Chapter Eight
Autumn
It was something beyond thinking that propelled me into his arms. More instinct than rational thinking, more primal. My body moved to press against him out of something very close to muscle memory and we fit together the way we always had. My head on his shoulder, his lips against my forehead, my arms around his neck just aching to pull him down for a kiss.
We stayed that way for a long while, swaying to the music, turning in place three full rotations before I finally heard him murmur into my hair. Or rather, I felt his lips against my forehead, the shape of the words against my skin. “I’ve missed you so goddamn much.”
I closed my eyes against the tears that threatened to come and instead I blinked. I didn’t say anything back. I didn’t think I could talk without crying, so I stayed quiet, but Cole made a low murmuring noise of assent that told me he understood exactly what I wasn’t able to say.
I felt him tug us a little, and I stumbled off-beat. “What are you doing?” I asked.
Even as we spun in slow circles, I could feel the press of his hand in the small of my back, leading us... somewhere. I couldn’t see over his shoulder, and part of me didn’t care. Part of me just wanted to drift in the bliss of being in his arms again. I still fit against him so snugly, the years hadn’t changed that. And his hands still knew my body., even after all these years he still touched me with the authority of being the first everything in my life. First crush, first kiss, first lover...
He tugged again. ”What are you doing?” I demanded as he leaned us even further to the left.
“Nothing. Don’t look up.”
So, of course, I craned my neck upwards. And nearly burst out laughing “Are you trying to drag me under the mistletoe?”
He grinned that grin. “I thought it was worth a shot.”
“How cheesy are you?”
“Hey!” he protested. “I really want to kiss you right now, but I’m still afraid either you or Brynn is going to castrate me the first chance you get. So I figured mistletoe would be a good cover.”
“You think I want to castrate you?”
He looked down. “Hell, I would if I were you.”
“Cole.”
“Stop. We don’t need to do this. I’ve missed you so goddamn much, Autumn.”
I felt my body craning for him, seeking him even before my brain kicked in and wondered what I was doing. Why was I kissing him? Why were my lips sliding against his, parting to let his tongue sweep against mine? Why were my hands reaching up and gripping his shoulder, pulling him down to meet me and deepen the kiss? Why did he still know exactly how to touch me, the way to cup my face in his hands, holding me tightly to him? Why was he here?
Why did I spend so much time hating him when it was clear I still loved him with all my heart?”
He pulled back and smiled, then glanced upward with a devilish grin. “Mistletoe is way over there, still.” He snaked his hand around my waist and lifted me with one arm. I squealed as he moved us directly under the hanging branch. “I want to kiss you right here too.”
This time when he kissed me, I didn’t think about anything other than how right it was that we were together again. Even if just for tonight, just for the holiday, it was still the sweetest present I could have asked for. A chance to do it over again and make it right.
Cole pulled back again and kissed my forehead. “You want to go somewhere with me?” he asked.
I was so content in his arms I was practically purring. I looked up at him, feeling oddly sleepy and sedated. “Why? Where are you going?”
He looked me in the eye. “Home.”
I felt like someone poured cold water on my head. I pulled back from him. “You mean to New York?”
He chuckled at my shocked reaction. “No! I mean to my house.” His mouth twisted oddly and he reiterated. “Or rather, the house I grew up in.” He looked down. “I need to see it. Feels weird to be here and not go over there anyway. But I don’t think I can go alone.”
All the alcohol must have gone to my head. Mind you, I only had one, but I had to be completely drunk. It’s the only explanation for why I said, “Okay.”
*****
In the few hours I’d spent inside Reese’s Pub, the weather had deteriorated. I maneuvered my car along the slippery roads, concentrating all my attention on the yellow lines in front of me and trying my damnedest to ignore the fact that Cole Granger was sitting in the seat next to mine.
He cleared his throat so as not to startle me when he started speaking. “I forgot how fucking dark it gets up here,” he said, craning his neck to look out the window and up at the dark sky. “I don’t think I’ve used high beams in, well, years.”
“Remember doing this?” I asked. I switched on the high beams. The light reflected off the bombarding flakes as we flew through the night, making us look like we were zooming through the universe at warp speed.
“Oh my god,” he breathed. There was something so... heart-twisting about his childish wonder. “I forgot it did that! They look like they’re coming straight for you! When Fitch, Ben Dailey and I used to drive around all bored, Ben used to turn on the high beams like that to wig Fitch out. He’d get so angry yelling at him to shut it off shut it off and we’d just laugh because we were stupid asshole teenagers and we had nothing but time.” He paused for a second, lost in the memory. “I wonder how Ben is doing?”
I licked my lips. “He died, Cole.”
His stricken face shone in the reflection of the headlights.
I nodded. “In Iraq, back in 2010.”
“Jesus, he was only...”
“Twenty.”
“Shit, when I was a kid I used to think it was adults who went off to war, now that I’m older I realize it’s just a bunch of idiot kids.”
“I’ve thought that too.”
“Shit, I can’t believe I lost track of Ben.”
“You guys were good friends.”
“We were. I... shit.”
We drove in silence for a moment. The sadness dragged heavily between us. The part of my heart that still belonged to him — the small, bruised part — ached like a phantom limb and I mindlessly reached out and grabbed ahold of his fingertips, squeezing them tight.
This time when I saw his face reflected in the passing car’s headlights, it was stretched into a smile.
“You remember how to get to my parents’ place?” he asked.
“You think I could forget the way? I practically lived over at your place.”
“So then maybe you ought to slow down, speed demon?”
“Oh, tough guy, am I making you nervous? Your city ass can’t handle driving in the snow anymore.”
“Nah see, down there we have things called plows.”
“They’ll get to it when the storm’s over.”
“What happens if there’s an emergency?”
“Then you call you friend who has a plow attachment on his truck and you follow behind him.
He looked down at his hand. “Yeah.”
“Everybody looks out for each other, Cole.”
“Yeah.”
“You miss it, don’t you?”
“I never realized. But... yeah, I do.”
I made the turn on autopilot. No one had been by to plow the drive, but I gunned the engine and we slid down the sloped drive to the A-frame house that nestled in a hollow, off the main road. I turned my engine and headlights off and we sat for a moment, lost in the memory of this place.
The snow still fell thick and fast, but the stars shone through the gaps in the clouds, so the storm would be over soon. And the town would wake up to a beautifully blanketed world on Christmas morning.
Cole took a deep breath. “Let’s go in,” he said.
The snow squeaked under our boots. I followed behind Cole, careful to step in his footprints, letting him blaze a trail through the dark. He was holding his cell phone aloft like a torch, and I had to stifle my grin in my scarf. Even when citified, you couldn’t beat a country boy’s ingenuity.
The house was dark and silent. I looked up as it loomed out of the darkness, a series of sharp lines and right angles against the jumbles of forest behind it. No one had been here in quite a while. “Are you sure we’re supposed to be here?” I called to Cole.
His breath wreathed up in ribbons around his head. “It’s my house!” he called behind his shoulder, sounding amused.
“It’s your parents’ house,” I reminded him. “And they’re not here.”
“It’s my house,” he repeated, more firmly now. “I grew up here. See?” he jingled something in his hand. “I still have a key.”
We trudged forward a few more paces and suddenly the entire world was ablaze. When the pain in my retinas subsided I saw that the motion sensor lights had kicked on.
“Well. That makes it easier,” Cole laughed and looked down at the keys in his hand, picking out the right one.
“Do they know you have that?” I wondered.
“Unless they forgot they gave it to me when I was ten, then yes.”
“You’re impossible.”
“I’m charming. You told me that.”
“And you said you didn’t believe it anymore.”
“Maybe you’re helping me believe it again. Maybe all I needed was a few moments alone with the only girl who ever looked me in the eye and called me on my bullshit.”
“What bullshit is that?”
He swallowed, blinked. “I should have never left you behind.”
Before I could say anything more, he pushed open the door and let us both inside.
For a second, I stood there in the quiet, dark kitchen, trying to resolve the Granger house that lived in my memory with the one that I saw here now. Quiet and musty and covered in dust. I sneezed, and then shivered. “Oh my god, it’s freezing in here.”
Cole chuckled as he took off his gloves and shed his peacoat. “Well, it’s warmer than outside.”
“Barely.”
He walked around to the living room and checked the thermostat. “It’s forty-five degrees,” he protested.
“Right,” I said. “Sure, that’s downright balmy.” My teeth chattered.
“Would you like me to turn on the heat, Princess?”
I stuck out my tongue at him. “Only if you think it won’t be too much trouble.”
He came over and tugged on my sleeve. “If it’ll make you take off that ridiculous parka.”
“Make it warm enough so that I can’t see my breath and I’ll consider it.”
I’d never seen him move so fast. I burst out laughing, and my breath froze in a ring of mist around my face. I was giddy and half drunk and felt like a crazy high schooler again.
A crazy high schooler who was head over heels in love with the worst guy imaginable.