Path of Destruction (Broken Heartland, #2)(56)
Cooper opened his mouth and closed it without speaking. She watched his lips, waiting for him to answer. The moment turned heavy, hot, and thick with heat and mixed emotions.
“Tell me. Whatever it is, just say it, Cooper. I can’t stand not saying things anymore.”
His warm eyes clouded with confusion. She felt his answer, could see it all over his face.
“Forget it. You don’t have to say it. It’s him. Kyle. You’re just like everyone else. You look at me, but you see him.” She jerked roughly away from him.
Cooper reached for her and held her in place. “It’s just… That’s not it. Damn it, Ellie May, I don’t know what the hell I see anymore. I just want to look out for you like I promised him I would. Why do you have to make that so damn hard on me? Why can’t you just help me keep my promise?”
Why do have to make that so damn hard on me?
Hayden had said the same thing. So had her dad. More than once.
She answered his question with a few questions of her own. “Do you really care about her? Cami? Is she why you don’t say much anymore? Why you’re so closed off? If you start dating her, is our friendship done for?”
She could see him struggling with the non sequitur and debating on which question to answer first.
“You hooked up with Prescott this summer and our friendship didn’t end, did it?”
Touché.
“That’s the part I don’t quite know about.” Ella Jane took a few long seconds to refocus. “Things did change between us when I started dating Hayden this summer. Why is that, Coop?”
His eyes widened and his breath came noticeably faster. “Because I didn’t like him. I didn’t like what he represented, or that someone I didn’t even remember existed was suddenly…”
“Suddenly what?” she demanded, glancing up at him from underneath her eyelashes.
“Moving in on my girl,” he said on a sigh. At the moment he admitted she was his, he released her. Raking a hand through his hair, he took a step backward.
Ella Jane felt her own eyes widen. “When was I your girl, Coop? Because all I remember is pining after you for years only to hear you tell my brother dating me would be like incest.”
Cooper didn’t answer right away. The two of them stared hard, facing off, trying to figure out where they stood.
“In my head, you kind of always were I guess. Sometimes I had brotherly protective feelings for you, and sometimes I had…other feelings.”
Her heart raced behind her ribs. Of all the nights to be half in the wind on Jack Daniels.
Apparently Cooper realized this was going to turn into a serious discussion, because he walked around his truck and lowered the tailgate. Ella Jane accepted his help when he offered a hand to boost her onto it. He scooted beside her, both of them looking up at the stars instead of at each other.
“I think I’d like to know more about these other feelings,” Ella Jane whispered. “If you don’t mind telling me, that is.”
She heard him breathing beside her, heavily, as if a weight had settled onto his lungs. Clearly he didn’t want to talk about this, and she knew it was probably a bad idea to push him if he didn’t want to.
“You know what? Forget it. It’s late and we should probably get home and—”
Cooper cut her off with a hand on her bare knee. His fingers wrapped around toward her inner thigh, and she couldn’t form a coherent thought to save her life.
“I care about you, EJ. Ellie May. Ella Jane Mason.” Cooper cleared his throat. “Whoever you are and whoever you decide to be, I will always care about you. I’m pretty sure I love you. I wish I could give you some specific clarification on that, because that’s a heavy damn statement if ever there was one. But all I know is that for most of my life I have loved you in one way or another.”
Everything inside her felt as if it had seized up and stopped functioning. Her chest rose and fell—pretty much the only indicator that she was still breathing.
“That night…the night of the storm, I told him. I told Kyle how I felt, that it was more for me than just friendship or brotherly concern. I hated Prescott because I felt like he’d taken something that was mine. But looking back, the truth was, I’m the one who waited too long. I waited and I missed out, and then Kyle was gone and how I felt about you—about us—took a backseat. And this entire year, I’ve been off in my head, trying to figure out the mechanics of me and you, and I think I’m supposed to stand in for him now, you know? He basically made me promise that I would. But those are some seriously impossible shoes to fill.”
Ella Jane didn’t know why, but she felt like crying. His words stirred an innocent young girl with a crush that still lived somewhere deep inside of her. But that girl had seen and done so much, had grown and become jaded when it came to love and crushes and life. It all felt so tragic and sad and…hopeless.
“Cooper, I…”
“You don’t have to say anything.” He gave her thigh a squeeze. “I didn’t tell you because I expect anything to change. I told you because you deserved to know and because I’d never want you to think I was distancing myself because I didn’t care about you. I care about you more than anyone.”
“More than Cameron Nickelson?” She would’ve taken the question back if she could’ve. It was the wrong thing to ask, petty and immature. But still…she couldn’t help but want to know. Cooper opening up like this was rare and not taking advantage of it would be something she would regret later.