Good Girl Complex(Avalon Bay #1)(95)

Evan throws his arm around my shoulder. “I know Coop better than anyone. Trust me when I say he’s crazy about you. And I’ve got no reason to lie.”

Evan’s pep talk digs my mood out of the gutter at least marginally. Enough that when a yawn slams into me, I’m motivated to get ready for bed.

“Promise you’ll wake me up if he calls you?” I fret.

“I promise.” Evan’s voice is surprisingly gentle. “Don’t stress too hard, Mac. He’ll be home in no time, okay?”

I give a weak nod. “Okay.”

“No time” ends up being a quarter past midnight, as I’m woken from a restless sleep when the bed dips beside me. I feel Cooper slide under the covers. He’s still warm from a shower and smells of toothpaste and shampoo.

“You awake?” he asks in a whisper.

I roll over to lie on my back, rubbing my eyes. It’s pitch black in the bedroom but for the pale glow of the floodlight on the side of the house, filtering in through the blinds.

“Yeah.”

Cooper lets out a long breath through his nose. “I talked to Levi.”

That’s what he’s leading with? I’m not sure what relevance it has to our situation or our fight, and part of me wants him to stop stalling and tell me if we’re going to be all right. But I keep my impatience at bay. Evan said his brother has a process. Maybe this is part of it.

So I say, “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” A long beat. “I’m going to press charges against Shelley. For stealing the money.”

“Wow.” It hadn’t occurred to me that would even be an option. But it makes sense. Mother or not, she stole more than ten thousand dollars from him. “How do you feel about it?”

“Honestly? Fucked up. She’s my mom, you know?” I’m startled to hear his voice crack. “I don’t want to think about her getting thrown in jail. At the same time, what kind of person steals from their own kid? If I didn’t need the money, I’d say whatever. To hell with it. But that was every cent I had saved up. Took me years.”

He’s talking to me. That’s a good sign.

Except then, he falls silent, and the two of us lie there, not touching, both seemingly afraid to disturb the air too much. After several seconds tick by, I realize there’s nothing stopping me from going first.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I was out of line earlier. I got defensive and lashed out. It was mean and you didn’t deserve that.”

“Well …” he says, and I think I detect a hint of a smile in his voice. “I had it coming a little. Shelley gets under my skin, you know? I just want to throw shit when she’s around. And then she goes and steals my money …” I can feel the tension building up in him, the effort it’s taking to stay calm. Then on a deep breath, he relaxes again. “A lot of what I said came out at you because I was mad at her. You were right. I’ve got some bullshit that was there way before you came along.”

“I get it.” Turning on my side, I find his silhouette in the dark. “I thought offering you the money was helpful, but I see now how in that moment it hit a nerve. I wasn’t trying to throw money at the problem or emasculate you, I promise you that. It’s just … that’s how my brain works. I go into problem-solving mode—Money stolen? Here’s money. You know? It wasn’t meant to be a statement about our respective bank accounts.” I swallow a rush of guilt. “In the future, when it comes to that kind of thing—family stuff, money stuff—I’m here if you need me. Otherwise, I’ll butt out.”

“I’m not saying I don’t want you involved.” He shifts, rolling over to face me too. “I don’t want all these lines and rules and shit.” Cooper finds my hand in the dark and brings it against his chest. He’s shirtless, in only his boxers. His skin is warm to the touch. “The money thing is always going to be there, and I’ve gotta stop getting bent outta shape about it. I know you’re not trying to make me feel any sort of way.”

“I was afraid you weren’t coming back.” I swallow again. Harder. “As long as I was here, I mean.”

“Gonna take more than that to get rid of me.” He tangles his fingers in my hair, rubbing his thumb against the back of my neck. It’s a sweet, soothing gesture, practically putting me right back to sleep. “I figured something out tonight.”

“What’s that?”

“I was sitting in this grimy little bar with Levi and a bunch of sad old bastards hiding from their wives or avoiding their sad old houses. Guys only twice my age but who’ve already done everything that’s ever going to happen to them. And I thought, fuck me, man, I’ve got this crazy hot girl at home and our biggest problem is she’s always trying to buy me shit.”

I smile against my pillow. When he puts it that way, we sound like a couple of dumbasses.

“And this jolt kind of hit me suddenly. I thought, what if she isn’t there when I get back? I was glaring into the bottom of a glass feeling sorry for myself. What if I’d run off the best thing that ever happened to me?”

“That’s sweet, but I wouldn’t go that far.”

“I’m serious.” His voice is soft yet insistent. “Mac, things around here were never good. Then my dad died, and it was confirmation that nothing would get any better. Shelley split. We made do. Never complained. And then you showed up and I started getting ideas. Maybe I didn’t have to settle for slightly better than nothing. Maybe I could even be happy.”