Cora
Penn had been right. The three of us sleeping in one bed had been a war zone. I had a bruise on my ribs from River’s elbow and one on my thigh from Savannah’s heel. Why I’d thought it would be a good idea for me to sleep in the middle, I’d never know. At the time, I’d wanted to be close to both of them. In hindsight, Penn’s bed probably would have been safer—at least physically.
Mentally, I hadn’t been able to shut down that night. There was too much to think about. But after spending the day supplied with an elephant’s dose of adrenaline, my body was down for the count. I’d done that thing where I’d tossed and turned, convinced I couldn’t fall asleep, but somehow, the hours passed in a span of minutes.
Around six, with just over four hours of restlessness under my belt, I gave up in lieu of a trip to the coffee pot. The house was silent as I tiptoed down the hall. Catalina’s door was closed, no light showing at the bottom. The same with Penn’s, though in a reappearance of my creepy side, I paused at his door and put my ear to it. I didn’t know what I was expecting. Maybe a snore or the sound of the shower.
Or maybe the sound of his gruff and hopeless pleas while he was down on his knees, confessing that he’d seen the error of his ways and praying to the Lord for my forgiveness, all the while clutching a photo of me with a Devil-may-care smile, wind-tousled hair, and a low-cut shirt that made me look simultaneously classy and smart but also made my boobs look like I was nineteen again.
I mean, not that I’d given it much thought or anything.
Instead, I heard, “You looking for me?” rumbled from behind me.
I jumped at least seven feet in the air—give or take six feet and eleven inches—and clutched my heart. “Jesus, don’t sneak up on me like that.”
And then that heart of mine, which had just been startled into arrhythmia, stopped.
Because Penn was standing there looking like he’d been ripped straight from my fantasy vault. Shirtless, sweaty, abs rippling, biceps flexing, and holding a steaming mug of coffee like he was the god of caffeine.
I lifted my hand like I was blocking out the sun. “Any chance you could put on some clothes?”
“Not after you moaned like that.” He smirked before tipping the mug to his lips.
Annnnnd I’d moaned. Fan-fucking-tastic.
Now was not the time to be embarrassed.
Now was the time to crawl back into bed and hope to God that this was a dream and the heat currently licking over me was nothing more than Savannah mouth-breathing in my face. I spun on a toe, ready to make my escape, but he caught my arm.
“Wait, wait, wait. Okay, fine. I’ll put on a shirt. I just got back from a run and was about to hit the shower.”
Dropping my chin to my chest, I momentarily lamented the fact that his front didn’t become flush with my back. Nor did his strong arms wrap around my hips, anchoring me into his curve as he peppered kisses up and down my neck. Only a few weeks earlier, all of that quickly followed by a shower for two would have been in both of our futures.
The regret didn’t linger for long when I thought about the pure agony of discovering he was gone and then the earth-quaking elation—no matter how brief—at seeing him for the first time. I knew I’d been falling in love with Penn before that night, but there was nothing quite like losing someone to force your mind to catch up to your heart.
His coffee cup appeared in front of me. “How about I temporarily forgo the shower and you keep that warm for me while I cook you some breakfast?”
I blinked down at the creamy, brown liquid. Penn drank his black. This one had cream—and probably sugar too.
Just the way I liked it.
My nose started stinging. “How long have you been waiting for me to get up?”
He shuffled closer, his warmth looming all around me without him actually touching me at all. “Since the moment you went to bed. I even let Drew take the room last night in case you couldn’t fall asleep. I only went for a run to keep from tearing that door off the hinges. And then I’ve been standing here, drinking sugary milk disguised as coffee ever since.”
I choked out a laugh, but it only made my eyes water.
My shoulders sagged, and before I could stop myself, I leaned back against him. He wasted no time wrapping his free arm around me, but not at my hips. His densely tattooed forearm draped over my chest, where he hugged me hard and long.
“Why didn’t you trust me?” I whispered, placing my hand on his arm, wishing I could make him feel the hollowness his deceit had left inside me. “I think that’s what hurts the most.”
“Cora,” he breathed before pressing a kiss to my temple.
“I get it. In the beginning, I genuinely do. You weren’t there to hurt me. But once you got to know me. After I’d opened up about Nic and everything in between. I just… I can’t seem to figure out the rest.”
“I’m sorry,” he rasped. “I’m so fucking sorry. I knew you were going to get hurt, and I tried to soften that blow as best I could. We both had secrets, Cora. You never even mentioned River being your daughter until you were forced to.”
I tensed. I should have known he’d twist this into something he could blame me for. God knew everyone else blamed me for the way they treated me.
But before I had the chance to get mad, he quickly amended his statement. “And I’m not saying that was wrong.” Holding the coffee out to the side, he moved around in front of me, his fingertips trailing over my throat and to my shoulder, sending a thrill down my spine.
My breath hitched when he rested his forehead against mine, his hand finding its home in the curve of my hip.
“You believed that people not knowing she was yours was best for her. And you were willing to sacrifice whatever you had to, including hearing her call you mom to make sure that happened. I respect that, Cora. And one-hundred-percent God’s honest truth, I do trust you. You’re the strongest woman I’ve ever met. But I am begging you to please take a step back and objectively look at what I did. Lisa was crazy about you. She told me numerous times how selfless and kind you were and how much you helped the girls and encouraged them to strive for more in life. But I had no idea what I was getting into when I met you. You were so much more than all of that. The only thing I ever wanted for you was to make your life easier. It didn’t matter if that was fixing the plumbing or hanging ceiling fans or changing the lights in the breezeway. I wanted to give you enough slack to breathe again. I will be the first to admit that I fucked that up. But only because I fell in love with you.”
I swallowed hard. He was making sense.
I hated when he made sense.
Hated it. Hated it. Hated it. Because I knew I wasn’t overreacting, but I still felt guilty.
On one hand: Yes, I’d kept secrets. But there was no rule about having to air your dirty laundry on the first date. Yet, he wasn’t wrong. In his own way, he’d been trying to spare me. Which, honestly, any other man, any other situation, I would have happily taken the out.
But on the other hand: All he would have had to say was, “You knew my wife as Lexy Palmer,” and I would have been on board. She was one of my girls regardless that she was his wife. If she had told him how much I cared about the women who lived in that building and all that I tried to do for each and every one of them, he should have had a little more faith in me as a person.
But hindsight was a bitch. Knowing didn’t mean changing.
I couldn’t travel through time and shake sense into him before he’d left.
This is where we were at this point.
Him standing shirtless and holding a cup of cooling coffee after he’d spent hours waiting for me to wake up.
Me staring into the blue eyes that had once captured me in their depths—and if I was being honest with myself, I still hadn’t escaped. If only I could figure out who I was lost in—Penn or Shane.
“Truth or lie,” I whispered. “Which do you want?”
He grimaced like he didn’t want either. “Truth.”
“I’m really mad at you. And not because you did anything wrong necessarily.”
His eyes fluttered shut. “I know.”
“I still don’t understand a lot of what happened between us. Or how I feel about it. Or how I’m going to feel about it tomorrow. But right now…” I took the coffee from his hand. “Assuming this is still warm, I’m willing to listen to you tell me about who you really are while you cook me breakfast.”
His eyes popped open, the sweetest mixture of surprise and relief swirling within. His mouth split into a giant smile that had to have belonged to Shane because I’d never seen one that big in Penn’s repertoire of lip twitches.
In one swift movement, he folded his arm around my waist, crushing me against his chest, and then lifted me off my feet. I laughed as coffee sloshed everywhere. And then I laughed harder as I dangled in his arms while he carried me to the kitchen, rumbling, “Woman, I’ve got a microwave. I can keep that thing warm for the rest of your life.”
While scrambling egg whites and frying bacon, Penn started at the beginning—Lisa. Where they’d met. How long they’d dated. It made me a masochist considering she had been the wife of the man I was in love with, but she was also Lexy. Part of me rejoiced in the knowledge that, regardless of how it had ended, her life had been beautiful. He told me all about her sneaking into my room and planting that hidden camera in my stars. I was shocked—and felt a little violated to be honest. I mean, really, who did that? But the way Penn seemed lighter with every detail he divulged made it impossible for me to harp on it. I’d never seen him talk so much or so fast—even through the painful stuff.
Some fun facts I learned:
Penn had gone to MIT—like holy shit, the real MIT.
According to his diploma, he was an architect. Blink. Blink. Blink.
According to his bank account, he was something of a real estate mogul. The only mogul status I’d ever gotten close to was in the field of bed bug extermination.
He still owned the oceanfront house he’d shared with Lisa in Florida, which was kind of sad and a lot intimidating.
He had paid a guy hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy the identity Penn Walker. Considering he’d paid me a million dollars to escape it, I thought he’d gotten a pretty good deal.
I’d gone into that conversation desperate to learn who he was, but I wasn’t ready for the answer.
His favorite color was, in fact, still blue.
But that was where the similarities ended.
However, with a breaking heart and a forced smile, I gave him the benefit of the doubt and kept listening.
After we’d covered all things Lisa, he started telling me about our first few weeks together. It was crazy to hear my memories from someone else’s perspective. Some parts were funny. Like when he told me how he’d dropped the first batch of Maury Poppins cupcakes and had to drive all the way back to the bakery to get more.
Other parts were mortifying. If there hadn’t been bacon involved, I’d have crawled under the bar when he started listing all the times he’d caught me staring at him. Apparently, I wasn’t nearly as smooth as I’d thought.
And then I thought my heart was going to beat out of my chest—and not because I was on my third cup of coffee—when he told me why he never touched my star necklace.
“Every moment with you felt like a reprieve. When I looked at you, when I touched you, when you touched me. Guilt wasn’t devouring me. Failure wasn’t consuming me. Hate wasn’t suffocating me. And on the off chance that you felt the same, I wanted to give that back to you. I’ll never be able to forget Lisa, and I don’t expect you to forget Nic. But I didn’t want to remind you of him. And the minute I touched that necklace, your mind would have jumped to the loss, the pain, and the past. I wanted you with me in the present, where I could protect you from all of that.” He’d paused, spatula in hand, one side of his mouth curling adorably, and then finished with, “And only about point zero zero zero zero five percent of that had anything to do with me being jealous that he got to you first.”
I laughed and threw a piece of bacon at him. (It was a burnt bit. I wasn’t a total animal.)
To which I reminded him I was younger than Savannah when I’d met Nic.
To which he scrubbed his face so hard that it looked like he was giving himself a facial.
After we covered all the “how we got here” basics, Penn gave me his backstory.
He was an only child who had come from money and grown up in private schools.
His mother had died of cancer. His father of a stroke a few years later.
He loved to ski—water and snow.
He knew enough Spanish to get by.
He’d traveled to six out of the seven continents.
And I was still me.
Cora Guerrero. Single mother, felon, and all-around dreg of society.
I didn’t want to feel it. Not with him. But the inadequacy was shrieking inside me with his every word spoken.
Penn had left me for a reason. He’d claimed that it was to keep me out of the line of fire. Protection, safety, blah blah blah. But after hearing all of his stories about the past, learning who Shane Pennington really was, while sitting in his fancy apartment, staring at the gorgeous and successful man, I had to remind myself that Penn had never intended to stay with me.
And that wasn’t a woe-is-me fiesta. It was the truth. He’d said so himself.
Don’t get me wrong. I was a real catch. Maybe not when I had two men controlling my life and a building full of working girls depending on me twenty-four-seven—that was a teensy bit of baggage. But I was a good person. I was kind and smart and funny. I had a great ass and quasi-perky boobs, even. But a man like the one in front of me was from a completely different ocean.
He hadn’t meant to fall in love with me. His words. Not mine.
And he wouldn’t stay in love with me, either. My words. Not his.
In a lot of ways, that realization cut me like the sharpest knife.
But, in others, it set me free, my anger and frustration at his betrayal ebbing into nothingness.
The truth sucked.
But it was a lot like knowing that someone was lying to you. You didn’t have the expectation that anything they said would actually come to fruition. And because there was no expectation of truth, there could be no pain caused by the lie.
As much as I hated to admit it:
Shane was the truth.
And my Penn—the most incredible man I’d ever met—was the lie.
I couldn’t fault him. I couldn’t blame him. I couldn’t even be mad at him anymore.
In his infamous words from all those weeks earlier, not all lies were bad.
The one tall, dark, and breathtaking one standing across the kitchen was actually pretty amazing.
And in my world, you held on to any good you could find.
Even if it killed you.
I could pretend.
It wasn’t the same, but he was the closest thing to Penn I could ever get.
I could accept this new guy.
Embrace him for however long he decided to stick around.
It was a lie. But I knew it and could prepare for it.
And maybe I’d be ready for it to end when the time came.
I could use him like he’d used me.
Anything was better than the pain of accepting that he was truly gone.
Or so I told myself—for, oh, about sixty seconds.