Authors: Marissa Farrar
Cole – Present Day
The bright glare
of sunlight pressed against my closed eyelids, demanding they open.
I groaned and flung the back of my hand over my eyes. I wasn’t sure my eyelids would part if I tried—it felt as though they’d been glued together. My mouth was bone-dry, a disgusting taste lining my throat, tongue, and teeth. My dehydration was so intense, I’d been dreaming about downing long glasses of water. My head throbbed, and I worried if I moved it would explode. I also had the horrible feeling something bad went down last night, but right at that moment I couldn’t remember a thing. Was it the fight I’d had with Gabi? She’d told me to stay out of her life, so I’d gone and gotten drunk. That must be what was bothering me, though something else niggled at me.
The sunlight continued to assault me, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to remain lying here. I needed water, and my bladder was full to the point of being painful.
I forced my eyes open and cautiously sat up. The room spun and my head pounded, but I didn’t think I was going to throw up. I stood and stumbled over to the bathroom to relieve myself. Next port of call was the kitchen for water, and to find some painkillers.
With both in hand, I dropped myself down at the kitchen table and knocked back the tablets with the rest of the water.
I groaned, folded my arms on the table, and dropped my aching head onto their cushion. I needed to go and see Gabi. As soon as I started to feel better, I would march right over there and tell her she wasn’t going to get rid of me so easily. Maybe she did still hate me for what I did ten years ago, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t get past it. I didn’t think she’d pushed me away because she no longer had feelings for me. No one held onto that kind of anger for so long if they didn’t care about someone. If I wasn’t important to her, she’d have forgotten all about me by now, or at best she’d be apathetic. But no, she was heated, and passionate, and still as beautiful and vibrant as the first day I’d plucked up the courage and spoken to her.
I pulled myself together enough to brew some coffee and fry up some bacon for a sandwich. I needed salt and grease to line my stomach. I ate and then took a shower to rid myself of the alcohol fumes from the night before. A couple of cups of strong coffee helped me feel more human.
An hour later, I stepped out of my house, ready to drive over to Gabi’s and tell her I wasn’t going to give up. With a frown, I paused and looked around. Where the hell was my car?
Damn, I must have left it outside the bar. I figured it was a good thing I’d had the sense to walk considering I couldn’t even remember getting home. It didn’t matter. A walk back to the bar to pick up my car would help to clear my head and figure out exactly what I would say to Gabi.
This time, I wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
Gabi – Present Day
I woke the
next morning emotionally exhausted.
I’d cried myself to sleep, and then sprung awake after a couple of hours and cried again. I knew I shouldn’t feel like this—after all, I was the one who told Cole to leave—but I couldn’t help what my heart felt.
A knock came at my door, and my dad pushed it open, carrying a cup of hot coffee. “Hey, sweetheart. I thought you could use this.”
I forced a smile. “Thanks, Dad.”
With my puffy eyes, and swollen face, not to mention insane bed hair, I was a total mess, but my dad only looked at me with sympathy. I took a sip of the coffee and smiled. He’d remembered for once that I no longer took sugar.
“So,” he said. “Who do I need to go and kill for making my baby-girl cry like this? I can’t help but think this has less to do with your leg and more to do with the young man who was here the other night.”
So he did remember Cole being here when he’d gotten stuck.
I nodded. “The problem is, Dad, the two things are joined together.”
“How’s that?”
I hated saying my worst fears and feelings out loud, but my dad had always been good at getting me to talk, even when sometimes it ended up with bad results.
“How can I ask him to take on this?” I gestured to my missing limb. “He doesn’t need to have a woman like me in his life.”
“No? Seems to me that young man could do with someone exactly like you in his life.” He lifted up both hands in a stop sign. “I’m not going to say I approve, Gabi, but I figure I’m hardly able to take the moral high ground. I know things didn’t go the way you wanted with the two of you ten years ago, but you’ve both paid for it, and here you are, drawn back together again. Sometimes the universe has a way of making things happen, even when it feels like the worst thing in the world at the time.”
I stared into my coffee. “I’m afraid of getting hurt again.”
“Oh, sweetheart. We’re all afraid of getting hurt. Are you really going to allow fear to be the thing that controls your life?”
Tears filled my eyes again and I pressed my lips together to hold back a sob. I wanted to thank my father for his advice, and tell him I loved him, despite everything, but a painful lump blocked my throat, and all I could do was blink and nod.
He patted my knee. “Listen, I have to pop out for a while, but I’ll run you a hot bath. You can manage okay?”
“Yes, Dad, I can manage.” I was practically an expert at sitting on the edge of the tub and removing my prosthesis, and then slipping over the side and into the water. Getting out again was more of an effort, but my upper body was stronger now than it had ever been, and I was able to haul myself back out again without too much of a struggle. “Where are you going?” I added.
He smiled. “Just seeing a man about a dog,” and then he reached out and ruffled my hair as though I was ten again.
The moment where I’d felt like I had my old father back again vanished and my stomach sank with disappointment. He was going out to get a drink.
He left the room, and within a couple of minutes, I heard the thunder of water hitting the bathtub. I sighed and maneuvered myself to the side of the bed to put on my prosthesis, knowing I’d only have to take it off again when I crossed the hall to the bathroom. At some point I’d find the money to have the bathroom converted into a wet room, so I wouldn’t have the hassle of baths, but until then I would have to make do.
I reached for my prosthetic leg and remembered I no longer had to go through the nightmare of putting the old leg on with the rubber sleeve. No, I had the new pin-lock leg, which was quick and easy to attach and detach again.
I smiled for the first time that morning.
***
I was out
of the bath, dressed, and attempting to drag a comb through my corkscrew curls when the doorbell rang.
I made it downstairs and opened the door to find Cole standing on my porch. He appeared even rougher around the edges than normal, dark shadows beneath his eyes, his cheekbones hollowed. He looked rough, but more than that, something about him appeared vulnerable, and I didn’t think I’d ever seen Cole Devonport vulnerable before.
“Gabi,” he said, one hand out held. “Hear me out, please.”
My father’s words echoed in my head. He’d told me I shouldn’t be ruled by fear. He was right. I wasn’t a coward; I never had been.
I stepped back and nodded. “I guess you’d better come in, then.”
He stepped into the entrance hall with me and glanced around. “Is your dad at home?”
“No, he’s gone out, and I doubt he’ll be back any time soon. So what did you come here to say?” Just being in Cole’s presence sent my heart racing, and made me aware of my body in a way no one else did. My skin tingled when I was around him, and I felt like we were two magnets drawn together.
“I came to say that I’m not giving up.”
“On what?”
“On us. Kissing you yesterday felt so right, and I won’t just walk away. I love you, Gabi. I’ve loved you since I was seventeen years old. There’s never been anyone else for me, and there never will be. You may hate me, and still resent me for when we were teenagers, but as far as I can tell, that simply means you still care. And that’s worth fighting for.”
I stared at him. I wanted to give in and fall into his arms, but despite not wanting to be afraid, I was. I was terrified, and the sad thing was most of my anxiety came from my fear about how he would react when he saw my stump for the first time. Assuming our relationship went the same way most adult couples’ did, he would see me naked again, and my body wasn’t the same one he knew so well when we were younger.
“What happened between us when we were teenagers isn’t the only thing holding me back,” I admitted. “I’m worried about how you’re going to react when you see what’s left of my leg.”
He reached out and took my hand. “I don’t care about your leg, Gabi. I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t love your body—and I still love your body now—but it’s
you
I’m in love with. You’re the person I want to be with, not your leg.”
I wanted to believe him, my heart longed for it, but the thought of showing him the result of the bomb explosion sent my stomach tumbling with nerves. I would be opening myself up to him completely, and being open meant exposing myself to being hurt again.
I wanted him to understand exactly how I felt.
“You broke me back then, Cole,” I started, “shattered me into a million tiny pieces, and for a while I didn’t think I would be able to come out of it, didn’t think I’d be able to see a future. But you know what? I fixed myself. I didn’t need any man rushing to my side to be a god-damned hero. I went out and became the hero myself. And if this had been a movie or something, I’d have gotten my happy ever after, just being strong for me, but instead God, or fate, or whatever other fucker likes to screw us over, decided I hadn’t dealt with enough in my life yet, so then this happened,” I gestured to my prosthetic leg, “and here I am having to fix myself all over again.”
“But you don’t have to do it alone this time. I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.”
I shook my head and pulled my hand from his. “And what happens if I let myself lean on you, and then one day you decide you’re not going to be there anymore?” He opened his mouth to speak but I lifted my hand to stop him. “I’ll tell you what happens—I fall down again, and one day I’m not going to be strong enough to pick myself back up.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Gabi. Let me prove that to you.”
I searched his blue eyes. “How? How can you prove it to me?”
He didn’t say anything else. Instead, he stepped in toward me, closing the gap between us, and then his hands cupped my cheeks, his fingers slipping through my hair, and he kissed me. His lips were soft but firm, gentle but insistent. I melted into him, forgetting all of my worries, focused only on the sensation of his mouth capturing mine. It
did
feel right. In fact, kissing Cole felt perfect, just as it always had when we were teens. We’d been able to kiss for hours back then, and I felt like I could stand here and kiss him for hours again now.
His hands moved from my hair, slipping down my back to clutch my bottom and drag me against him so our bodies met. I could feel the beginnings of his erection pressing into my stomach, and the nerves I’d been experiencing joined with the first flutterings of excitement and arousal. I hadn’t allowed sex to be part of my life for some time, had wondered at times if it would ever happen for me again, or if I would die a dried up old maid, but it seemed my body had other ideas.
His kiss transported me back to being seventeen again, and I forgot all of the pain and trauma of the last ten years. All that was important was how I felt in his arms—young, desired, and whole again. I didn’t ever want to feel any different.
His kiss grew urgent, his hands skimming the curves of my body. My breath grew shallow, and he laced his fingers in the back of my hair, tugging back to expose my throat. His lips left my mouth and feathered across my jaw and down the outside of my neck. I shivered in his arms, a sudden slave to desire. I wanted Cole, and I knew he wanted me, too, despite everything.
“Upstairs,” I managed to gasp, aware my dad might come home.
He caught me up around the back of my thighs and lifted me so I straddled his hips. He was strong, his muscles bunching beneath his shirt, and lifting me in such a way he made me feel light and feminine and sexy. He carried me up the stairs with little effort and kicked open my bedroom door. Cole transported me to the bed and laid me down, before climbing on top of me, his knees either side of my hips so his big body hovered over mine.
He stared down at me. “God, you’re so beautiful.”
I smiled, and his lips made contact with mine again, kissing away my expression. My hands reached for the bottom of his t-shirt, suddenly desperate to feel his skin against mine, to feast my eyes upon the man Cole had grown up to become. He helped me, breaking the kiss to sit up slightly and tug the t-shirt over his head.
Cole sat above me. I reached up and traced my fingers across his chest, the lines and swirls of tattoos, my palms skimming the hard bulk of his biceps, shoulders, pectorals, and abs. I wanted to learn what each and every tattoo on his body meant to him, his reasons behind them all.
He was the same boy I’d known all those years ago, and yet he wasn’t. He still had the small mole he was born with on his collarbone, still had the scar on his hip where he’d fallen off his skateboard when he was twelve. His hands were still the same, his fingers long and strong, the nails square. His eyes and features hadn’t changed. But that was where the similarities ended. The dark blond hair which had once been barely a spattering across his chest was now thicker, and ran in a line down to his navel, and then farther down again, disappearing beneath the waistband of his jeans. But mostly it was the muscles and tattoos that marked the difference. How he’d bulked out to a man.
“Cole,” I breathed, as he leaned down to kiss me again, and then he began to pull my t-shirt up my body and over my head. I had scars from the bombing, twisted, raised lines across my stomach and hips, and after he ran his fingers over those lines, he dipped his head and kissed them. Then his fingers were at the button of my pants, yanking them undone, and I knew the time had come when I would have to show him.
This wasn’t going to be a surprise to him. It wasn’t as though he didn’t know what he was getting himself into. But even so, I couldn’t help the churning in my stomach, worrying what his reaction was going to be.
I had to do this.
“I need to show you.”
He understood exactly what I meant, and gave me a final kiss before moving himself to one side of the bed, allowing me some space. With my stomach in my throat, I rolled up the leg of my jeans, exposing the prosthesis. I undid the pin holding the prosthetic leg to my limb, and removed the sleeve and the extra socks I had over the stump to make the prosthetic more comfortable. Then I completed the job he’d started of removing my jeans. Sitting only in my underwear, I was exposed, and it felt like the first time he’d seen me naked. Of course, it wasn’t. Cole had seen me naked more times than I could count, but I’d been a slip of a girl then, and, like him, I’d filled out. Oh, and now I was missing a leg.
“It’s okay, Gabi,” he said with an encouraging smile. “It’s not as big a deal as you’re telling yourself. Not for me, anyway.”
I wanted to believe him. I
had
to believe him. I sat, rigid in bed, not wanting to look at him. Sudden tears filled my eyes, and instantly he pulled me into his arms again, kissing my tears away.
“Don’t be sad. Don’t be ashamed,” he said between kisses.
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re still you, Gabi. Still as beautiful as the day I met you.”
He kissed me again, lowering me back on the bed, so we lay side by side.
His hands ran over my body, caressing my breasts and dragging a moan from my throat, my nipples crinkling into tight buds at his touch. His hands slipped lower, skirting over the front of my lacy underwear, and then onto my thighs. I realized where he was heading, and reached down to place a hand over his.