’d heard whisper “I love you” earlier. No. I saw the killer I always knew was there, who I had witnessed myself, but it was more than that.

  I searched for some guilt in Cole. I held my breath just a moment, and I saw it. I felt it.

  I saw the rage barely blanketed under his control. I saw the ruthlessness in him. I saw the cold blood that someone with his life would need when they pulled the trigger, or when they had someone else pull the trigger.

  My gut flared up, and I knew. He could’ve done it.

  I asked, hoarsely, “Did your family kill my husband?” My throat barely worked, but I didn’t think it was because of Dorian’s hand. I blanched. I couldn’t hold back the real truth. I asked one more time. “Did you kill Liam?”

  And I waited.

  His chest rose as he drew in a silent breath. He never broke eye contact, and maybe that was why it hurt so much—because I saw it as I heard it. It felt like he was delivering my sentence when he said one word: “Yes.”

  I only had one response in return. “Get out.”

  Five Ways To Mend After That Guy Got Past Your Walls

  Okay, ladies. It happened. You tried to safeguard yourself against him, but he weaseled past your walls. Where do you go from here? Hopefully, he reciprocates your feelings. You’re together now, and you get to enjoy romantic strolls in the park, holding hands, the joys of touching in a darkened theater. Those are the good days. Those are the days you’re hoping for, but what if things aren’t ending with happy ever after? In that case, you need to move on (again). This is what you do:

  * Booze. Lots and lots of booze. Normally you’re probably careful about your alcohol intake. This is the time you can throw that out. Write it down, then rip it apart. Burn the paper. In this circumstance, the more booze, the better off you are. Just be safe, of course. No driving, no drunk dialing, and know your limits!

  * If alcohol doesn’t work for you, go the healthy route. Focus on exercise. Get a gym membership. Become a runner. Power-walk your ass off. If you can’t numb the heartbreak, use it to fuel something productive. Get high off those endorphins, ladies!

  * Music! Sad music. Happy music. Blues. Folk. EDM. Whatever works. Fill up your phone, and blast it any time you need a dose. Combine number three with number two, and off you go into the healthiest, best-looking you ever. You can combine number three with number one, too. Number three can go with anything.

  * Food. Now, while I’ve controversially recommended unlimited booze to numb your feelings, I have to offer this option with stricter guidelines: Indulge in food for the first weekend only! Ice cream. Pasta. Pizza. Whatever is on your forbidden list, order it in for that first cry-fest. Feel the food. Feel the emotions. Anger. Sadness. Whatever you need fill that hole he left in you, use food, along with booze or music, to help you ease the pain. But when the tear ducts stop working, because eventually they will, put the food away. Start on number 2.

  * Friends/Family/Fun. The three Fs. Use them. Have your friends to take you out, make you laugh—put them through the wringer. That’s why they’re your friends. Lean on your family. Go to them if you need support, or just to forget reality. If you need to revert back to your early childhood years when everything was safe, go there. Embrace this time when you can be selfish. You’re the one hurting. You’ll hold them up later, when you can hold them up. Until then, be selfish. Enjoy their support, and above everything else, seek to have some fun at the end of the day. That will chase the heartbreak
away, little by little. And if all else fails, go on to number six.

  * One-night stands. Getting under someone new can be the best way to jumpstart getting over someone old. But just be safe about it. Don’t let a one-night decision, or a more-than-a-few-nights decision, alter your future. And if you go this route, empty a drawer and fill it up with condoms. Take charge, ladies. Don’t rely on the guy. After all, that might be why you’re in this mess in the first place.

  With that said, drink up, eat up, let the tears flow, use the anger, and proceed with whatever helps you endure the pain. You’ll have your walls back up in no time.

  I left.

  Sia drove me to my parents’ house, a few hours away. When the door opened and my dad appeared, wearing his usual blue plaid flannel pajamas, I couldn’t hold the tears back any longer.

  This was when I raged, when I threw things, when I screamed, when I let everything out. But when it was over, the next week, I wasn’t sure who I was grieving: Liam or Cole.

  My parents were speechless when they first saw me, but I ignored their reactions. I didn’t have the words to explain, so Sia did once my dad had carried me inside. I heard their soft conversation on the porch as I waited in the kitchen, tears pooling on the table. And that night, when they came back in and after Sia asked for the seventh time if she should stay and I told her no again and walked her out to her car, my dad pulled out a bottle of whiskey.

  My parents didn’t drink a lot. The alcohol was for special occasions, maybe one glass on holidays. But that night, my parents were lushes. My mom kept crying. She’d wipe her tears away, remark that they shouldn’t have let me have my space even though I’d requested it, and get a forlorn look in her eye. Over and over. And every time that look appeared, she’d refill her glass.

  My dad was much the same, except he wasn’t crying. From time to time a murderous rage came into his eyes. His hands curled into fists, and the veins bulged out in his neck. Then he’d refill his glass with whiskey.

  After a month, Sia and Jake offered to help pack up my apartment. Of course I would want to move, and of course they understood why I wouldn’t want to come back, to face the place where I’d fallen in love with Cole. They understood. They were more than willing to help me move on with my life, but the only problem…every time I tried to think of that, I couldn’t. My brain would shut down. The words to answer Sia never came out of my throat, and when we talked on the phone, it was always about my parents, about me being back home, or about her life. She told me about her job, how the Gala was doing great, and how her relationship with Jake was going as well.

  I couldn’t bring myself to ask her to help me move on. I tried. I did. I attempted to force the words out of my throat. But they never came, and every time after I hung up the phone with her, I was flooded with other memories instead. They weren’t the ones I needed to remember, but they were torturous in their own right.

  I’d remember the first time in Gianni’s, when Cole walked in with his friends. I remembered how I woke up, like I’d been asleep for the last year.

  I’d remember seeing him in the elevator, holding Carl up. My body burned as it had then. I felt it all over again, how much I’d wanted Cole, even then.

  The sight of him on that running track, how my stomach had gotten butterflies and my palms were sweaty, like I had a schoolgirl crush on him.

  Then I’d remember the table at our first dinner together, how we didn’t order and went back to my place—the feel of his lips, the way he held me, the way he carried me. The way he made me groan, as I raked my fingers through his hair. The feel of him inside me.

  The feel of him all the other times, too.

  And I always asked myself the worst question, the one that plagued me:

  Did he miss me like I missed him—utterly and completely?

  Three months later

  “Addison, can you clean out Taffy’s stall?”

  “Who was that?” Sia asked over the phone.

  I tucked my phone more securely between my shoulder and neck, gave Kirk the thumbs-up, and began heading to the opposite end of the barn. Horses looked up in every stall as I passed by.

  “That was the guy I’m helping,” I told her. “My mom got tired of me moping around the house. When the barn manager for our county fair mentioned he was looking for volunteers, guess who she suggested?”

  “She didn’t.”

  “She did.”

  I stopped halfway to Taffy’s stall. My bags were stashed next to the food bins. I grabbed some of the apples I’d brought and kept going. When it came to the alpha mare, I’d learned bribes went a long way.

  “It’s been fine for the most part, and honestly, it really does get me out of the house.”

  Sia made a noncommittal Mmmmm sound as Taffy stuck her head over the stall door. She had large doe eyes and a long white blaze down the middle of her brown face. Her nostrils flared as she smelled the apples, and she nuzzled against my hand.

  “Besides, some of these horses have better attitudes than humans,” I told her. “Like this one.” I ran my free hand up the front of Taffy’s face, all the way to her forelock. “Oh, yes. You, Miss Taffy. You’re a bossy mare, aren’t you?”

  “Are you flirting with that horse?” Sia asked.

  I laughed and grabbed the phone, switching it to my other ear. Taffy picked up the apples and pulled her head back, content to let them drop in her stall so she could eat them.

  I leaned against the stall door. “I am, and I don’t care.”

  Sia laughed, then was quiet a moment. “You’re not coming back, are you?”

  “What?”

  “You sound happy. Or, well, you’ve been sounding happier the last few times on the phone. You’re not coming back, are you?”

  I could hear her disappointment. “Uh…” What did I say? My stuff was still there. Waiting. Gathering dust. Sitting alone. “I don’t know, Sia. I really don’t.”

  “I still had hope since you keep turning us down, but now I can hear it in your voice. You can tell me. You’re really not coming back.”

  I looked at the ground, holding my phone so tightly. My throat swelled. “Uh…”

  “Never mind. I didn’t say that to make you feel bad. I’m sorry. I just—I’m going nuts not having my best friend here.”

  “I know.” I sucked in a breath. “I’m sorry.”

  Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I think Jake’s going to propose.” She rushed on before I could say anything. “I have no proof. It’s not like I found a ring or anything, or even a receipt, but every time I go on his computer, ring ads pop up on the side. And when I’m searching for clothes, suddenly dress ads have started showing up, so that means he’s looking, right?”

  I already knew he was. Jake had called a week earlier to ask for my “permission.” He’d laughed as we talked, but I heard how nervous he was. “I know you’re not her mom and dad, but you’re the reason I met her, and you’re her family,” he’d said. “I figured, well, this feels right to be asking you. I’m going to ask her parents, too, but to be honest, she’s way closer to you. I know it’d mean more to her if I asked you, so here’s me—” He laughed again, ending at a high pitch. “—asking you if I can marry your best friend?”

  “Yes,” I’d told him. My cheeks had hurt from smiling during that conversation. “A thousand times yes. She loves you so much.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes!”

  He’d sounded so happy, and it’d been a struggle to keep quiet since then.

  “Well, if he does, he’s a very smart man,” I said now to Sia.

  She snorted. “You’re damned straight he’s smart. He was a genius to seal the deal with a quickie that first night. Insta-love, Addison. I swear. It was during that first dinner at his place, after we found William’s stash—when he finished and before quoting Derek’s T-shirt.”

  “Do I want to know this?”

  “You remember that shirt? Or wait. Was it his coffee mug? I