Till Death(69)

“What the fuck would be wrong with me if there was a problem?” He pulled back the covers and climbed in, stopping long enough to turn off the light. The room was flooded with darkness with only the faint moonlight streaming in.

Cole got an arm around me and drew me to his side. We were back to chest, his arm securely looped around my waist. There wasn’t an inch of space between us. My rear was cradled against his hips and the front of his thighs pressed against the back of mine. “Thank you.”

My brows inched up my forehead. “For what?”

“For . . . giving me you.”

My heart swelled so quickly and fiercely I thought I’d cry. A moment passed and I felt his lips brush the back of my shoulder. I focused on taking several deep breaths, working the happy little messy knot out of my throat.

As I lay there in his arms, my mind wandered over the evening, all the way back to when he was telling me about his ex-wife. He’d been about to tell me something, but we’d been interrupted. I twisted onto my back. His hand slid to my hip, leaving a trail of fire in its wake. Silvery moonlight caressed the bridge of his nose. His eyes were closed, expression relaxed. “You still awake?”

“Uh-huh.” He tipped his head down and kissed my brow.

I smiled as I closed my hand over his forearm. “You were telling me something about . . . about your marriage. You said it wasn’t the job that caused it to fall apart. You said it was . . . was me, but I don’t understand how.”

He drew his hand away from my hip to the center of my belly. “You haven’t figured that out yet?”

“Um, were there clues I missed somehow?”

“Yeah.” He chuckled, sliding his hand up to rest between my breasts. “There’s been a lot of clues.”

“Want to help me out then?”

Cole’s lips coasted over the curve of my cheek. “For a while I thought you were the one who got away. That one day I would somehow piece it all back together, but I was wrong. You were the one.”

I might’ve stopped breathing.

He curled the tips of his fingers around my chin. “You are the one. Took me a long time to realize that. I kept telling myself that I was just focused on my job and that’s why I was never really there with Irene. Then I told myself that I hadn’t tried hard enough to make the marriage work, because it hadn’t been her. She’d done everything right. It had always been me. Me and you.”

“Cole,” I whispered.

His thumb swiped my lower lip. “When you left, you were still here. Like a damn ghost haunting my every step and thought. I never really moved on. Wasn’t going to. You had a piece of me.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I rolled onto my side and planted myself against him, burying my face in his neck.

“Irene didn’t know about you and us. Never felt right telling her about you. That’s why she believed it was the job, but it wasn’t. Just was that a big piece of me was always with you.”

“Oh God,” I murmured, clutching his shoulder with the hand that wasn’t wedged between us. Tears welled up in my eyes. “I . . . it was the same. It is the same for me.”

Somehow he managed to circle both arms around me, and our legs tangled together. Cole held me tight, and as I lay there, sated and happy, something occurred to me that should’ve many years ago. With every man I’d been with since the Groom, I held them back, built up walls that no one had really tried to scale or to knock down. I’d always believed that I’d been open, but I knew I hadn’t. Not until now. But Cole had seen that wall and he knocked at it until a crack formed, and that fissure spread, bringing that wall down. It was more than just him though. It was also me. I let him in.

I was ready.

The riot of emotions I was feeling were good, and a small smiled tugged at the corners of my lips. I was finally ready.

It wasn’t too much longer before I fell asleep and for the first time in a very long time, I slept without nightmares.





Chapter 21




Sunday was a surprisingly normal day despite everything that had happened. Cole was up before me, and that meant he had coffee ready for when I stumbled out of the bedroom. For that alone, he was truly a keeper.

He became even more of a keeper throughout the day. He helped out around the inn, taking care of small maintenance issues Mom hadn’t gotten around to hiring someone to fix.

After lunch—lunch he’d run out and grabbed for us—I found him in the bathroom of one of the rooms, half his body under the sink. One booted foot rocking to some unheard rhythm. Metal clanged off metal.

“What are you doing?” I asked, leaning against the frame of the door.

“Fixing a pipe.” His foot stilled. “Your mom mentioned she hadn’t been putting guests in this room because the pipe leaks after the water is turned on.”

I bit down on my lip but it didn’t stop my smile. “You don’t have to do this.”

“I don’t mind,” he replied. “Just a washer that needs to be replaced. Nothing major.”

“That’s sweet of you to do,” I said, my gaze traveling over his long legs. He was wearing jeans that faded over his knees. “Thank you.”

There was a pause. “Thank me later, babe.”

I started to ask how and then I completely understood how he wanted me to thank him. My entire body flushed hot. Memories of last night flooded me. “I can . . . I can do that.”