“You’ve known me for what? About a week? And suddenly you’re an expert on every little detail about me?”
The abrasiveness of his words silenced her for longer than she wanted to be. “I’d like to think I know you, yeah. We’ve spent every second together since we met. You told me things no one else knows.”
“Don’t talk about that.”
“We don’t have to talk about it. I’m not talking about it. I’m trying to show you that I know you better than you’re giving me credit for.” She had no idea what was wrong with him, but regardless of what Cole said, she knew one thing for sure—this wasn’t the person she’d spent the last…however many days with.
Cole rubbed his hands through his hair. “If you know so much, then you’d know that I’m the kind of guy who cuts and runs when shit gets complicated. And this”—he gestured between them—“is way fucking complicated.”
“You can’t be serious.” Brooke hated how her voice broke on the last syllable. Hated she was showing him he was hurting her.
“Your bodyguard is downstairs. He said he’ll wait for you.” Cole began moving around the room, gathering his stuff.
Brooke put her hand on his arm to stop him. “Wait, what? Dean is here?”
“He didn’t give me his name. But if a big guy with a shaved head and a bad attitude is Dean, then yes. I ran into him downstairs.” Cole pulled away from her and continued packing.
Brooke stared at him for a second. For the first time in a week, she felt like she was looking at a stranger. “So that’s it? I tell you how I feel about going back to that life, and this is what you do?”
“I told you. Shit was fucked up when I was a kid so I enlisted the first chance I got. Then shit in the army went south so I quit. Life in Georgia sucked so I took off again. See the theme, Princess?”
“You didn’t abandon me when I needed you at that gas station or at the bar. Why are you doing it now?”
He dropped his bag and faced her. “Because you don’t belong with me. I have nothing, but you have a whole life waiting for you. You belong in the world while all I want to do is exist on the fringe of it. This was nothing more than a stop on one of your tours. Not a destination.”
Brooke disagreed. She felt they clicked in every way that truly mattered. Her life back home was superficial. The past week had been filled with adventure and depth and feeling.
They hadn’t talked about what would happen after Oregon, but the fact that they’d said they’d discuss it had given Brooke hope that she might mean more to him than just some traveling partner. And she mentally scolded herself for allowing herself to have hope of something more—hope Cole was squashing with every passing word. She wanted to tell him their lives weren’t as different as he thought they were, that they could make it work between them if they both wanted it badly enough. But she didn’t say any of that. How could she when he was packing his shit and bailing on her? “Maybe you’re right” was all she could get out without her voice cracking with the tears she felt threatening to fall.
Without looking at her, Cole picked up his bag. “It’s probably best if I go now,” he said. “No point in dragging this out any more than it needs to be. I can call you a cab to take you to a train station or something if you don’t want to head back with your bodyguard.”
“Don’t do me any more favors,” she said. “Just go.”
He hesitated for only a second before he went to the door and pulled it open. “For what it’s worth, I will miss you.”
She stared him down, willing the tears away. “Well, I’ll be on What’s Up, America? in about a week. You could tune in and get a glimpse of the life that, according to you, I’m meant to be living.”
Cole didn’t reply right away, and the silence that stretched between them was oppressive. Finally, he said a soft, “Goodbye, Brooke,” and was gone.
It wasn’t until a few seconds after the door closed that she allowed the dam she’d built behind her eyes to collapse. And with every tear that fell, she tried desperately to rid herself of the man she was sure she’d never forget.
Chapter Fifteen
“Brookey, are you ready?”
Her mother’s singsongy voice was like nails on a chalkboard, even muffled through her bedroom door. There were few things Brooke hated more than when her mom called her “Brookey.” It made her feel like a five-year-old, which was actually probably appropriate since that was also how her mom treated her.
“Almost.”
“Well, try to hurry. Arthur will be here soon.”
Brooke heard a creak in the hall, which meant her mother had walked away from her door. Letting out a deep breath, Brooke looked at her reflection in the vanity. She looked haggard. Her eyes were puffy, her skin pale, even her hair—which her mom had had a conniption about when she’d first seen Brooke—looked flat. It was like every part of her body was expressing a misery that felt bone-deep. Arthur, her lawyer, would probably stroke out when he saw her. He had a lot of money riding on this deal too, after all.
Her parents had so far refused to comment on the sadness that felt so pervasive, Brooke wondered if she’d fallen into a full-fledged depression. They had to notice it, but to comment would have given it wings—made it something that needed to be addressed instead of ignored until it passed.
Brooke didn’t think it would ever pass. She was going to spend the next thirty-six months on a world tour she didn’t want any part of, her parents would be with her for its entirety, and it would give her worldwide recognition. It was pretty much every nightmare she’d ever had wrapped up into one.
But those things weren’t even the worst of it for her. Despite her mind constantly berating her for it, Brooke missed Cole. Terribly, deeply, painfully. He’d cast her aside like she meant nothing to him, but she wasn’t able to do the same. Thinking about Cole was somehow like thinking about her brightest day and her worst stomach bug. It was ridiculous. She hardly knew him. They’d spent together what would ultimately be a blip on the reel of her life. But Brooke suspected the memory of him would be stamped on every frame for a long time to come. And she wasn’t sure how to handle that along with everything else.
She felt one negative comment away from a mental breakdown, which scared the hell out of her. She wasn’t this person. Sure, she’d allowed herself to be walked over by her parents for her entire life, but she didn’t let others do it. Sure as hell not strangers. And she especially needed to not let it be done by one who’d picked her up in a gas station, for fuck’s sake. Taking a deep breath, Brooke willed herself to slip on the mask she’d been wearing since she was a teenager. The one that made her look like a confident, untouchable professional who didn’t get hung up on Southern boys with adorable dimples and worn-in Levi’s.
Standing up, she drew her shoulders back and held her head high. She’d have to bury Brooke Alba and become Brooke Devereaux to pull all of this off. Even though she knew that in doing so, there’d be no going back. The girl she’d been had to die in order for any semblance of herself to live. Brooke opened the door to her room and walked out, knowing full well the life she was walking toward wasn’t the better option. But it was the only one.
Cole arrived in the small town in Oregon where Jimmy had grown up as the sun was beginning to go down. Exhaustion had hit him fifty miles ago, but he’d been unable to stop. Getting to Jimmy had been why he’d set out on this trip in the first place, and once he’d gotten close, it was as if that purpose had become a desperate need. Once there, he’d have finished what he’d started. The fact that he’d been sidetracked along the way by a girl he’d sent away even while he knew she’d be taking his heart right along with her was no longer at the forefront of his mind. He’d talk things out with Jimmy. Being with him would put everything else into perspective.
Cole used his phone to search for the name of the place where Jimmy was and followed the directions. It only took ten minutes to get there. He pulled through the wrought-iron gates and continued down t
he narrow road a bit before pulling over and putting the car in park. With a deep breath, Cole pushed the door open and got out.
He’d had to look around a bit before he found Jimmy’s headstone. When he saw it, Cole was hit with a sudden wave of sadness that he hadn’t been able to be there for the funeral. Jimmy had been his best friend for almost four years. Not being there had felt all kinds of wrong, but Cole had been deployed, and the choice hadn’t been his.
As he read the headstone of Sergeant James Ventura, beloved husband, father, and son, tears welled in Cole’s eyes. Losing Jimmy had been like losing a limb for him, so he couldn’t even begin to imagine what it must have been like for his family. He’d seen numerous pictures of Jimmy’s wife and daughter, but he’d never met any of Jimmy’s relatives in person. Judging by the fresh flowers laid on his grave and the pristine American flag that blew in the soft wind, Cole figured they came often.
Squatting down, Cole rubbed a hand over the words on Jimmy’s headstone. “Sorry it took me so long to come see ya, buddy. I don’t even have a good excuse except I wasn’t ready to face you ’til now.” Truth was, despite being on his way to visit Jimmy, Cole hadn’t let himself think about the man much beyond the memories that surfaced in his nightmares. The image of the truck pulling up with a lifeless Jimmy—his eyes devoid of their usual brightness, his body a battered shell of what it had been—had been riding Cole’s subconscious more and more as he’d gotten closer. Not that it should’ve surprised Cole. Losing Jimmy had been like losing his brother all over again.
“You were always everything I wished I could be. A dedicated soldier, a good son…a great man.” Cole let his hands drop and clasped them between his thighs. “I kinda felt like I was becoming those things. A good man at least. But”—Cole shrugged—“just like everything else, I fucked it all up.”
The wind blew a little stronger, gusting through Cole’s hair, tousling it. He ducked his head into the breeze as if it were a caress. “You always did like fucking up my hair,” he said with a laugh. They’d been mandated to keep it short while deployed, but Cole always bucked the rules a bit, letting it grow out until his CO threatened to hack it off with a chainsaw.
Cole shifted so he was leaning back against Jimmy’s headstone, his legs bent in front of him. “I went home after I decided not to re-up. I was hoping my old man would be happy to see me. Maybe even respect me a little. Stupid, huh? All he wanted to know was what I was going to do for work now that I was done playing G.I. Joe.” Cole let his head fall forward. “Anyway, I stuck around there longer than I should have. He’s an asshole who makes me an asshole too. Packed up what little stuff I had and hit the road to come see you. So here I am.”
The sun blazed over a hill in the distance, causing the sky to become streaked with burnt orange and red hues. Cole looked up at it until his vision blurred. It took him a minute to realize he was crying, but once he did, it turned into the kind of body-shuddering sobbing that made it hard to breathe. “What the hell am I gonna do now, Jimmy?” he choked out between sobs.
The reality was, the only plan Cole had had was to make it to Jimmy. He was here. So…now what? Where the hell did he go from here? His skills were wrapped up in being a soldier, but he didn’t want to do that anymore. Couldn’t do it. Seeing what remained of Jimmy’s body after he’d gone on a patrol and run over an IED had broken Cole. Joining the army had been a way for Cole to escape his shitty town and shittier father. But then he’d needed to escape the army, followed by needing to escape the civilian life that made him feel like his skin was too tight. Now there was nowhere else to escape to.
The only time Cole had ever been truly content was when he’d been with Brooke. But just like everything else, he’d ruined it. Granted, he’d done it for her. What the hell did he have to offer someone like her? She deserved better.
Cole got himself under control a bit and turned to look at the headstone again. Jimmy had deserved better too. If there was ever a man who didn’t deserve to return home in a box, it was the man whose grave Cole was visiting. “Why can’t life ever be fucking fair?” Jimmy had an entire family who’d depended on him. If it had been Cole killed in action, no one would’ve even missed him. His dad sure as hell wouldn’t have come to leave flowers at his gravesite. Jimmy had been loved—was still loved. His absence left a gaping hole in the lives of everyone who knew him.
Kind of like the hole Brooke had left in Cole’s life. He wondered if she’d miss him—when she got over hating him, which he was sure she did because he deserved to be hated by her. She’d needed him, trusted him to protect her, and as soon as he’d had to show up for her—not against some prick in a bar but against a threat that was almost as ominous to her—he’d bailed on her.
Beating the hell out of some drunk asshole was easy. But fighting the truth, that he was nothing but a hick who would hold Brooke back, seemed impossible. It was the very thing people had always said about his father after his mom died. “Oh, that poor Mary Timmons. That no-good husband of hers pulled her down. At least now she’ll have some peace.” Cole didn’t want to be that guy.
But as the sun disappeared and the air around him grew crisp, Cole wondered if he had to be that guy. If he was genetically predispositioned to be a screw-up, or if he could be…more. “You always said I could be anything I wanted to be,” Cole said to his friend. “But what if I don’t know what that is?”
But even as he voiced the words, Cole realized he did know. It had been something that had only been a vague idea to him until two weeks ago, when a beautiful stranger had needed a ride. In the time since, that idea had morphed into a reality that was as complex as it was simple. But now that she was gone, that reality had been ripped away from him, and he didn’t think he could ever get it back without her.
Cole sat in the cemetery for hours, trying to figure out how to recapture what he’d lost. He talked through myriad of thoughts that weighed him down and let the ground beneath him absorb them. He gave the doubts over to Jimmy because he knew Jimmy would willingly hold them so Cole could live. Truly live, unencumbered by the things that had held him back from what he wanted the most: to be happy.
And as he stood and said his goodbyes to his best friend, Cole knew he’d be leaving a very different man than the one who had come. If he was being honest with himself, he’d started becoming a new man in that rundown gas station in Kansas. He had his sights set on a future. Now he just had to go get it.
Chapter Sixteen
“You ready, Ms. Devereaux?”
Brooke’s head snapped up to look at the young assistant wearing a headset over her long brown hair. The woman looked harried, which Brooke could relate to. Every cell in Brooke’s body jangled with anxiety and maybe even a touch of foreboding. But Brooke knew to keep all of that locked inside. She turned to look at herself in the mirror and saw the reflection of a confident—almost bored—performer. The mask had served her well over the past few days leading up to this event, and Brooke would have been proud of the fact that she hadn’t let it slip even a millimeter if she didn’t feel as though she were completely lost behind it.
“Yes,” she said, her voice deep and strong. “I’m ready.” Brooke stood and gave herself one more once-over in the mirror, taking in the shimmering gold micro dress the wardrobe department had given her this morning. It didn’t leave much to the imagination, but she figured headlining for pop heartthrob Jacoby Hale necessitated a certain level of sex appeal.
Brooke followed the woman down a long corridor before turning right and walking through a tunnel that would lead them to the stage that was set up outside the What’s Up, America? studio. Despite having performed countless times before, this was the first time Brooke would be aired live on a major network. It was almost ten a.m., the time Brooke was set to perform one of the new singles she’d recorded before disappearing into the Midwest with Cole.
Cole.
The thought of him caused a knot to form in the pit of her stomach. She’d been home
for nearly a week, but the pain from knowing she’d never see him again was still almost unbearable. She’d done her best to tell herself it didn’t matter—he didn’t matter—but it was all bullshit. The more accurate truth was that nothing mattered without him. Brooke had no doubt that if he hadn’t rejected her, she’d be in a very different place right then. Likely somewhere in Oregon having lunch with Cole’s old army buddy and his wife. If he had a wife. Brooke had never thought to ask, and the knowledge of that made her heart hurt even worse. She’d asked so few questions, known so little about the man who’d become so important to her.
His sending her away had hurt, but she also knew it wasn’t fair to blame him for falling back into her life as though she hadn’t taken off a few weeks ago without a word. The mistake she was about to make was all on her. And she wasn’t going to do a damn thing to stop it because ultimately, she had nothing else. She couldn’t be who she wanted—didn’t even know who that was really—so she’d be who everyone else wanted her to be and hope that one day her priorities would shift to match her parents’ dream.
She heard the hosts of What’s Up, America? talking to the crowd, hyping them up for her performance even though most of them probably had only the vaguest ideas of who she was. After they fitted her with her mic, Brooke closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. She let herself get lost in her mind for a moment, and she found herself transported to the Rockies, standing on the side of the road and looking over at Cole as he smiled that breathtaking smile. She wished she could see it for real, even if it was only one more time.
A gentle nudge startled her. “You’re on,” the assistant whispered.
Brooke must have missed them calling her name, but the roar of the crowd was enough of a clue that she was up. People were always so supportive on things like this, even if they weren’t familiar with the artist performing. They got caught up in the energy of the moment and let themselves get carried away by it. Brooke wished she could do the same. Instead, she felt like she was going to puke all over her gold Gucci shoes.
Misadventures with a Country Boy Page 14
