by Vivian Lux
“Yeah, poor Rett. I told him I didn’t like sex, did I tell you?”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“And he bought it?”
“He’s so straight-laced that I don’t think he understands lying.”
“That boy is a closet sex maniac just waiting to be unleashed, mark my words.”
“Yeah, well....”
“Well he’s not the reason you’re flushed bright red and breathing heavy right now, is he?”
“What? I am not.”
“You are. Your Cole-radar is going off.”
“He’s that close?”
“I think he’s coming over.”
“Oh god.”
“No, I’m just messing with you.”
“You’re a pain in my ass.”
“Why won’t you talk to him, Autumn?”
I twisted the bits of label in my hands and dropped them onto the table top that looked like it was undergoing a very localized snow squall. As I did, I tried to find an answer. I searched my brain for a response that made any sense whatsoever, but there were no words for what I was feeling. How could I explain why I was on high alert, like a zebra wandering past a pride of lions? I squirmed in my chair, frozen to the spot and burning with the desire to run away, get away from him and run shrieking out into the snowstorm and let the snowflakes sizzle on my overheated cheeks. Why did I want to grab him, and then fling him away, kiss him and then slap him across the face? Why was I still feeling this way after so many years? “Because...” I started lamely and then trailed off, still searching for how to tell Brynn that in spite of everything I had ever said about Cole Granger being an asshole, I didn’t actually believe it.
I didn’t break things off with him out of anger. I did it because I loved him. He needed to go. The first member of his family to get into college and he gets into Penn with a full ride? That’s incredible. I needed him to concentrate. To do well. To make me proud. Then maybe, someday in the future, our paths would cross again and we could pick up where we left off. Maybe. I wasn’t counting on it, though.
When he walked out that door without saying goodbye, I honestly hoped I’d never see him again.
I never counted on him coming back.
“He shouldn’t have left,” I finally stammered.
Brynn’s eyes darted upward and I wondered how close Cole was to us now. Did he hear me? Oh god, he must have. Could the ground open up and swallow me now? I shifted in my chair and started backtracking immediately. “Yeah I thought that back then, but really, how could I make that demand? He got that scholarship, he’s so damn smart, it was right for him to leave. I was being selfish as hell.”
Brynn’s eyes softened. “You were a teenage girl in love, of course you were selfish.”
“Still, it’s no excuse.”
“Sure it is,” a deep voice said over my shoulder.
Chapter Seven
Cole
She whirled around with her mouth open, those perfectly pink lips making such a kiss-ably shocked round ‘o’ that it was all I could do not to kiss her with everything I had.
Instead, I stood there with my hands shoved in my pockets to keep myself from reaching out to grab her.
“How long have you been here?” she demanded.
“Here, at the bar? About ten minutes.”
“No, I mean, how long have you been listening to me talk?”
I flicked my eyes up at Brynn, who pursed her lips together and took a sip of her drink. She hadn’t warned Autumn as I got close enough to hear them discuss me. I owed Brynn a drink as a thank you. Probably several. “Long enough,” I said.
“You...”
“Autumn, come dance with me.”
“What?” She looked scandalized and excited at the same time. Watching Autumn fight with her emotions sent me right back in time to the moment when I last saw her, smiling and blinking back tears as she told me to go to college, that she was breaking up with me for me.
I thought that was what she wanted. I thought I was making her happy by walking away. But now I heard that she’d been just as miserable as I was without her and the weight of the years knocked me down to one knee. “Please,” I begged her. “Just a dance.”
I reached out my hand and goddammit I still fucking loved her.
Her long, elegant fingers slipped into my palm and I closed my hand around hers before she could get away. “Cole,” she began as I pulled her to me.
“It’s nothing major, Autumn. I just want to talk.” I tried to bring her closer, but I misjudged her footing. She lurched to the side and for one, brief, beautiful moment, her perfect breasts were pressed against my arm. All I would need to do was move my hand a fraction to cup one in my palm.
Instead, I froze and let her step away. Her eyes were accusing, but I feigned my innocence and hoped like hell she wouldn’t look down and spy the raging boner I was now sporting
“You want to talk?” Her voice was muffled against her hand as she covered her mouth and looked away, and part of me wondered if she was laughing about the inadvertent tit-grope. Back in the day, she would have thought it was hilarious.
She composed herself and allowed me to lead her — gently and with no more near tit-grabs — away from the table and into a quieter section of the bar. I didn’t try to sit with her. I knew she needed a chance to walk away from me.
She took a deep breath and looked up and I saw her grit her teeth. “Okay. So we’re talking. I’ll talk first then.” She pushed her hair behind her shoulder. “How is New York?”
I cleared my throat. Small talk. Okay. I could do small talk. “Big.”
She blinked “That’s it?”
I was grinning like an idiot, so wide my cheeks were aching. “I don’t really want to talk about me,” I told her, feasting my eyes on the way her red hair glinted in the low light of the bar.
Her grin was wicked. “Well there’s a first.”
“Atta girl.” I leaned against the wall. “What’s been up with you, Autumn?”
“You want me to sum up eight years in one sentence?”
“How about the last six months?”
“Busy,” she said shortly. Then her voice softened. “The kids are fun.”
“Tell me, do teachers have favorites?”
“Oh, absolutely!”
I pretended to be shocked. “You’re supposed to lie to me and tell me that you are completely diplomatic and professional.”
“Why?”
“Because now I know my teachers really actually did hate me.”
Now she was laughing. “Just Mrs. Collis.”
“Oh god, it was that noticeable?”
“Well, you did let a fucking cow loose in our school!” She was laughing even harder now.
“It was just that one thing!” I protested. “I was only a freshman, I was trying to make my mark!”
“Kind of cemented your reputation, though, didn’t it?”
I shrugged. “Yeah, guess so.”
She blinked those perfectly blue eyes of hers. “You were really smart, though,” she said, her voice just a little bit softer.
My whole body ached with wanting to kiss her. I had to look away. “Were?” I said, pretending to be petulant to disguise how badly I needed her.
“Well, tonight’s not exactly been a shining moment of intellectualism. So far you’ve had a few drinks and tried to feel my tits.”
“I think trying to feel your tits is the smartest thing I’ve ever done.”
“Oh, he still thinks he’s so charming.” Her voice was mocking but she was smiling.
I looked at her. “I don’t actually really think that anymore.”
“What?”
“That I’m so charming.”
“Um...”
“You asked me how New York is.” I reached out and took a lock of her red hair in my hand. She gasped and held her breath as I twirled it in the low light, loving the way the colors glinted like fire. “I’ll tell you how it
is. It’s lonely.”
She gently took the piece of hair from my hand and tucked it back behind her ear. “You don’t have a ton of friends? Come on, Cole, you can’t expect me to believe that.”
I cleared my throat and as I talked I realized I was telling the truth. “I have... colleagues. Work buddies. Associates. Networking partners. I have a bunch of people who I use to get ahead and who use me in the exact same way. It’s a little... soulless.”
She was silent but her eyes were soft. Friendly. Knowing. She understood me better than anyone ever had. I took her hand. “It’s been a long, long time since I just talked to someone about... nothing.”
“Are we talking about nothing?” she asked.
I nodded. “Is that okay with you?”
“It actually is.”
“Merry Christmas, Autumn.”
“Merry Christmas, Cole.”
“Autumn?” I drew a circle around her white wrist. “Dance with me?”
Chapter Eight
Autumn
It was something beyond thinking that propelled me into his arms. More instinct than rational thinking, more primal. My body moved to press against him out of something very close to muscle memory and we fit together the way we always had. My head on his shoulder, his lips against my forehead, my arms around his neck just aching to pull him down for a kiss.
We stayed that way for a long while, swaying to the music, turning in place three full rotations before I finally heard him murmur into my hair. Or rather, I felt his lips against my forehead, the shape of the words against my skin. “I’ve missed you so goddamn much.”
I closed my eyes against the tears that threatened to come and instead I blinked. I didn’t say anything back. I didn’t think I could talk without crying, so I stayed quiet, but Cole made a low murmuring noise of assent that told me he understood exactly what I wasn’t able to say.
I felt him tug us a little, and I stumbled off-beat. “What are you doing?” I asked.
Even as we spun in slow circles, I could feel the press of his hand in the small of my back, leading us... somewhere. I couldn’t see over his shoulder, and part of me didn’t care. Part of me just wanted to drift in the bliss of being in his arms again. I still fit against him so snugly, the years hadn’t changed that. And his hands still knew my body., even after all these years he still touched me with the authority of being the first everything in my life. First crush, first kiss, first lover...
He tugged again. ”What are you doing?” I demanded as he leaned us even further to the left.
“Nothing. Don’t look up.”
So, of course, I craned my neck upwards. And nearly burst out laughing “Are you trying to drag me under the mistletoe?”
He grinned that grin. “I thought it was worth a shot.”
“How cheesy are you?”
“Hey!” he protested. “I really want to kiss you right now, but I’m still afraid either you or Brynn is going to castrate me the first chance you get. So I figured mistletoe would be a good cover.”
“You think I want to castrate you?”
He looked down. “Hell, I would if I were you.”
“Cole.”
“Stop. We don’t need to do this. I’ve missed you so goddamn much, Autumn.”
I felt my body craning for him, seeking him even before my brain kicked in and wondered what I was doing. Why was I kissing him? Why were my lips sliding against his, parting to let his tongue sweep against mine? Why were my hands reaching up and gripping his shoulder, pulling him down to meet me and deepen the kiss? Why did he still know exactly how to touch me, the way to cup my face in his hands, holding me tightly to him? Why was he here?
Why did I spend so much time hating him when it was clear I still loved him with all my heart?”
He pulled back and smiled, then glanced upward with a devilish grin. “Mistletoe is way over there, still.” He snaked his hand around my waist and lifted me with one arm. I squealed as he moved us directly under the hanging branch. “I want to kiss you right here too.”
This time when he kissed me, I didn’t think about anything other than how right it was that we were together again. Even if just for tonight, just for the holiday, it was still the sweetest present I could have asked for. A chance to do it over again and make it right.
Cole pulled back again and kissed my forehead. “You want to go somewhere with me?” he asked.
I was so content in his arms I was practically purring. I looked up at him, feeling oddly sleepy and sedated. “Why? Where are you going?”
He looked me in the eye. “Home.”
I felt like someone poured cold water on my head. I pulled back from him. “You mean to New York?”
He chuckled at my shocked reaction. “No! I mean to my house.” His mouth twisted oddly and he reiterated. “Or rather, the house I grew up in.” He looked down. “I need to see it. Feels weird to be here and not go over there anyway. But I don’t think I can go alone.”
All the alcohol must have gone to my head. Mind you, I only had one, but I had to be completely drunk. It’s the only explanation for why I said, “Okay.”
*****
In the few hours I’d spent inside Reese’s Pub, the weather had deteriorated. I maneuvered my car along the slippery roads, concentrating all my attention on the yellow lines in front of me and trying my damnedest to ignore the fact that Cole Granger was sitting in the seat next to mine.
He cleared his throat so as not to startle me when he started speaking. “I forgot how fucking dark it gets up here,” he said, craning his neck to look out the window and up at the dark sky. “I don’t think I’ve used high beams in, well, years.”
“Remember doing this?” I asked. I switched on the high beams. The light reflected off the bombarding flakes as we flew through the night, making us look like we were zooming through the universe at warp speed.
“Oh my god,” he breathed. There was something so... heart-twisting about his childish wonder. “I forgot it did that! They look like they’re coming straight for you! When Fitch, Ben Dailey and I used to drive around all bored, Ben used to turn on the high beams like that to wig Fitch out. He’d get so angry yelling at him to shut it off shut it off and we’d just laugh because we were stupid asshole teenagers and we had nothing but time.” He paused for a second, lost in the memory. “I wonder how Ben is doing?”
I licked my lips. “He died, Cole.”
His stricken face shone in the reflection of the headlights.
I nodded. “In Iraq, back in 2010.”
“Jesus, he was only...”
“Twenty.”
“Shit, when I was a kid I used to think it was adults who went off to war, now that I’m older I realize it’s just a bunch of idiot kids.”
“I’ve thought that too.”
“Shit, I can’t believe I lost track of Ben.”
“You guys were good friends.”
“We were. I... shit.”
We drove in silence for a moment. The sadness dragged heavily between us. The part of my heart that still belonged to him — the small, bruised part — ached like a phantom limb and I mindlessly reached out and grabbed ahold of his fingertips, squeezing them tight.
This time when I saw his face reflected in the passing car’s headlights, it was stretched into a smile.
“You remember how to get to my parents’ place?” he asked.
“You think I could forget the way? I practically lived over at your place.”
“So then maybe you ought to slow down, speed demon?”
“Oh, tough guy, am I making you nervous? Your city ass can’t handle driving in the snow anymore.”
“Nah see, down there we have things called plows.”
“They’ll get to it when the storm’s over.”
“What happens if there’s an emergency?”
“Then you call you friend who has a plow attachment on his truck and you follow behind him.
He looked down at his hand. “Yeah.”<
br />
“Everybody looks out for each other, Cole.”
“Yeah.”
“You miss it, don’t you?”
“I never realized. But... yeah, I do.”
I made the turn on autopilot. No one had been by to plow the drive, but I gunned the engine and we slid down the sloped drive to the A-frame house that nestled in a hollow, off the main road. I turned my engine and headlights off and we sat for a moment, lost in the memory of this place.
The snow still fell thick and fast, but the stars shone through the gaps in the clouds, so the storm would be over soon. And the town would wake up to a beautifully blanketed world on Christmas morning.
Cole took a deep breath. “Let’s go in,” he said.
The snow squeaked under our boots. I followed behind Cole, careful to step in his footprints, letting him blaze a trail through the dark. He was holding his cell phone aloft like a torch, and I had to stifle my grin in my scarf. Even when citified, you couldn’t beat a country boy’s ingenuity.
The house was dark and silent. I looked up as it loomed out of the darkness, a series of sharp lines and right angles against the jumbles of forest behind it. No one had been here in quite a while. “Are you sure we’re supposed to be here?” I called to Cole.
His breath wreathed up in ribbons around his head. “It’s my house!” he called behind his shoulder, sounding amused.
“It’s your parents’ house,” I reminded him. “And they’re not here.”
“It’s my house,” he repeated, more firmly now. “I grew up here. See?” he jingled something in his hand. “I still have a key.”
We trudged forward a few more paces and suddenly the entire world was ablaze. When the pain in my retinas subsided I saw that the motion sensor lights had kicked on.
“Well. That makes it easier,” Cole laughed and looked down at the keys in his hand, picking out the right one.
