CHAPTER 105
Cole was done for. He’d kept thinking, after sex, that it’d fade. That he’d come to his senses and find his footing. Realize that she was a normal girl and that they’d had one night of fun and now filming should be smoother, his life in Quincy less antagonistic. But he was still crazy in the middle of the night, when he fought sleep just so that he could enjoy holding her just a little bit longer. And he was definitely still crazy when he woke up, a morning chub out of control, and craved her. Smelling food, finding her in his shirt, in his kitchen, a spatula in hand, had made it even worse. He’d been attracted to women before, had loved fucking Nadia, but had never had someone crawl under his skin like this. He looked at this woman and saw her bouncing his child on her hip, saw her running through the field on his Montana ranch, saw her sitting in a velvet seat at the Academy Awards, her hand light on his arm, her mouth warm against his ear. And all of those images scared the hell out of him.
Now, sex in the kitchen completed, breakfast eaten, dishes washed, he watched her. She stood in the living room, her hands on adorable hips, frustration in her stance when he rounded the couch and faced her. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t carry all of this stuff home.” She gestured to her haul from last night, a pile that included a popcorn machine (she’d never had one), iPad (he’d insisted on it), and minion pajamas, among four bags of other things. She had been planning to wear the pajamas to bed, thank God she hadn’t.
“I can drop you off.” He didn’t want to drop her off. He wanted to drive over to her house, pick up all of her cheap shit, and move it in. He wanted to sit down and work out their shooting schedule, their next fifty years, find out every dream she’d ever had and then make them realities. He wanted to fly Brad DeLuca up here and personally hug the man for putting him in Quincy early, for putting him on her doorstep, for saving the rest of his life.
“The reporters,” she reminded him, chewing on a thumbnail as she reached down and shifted through the closest bag.
“Fuck the reporters.”
“Ha.” She pulled out a pack of gum, Bubblicious, and ripped it open, holding it up before shaking one out. “Want one?”
“No.” He watched her unwrap it and pop the pink cube in her mouth. A children’s gum. She chewed children’s gum. Her jaw worked, and she glanced up at him, popping a bubble before speaking. “What?”
“Can we talk about this?” A stupid question. He should have kept his mouth shut. Taken her home. Let everything play out properly. Or not play out properly. And in that risk laid his worry.
“About us?” She popped her gum again, and he fought the urge to kiss it out of her mouth.
“Yes.”
“Are you freaked out by what I said last night?” She tossed down the gum and turned to fully face him, her arms crossing in front of her chest. Not defiantly, her arms were tight, as if she was giving herself a hug, her hands under her armpits. Nervous Summer. A new side. Nadia would never have responded in this manner. She would have played games, been cool, skirted direct conversation while he chased her down with questions and insinuations. Their fights were exhausting, which is probably why they both avoided them—him working out his anger on their gym’s punching bag, her on, apparently, other men.
“No.” It was the truth. Her weak declarations that could be analyzed a hundred different ways depending on how long a man wanted to stay awake… those didn’t freak him out. Not when they were so pale compared to his feelings, live and vivid in a thousand different hues. He looked down, at the pile of shopping bags, and wished he’d picked a different location for this. It’d be too serious if he invited her to sit down, yet standing here, in this dim room, the fan above them off balance and ticking, wasn’t exactly how he imagined this going. Not that he had thought this through. If he had, he’d have duct taped his mouth shut. Bringing this up now could only lead to disaster.
“So talk.” Her shoulders had loosened a little, and her chewing quieted.
He took a deep breath and jumped off the cliff. “I meant what I said last night. A man would be crazy to cheat on you. A man would be crazy to want something else, when he could have you. I’ve had you—the real you—for these last eighteen hours, and I don’t want anything else. I don’t think I’ll ever want anything else.” He stepped closer and looked down at her. “Tell me we aren’t great together.”
She looked away, into a far corner of the room, then back up at him. “We aren’t, Cole. This…” she gestured between the two of them, her hand a floppy wave of heartbreak, “… this doesn’t even compare to what I had with Scott.” She lifted one of her shoulders in a tiny shrug of indifference. “I’m sorry.”
“But… you told me you loved me. I thought…” He stepped away from her and pressed his palms to his eyes, everything in his life spiraling down in one hellacious drain of WTF.
“You thought I was a terrible actress.” There was a smile in her response, and he looked up, confused. She blew a giant bubble and popped it.
“So you were acting? With me?” His mind started shuttering through their night, and she rolled her eyes, stepping forward and wrapping her arms around his neck, her mouth sugary when she pressed it to his lips.
“God, you are dense,” she whispered against his mouth. “Yes, we are great together. Yes, I don’t want anyone else either. Yes, you big stupid man who can’t say the words that every woman wants to hear, I love you too.” She leaned back to say more, but he didn’t let her go. He crushed her into his arms and somewhere, in the course of their kiss, he got her gum and swallowed it and then threw her over his shoulder and carried her upstairs.