Songbird Caged

by Lisa Edward

  “I didn’t know what you wanted for the big meet the in-laws dinner, so I brought everything,” he said mischievously.

  Cole had slumped down on a stool behind the island bench. I looked over at him to read his reaction to the in-laws comment. He had his forearms crossed on the flat surface in front of him, and his chin resting on his arms. He was watching me with big, sad, puppy-dog eyes, but when Jason joked about the in-laws his jaw twitched.

  Probably having heart failure at the reference to in-laws, I thought. I was waiting for him to make himself scarce, but he didn’t budge. He just kept watching me as I pulled three coffee cups out, and busied myself frothing the milk.

  “When can I move back in?”

  I turned, only to be greeted by Cole’s big emerald-green eyes and downcast mouth. “I want to move back in.”

  “You can move back in. This was never meant to be a permanent arrangement. I’ll pack up my stuff and go back home tomorrow, and you can come back here.”

  He sat up, frowning. “No, that’s not what I meant. I don’t want you to go, I just want to move back in, with you. I miss being here, but I miss you more. If you leave then I’ll still miss you. Can’t you stay?”

  Jason was leaning quietly against the side of the bench, eyes wide. I heard him whisper under his breath, “say yes”, and I glanced at him out the corner of my eye.

  He lifted his hands in the air. “Not that it’s any of my business, but you’d be safer here.” He indicated to Cole, who I suspected Jason had a bit of a crush on. “How could you refuse?”

  I sighed. I knew it wasn’t a good idea to be living with Cole again. Too much had happened, and we were too close. My feelings for him were so strong, and I felt like whenever he was around I had to constantly fight against this magnetic pull. It was exhausting and confusing, and it made me feel guilty all the time. Although I hadn’t slept with Cole, I still felt that in my heart I was cheating on Riley.

  “I thought you had my pillow to keep you company. How could you be missing me?” I joked, trying to lighten the mood.

  “While I am extremely familiar with your pillow—” He jiggled his eyebrows at me. “—it’s not quite the same as cuddling up to you.”

  I screwed up my nose. “Do I need to replace my pillow? Just how familiar are you, exactly?”

  He laughed that deep husky laugh that I loved so much. “Not that familiar. There hasn’t been any sex in your bed, I promise.”

  Yep, no sex in my bed. That would be because he always goes to the girls’ houses. Or to the backroom at Songbirds, or the car park, or anywhere else that was convenient and quick.

  I turned back to the coffee machine. He read my body language instantly.

  “Hey, I haven’t been collecting phone numbers, unlike someone here who bagged herself a randy doctor. So, have you called him?” he asked uneasily.

  I laughed. “I think my life is complicated enough, being in love with two men. I don’t need to confuse the situation by adding a third man into the equation.”

  I stopped, and squeezed my eyes shut tight. If I tried hard enough, maybe I could turn time back by about twenty seconds, to before I’d blurted out that I was in love with two men. Anyone want to guess who those two men were?

  I looked up at Jason. Maybe I’d only thought it, and didn’t really say it out loud. No chance of that. Jason’s hands had flown to his mouth, and he was watching me, wide-eyed again.

  Out the corner of my eye, I took a sneaky look at Cole. His expression was a little different to Jason’s. While his hand was also over his mouth, his eyes were smiling at me.

  “I’m just going to go find something to wear,” I announced, and practically ran to the bedroom.

  I sat on the edge of the bed with my head in my hand. What the hell was I thinking, blurting that out? I’d virtually told Cole that I was in love with him. At least he hadn’t fainted and fallen off his stool, although he may now think twice about wanting to move back in with me. He was not the steady, commitment type of guy that Riley was.

  If there was one thing that I was sure of, it was that Cole would never be able to commit to only one girl. No matter how many times he had reassured me that I was different, it wasn’t enough. Paris had proven that and I wasn’t prepared to have my heart broken.

  “Did you find something to wear?” Cole asked as he stepped warily into the room.

  I bit my top lip, and looked up at him. I was so embarrassed.

  “Are you still coming to the dinner?”

  I shrugged. I knew I was being a coward, but I really just wanted to bury my head in the sand and hide.

  “Well, my way of dealing with the whole Prue thing, which is absolute denial, hasn’t been working, so we need to try something different.” He came and squatted down in front of me, holding my hands. “I need you there.”

  His eyes were bright as he tried to suppress a smile. “Don’t worry,” he told me seriously. “What you said before is just another elephant we can ignore, if you want.”

  I stood up. “Good.”

  “But.” He looked at me smugly. “When I move back in, and I will be moving back in, we’re going to sit down and parade all your elephants out in the open.”

  He helped me select a Ceylon sapphire-blue dress that he said matched my eyes. It was one-shouldered, and gathered across to the opposite hip.

  I showed Jason the dress, and we decided that simple was best. He slicked my hair back into a high sleek ponytail, and ironed the hair dead straight. With smoky eyes and nude-coloured lips, my makeup was complete. I wore the bracelet that Cole had given me for my birthday as my main piece of jewellery, and the drop earrings from Marcus.

  Cole came out to join us as Jason and I were just topping up our champagne glasses for the third time. I needed some Dutch courage if I was going to get through the night with the stuff-shirts, and Jason was always happy to share a bottle of bubbly and some gossip.

  I stood up and walked over to Cole. He was holding up two jackets for us to decide which one he should wear. He was dressed in dark khaki-coloured pants with a fitted, plain-white linen shirt. The simplicity of the shirt meant it took nothing away from Cole. He looked breathtaking. His hair had been spiked, and his eyes somehow looked greener than I had ever seen them.

  “Can you try them both on for us and we’ll decide?” I asked him.

  Jason came over and stood beside me as Cole humoured us with a fashion parade, first with one jacket, and then the other.

  “Jesus,” Jason muttered under his breath. “How do you do it, Little Miss?”

  I looked at him briefly, and smirked.

  “He’s as hot as Riley. Different, but just as hot. Less smouldering sex-god, and more raw masculine sex-god.” He leaned over to me. “How do you keep your legs together?”

  I shook my head. I really didn’t know. “Sheer determination, and a good dose of guilty conscience.”

  “I have one more thing for you to wear,” Cole said, as he slipped the first jacket back on. In the end he had decided for himself what to wear as we were absolutely no help.

  He pulled something out of his pants pocket, and held his hand out to me, palm up.

  It was my engagement ring, sparkling clean and as good as new. He had clearly taken it to be mended after the hospital had cut it from my finger.

  “Oh Cole,” I said to him with a smile as I dabbed at my eyes. “You can’t make me cry now when we’re just about to leave.”

  I threw my arms around his neck, and hugged him so tight he was pulled off balance.

  “I know you’ve missed it, and you should be wearing it. At least until you decide what you want to do.”

  He slipped the ring onto my right hand. It would have to be worn there until the plaster, that was halfway down my fingers, came off.

  I held my hand up and examined the ring, watching the light refract through the diamonds and send colours dancing across Cole’s white shirt. I couldn’t help beaming. I was so happy to have the ring bac
k and in one piece.

  I grabbed Cole’s cheek and kissed him firmly on the lips. “Thank you.”

  NO WONDER Cole didn’t seem overly impressed when he visited my family home; his was about four times the size. It was, by anyone’s standards, a mansion.

  We were shown in by Rosetta, the housekeeper, who took my jacket before disappearing.

  Cole took my hand and led me through the grand foyer. “This way, babe,” he said reassuringly.

  I stopped, making him stop and turn to face me. “Are you still going to call me babe tonight? I thought we would have to be more formal, more—better behaved, and distant.”

  He held my cheeks in his hands. “If I want to call you babe, I’ll call you babe. If I want to kiss you, I will. Unless you have a problem with that?”

  Shaking my head, I felt relieved for some reason. I had envisaged Cole taking on the persona of Victor as soon as we had arrived, and becoming somehow more aloof and reserved.

  We continued into the formal sitting room where we were greeted by a beaming Pops, and a smiling Victor. Unfortunately, they were the only ones who seemed happy to see us. Well, happy to see me.

  Cole was very diplomatic, and pretended not to notice the look of disdain on his mother’s face as he greeted her. He introduced me to Prue, who he reminded, had known me when we were children, and then to her parents.

  I politely said hello, taking great pleasure in calling her Prue and not Prudence, which I knew she hated. I then made my way over to Pops, who was looking very comfortable in a burgundy wing-backed chair, and gave him a warm hug. He was looking so much better, although I knew he wasn’t well. The medication they had him on was obviously helping him to at least get out of bed and socialise, which I was extremely grateful for.

  “Would you like the grand tour?” Cole leaned in to whisper. “It takes about half an hour, which should take us up to dinner time.”

  That sounded like a plan. As much as I wanted to speak with Pops and Victor, the icy stares I was getting from the other guests were making me extremely uncomfortable.

  “What the …? You have a ballroom in your home? An actual freaking ballroom!”

  Cole had started the tour with what must have been the most impressive room in the house. It was a grand ballroom, the likes of which I had only seen in pictures of palaces in Europe. The walls were mirrored, and there were about a dozen chandeliers hanging from the ridiculously high ceiling. The floor was waxed to mirror-finish parquetry. It was, without a doubt, the most impressive room I had ever set foot in.

  Cole laughed. “It’s where my parents hold all their fundraisers. There’s one coming up next month, actually. Do you want to come?”

  I shook my head.

  “Okay, that was the wrong way to phrase it. Will you please come with me?” he pleaded exaggeratedly.

  “It’s not you. It’s just—I haven’t had anything to do with those people since my debutante ball nine years ago. I don’t think I could face Spencer Worthington and all his friends, as well as my mother and her cronies.”

  Cole’s mouth was downturned, but he nodded in understanding. “Okay. I was just really hoping you would come to see me beat the crap out of Spencer when I see him.” He smirked at me. “Should have done it nine years ago, but now that I know it was you he drugged, I can’t wait to see him again.”

  We continued around the house, moving from one lavishly-decorated room to another.

  “You know, I’m impressed,” I told him, still looking around in awe.

  “I know. It’s an impressive house,” he agreed.

  I chuckled. “No not with the house, with you. You grew up relatively normal, considering how you were raised. I bet you had a nanny and a houseful of servants.”

  He nodded, almost embarrassed. “My nanny was French,” he said, raising his eyebrows.

  “Oh God, do I want to hear this story?” I joked, pretending to cover my ears.

  Cole chuckled. “My nanny was old, so you can unblock your ears. She was awesome, though. She took care of me, you know? It wasn’t just her job, she genuinely cared about me.”

  There was that lonely little boy again, the one I had seen glimpses of from time to time. I took his hand, lacing my fingers with his.

  “Not many people have genuinely cared about me. She did.” He looked down at me. “You did.”

  My heart went out to him. Did he really think I didn’t care about him anymore?

  “I still do, Cole, of course I do. I’m just hurting. What you did …” I shook my head. ”Do you know what hurt the most that night?”

  He shook his head, waiting for me to continue.

  I led him over to a couch in yet another sitting room so we could talk privately. “There were two things. The fact you thought I didn’t care about you, after everything we’d been through together. That you could think that I was really saying to Riley that he was the only one I cared about, and who was important to me, when I care about you every bit as much.”

  He lifted my hand to his lips, kissing my fingers gently.

  “And when you told me I could watch, because you knew I liked to watch. You turned something that we had shared the night before, which I felt was so special and intimate, into something seedy and dirty.”

  “It was special,” he replied hoarsely. He cleared his throat. “It was special, babe. What we’ve done together …” He brushed the backs of my knuckles with his thumb. “I lashed out. I wanted to hurt you because I was hurting. Hearing Hotshot talk about all the things he missed about you, the things he missed doing to you, and the things you missed about him, it tied my gut in knots. Then when you told him he was the only one you wanted, and he was making all these plans for your future, I just snapped.”

  He lifted my hand, kissing the palm tenderly. “I know it’s not how you feel, and I understand why you had to reassure him, but at the time I just couldn’t think straight.”

  He ran the back of his fingers down my cheek. “I know I’ve had a lot of sex with a lot of girls. Most of them skanky, some of them hot, but none of them have meant anything to me.”

  He looked down, searching for the words. “I know you worry that when we do finally get together, and I say when, not if, that you will have to compete with all of them. But I’ve done things with you that I’ve never done with anyone before. Despite all the hundreds of girls I’ve been with, I’ve had so many firsts with you. And every single one of them is special.

  “I can’t take back what I said or did. I wish I could. All I can say is that every moment I spend with you means something to me. Just holding you at night, even when we’re not doing anything but cuddling, I feel closer to you. It’s more intimate than anything I’ve done with anyone else before.”

  I wanted to believe him, I really did. I could see from the pain in his eyes that he was sorry for hurting me, and I could see that he really believed what he was saying. But I also knew that once we left tonight after dinner, and he went and played at Songbirds, he would more than likely be going home with some nameless girl and banging her senseless.

  He was still looking at me, scanning my face, trying to read my expression, so I made a conscious decision to let it go. I couldn’t change what had happened, and I wasn’t going to put myself in that position again, so why hold a grudge? Cole was my best friend and I loved him dearly, and I didn’t want what had happened in Paris to come between us anymore.

  Lifting his hand, I kissed the tape that was still holding the deeper cuts on his knuckles closed. They would probably scar, and would be a constant reminder of what had happened. But some scars were good to reflect on. They could be a reminder of our mistakes, and hopefully we could learn from them.

  Cole took my hand and led me out of the sitting room, and into the last room on the ground floor—the library.

  I gazed around in awe at a room that was like something from an old movie. There were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and comfortable chairs positioned in front of an elaborate, marble, ope
n fireplace.

  Cole stood by the door, waiting for me to quickly look around and move on, but I wanted to explore.

  I ran my fingertips over one of the shelves, trying to read every title that I passed.

  “I love books. So many stories you can lose yourself in. All the romance, passion, sadness. All the happily ever afters.”

  “Is that what you want?” Cole asked as he stepped further into the room.

  I nodded absentmindedly. “Don’t you? Don’t you want love, romance, and happily ever after?”

  “I’d swap the romance for sex, but yeah, I’d like the happily ever after.”

  “But romance often leads to sex,” I told him. “So it’s a win/win.”

  “I guess I’m just not very romantic. I’ve never had to be.”

  “Being romantic isn’t about having to, it’s about wanting to.” I looked at him as he leant up against the mantelpiece over the fire. “You’re very romantic. Whisking me off to Paris, my birthday surprise, all the special dinners you’ve cooked, candlelit bubble baths and massages … the list is endless.”

  He frowned. “I don’t see that as being romantic, I was just doing nice things for you because I wanted to.”

  “That’s my point.”

  “Well, if I’m so romantic, and romance leads to sex …” He held his hands out to the sides expectantly.

  “It could have led to sex so many times, but …” I said quietly.

  “But Hotshot, right?”

  I shook my head. “It’s not just Riley, it’s a lot of things. I just think we make really great friends, and I don’t want to jeopardise that for one night of incredible sex.”

  “What makes you think it would only be one night?” he asked as he came towards me.

  “What makes you think it wouldn’t be?” I turned away from him. I couldn’t take his intense eyes burrowing into my soul. “What makes you think you could be happy with just me, and give up every other girl?”

  He raised my right hand and turned it over so my wrist was facing upwards, then ran his fingers over my tattoo. “Maybe you need to have a little faith in me, babe.”