Chapter 17

Sharing is caring…unless it’s a cold. Keep your ass at home with your flu face.

-Cora to Janie

Cora

I, Cora Maldanado, was insanely attracted to Coke Solomon.

And there was something seriously wrong with me, other than the obvious.

I was practically salivating each time the man came close to me, and it was getting to the point where I was thinking this was going to get bad.

I’d gone to work with him all week, and I did my work from his desk, right in front of him.

It was getting harder to handle my attraction to him.

I was currently making a list in my head of things that shouldn’t be sexy, but they were.

One, watching the man pour himself a cup of coffee. All he was doing was something so mundane that almost every human on the planet does it at some point in their life. But watching him with his strong forearm muscles reach forward and lift the heavy industrial pot of coffee and pour himself a cup? Yeah…that had inspired more than a few clenches in my nether regions in the last week.

Then there was watching him read something with his usual, everyday black reading glasses—the kind that anybody could buy at the grocery store.

To anybody else, he likely just looked like a normal person. To my brain, though? Yeah, I wanted nothing more than to look at that man wearing his glasses while he was down between my legs, doing things to me that no man had ever done before.

Then there was that freakin’ way he bit his lip when he was concentrating…kinda like he was now.

He was staring at a list of some sort, periodically stopping to check things off for something he was buying at auction next week.

I’d lost interest in my work about thirty minutes ago. In all actuality, I was ahead. Surprisingly, considering I stopped every few minutes to ogle the man wherever he might happen to be in the yard.

Sometimes I’d go to the window and watch him crushing cars or growling at an employee for sleeping when he should be working.

That employee needed to be fired. He was the most useless employee I’d ever seen, and I honestly had no clue why Coke put up with it.

Kind of like now. With one glance in the direction of the yard, I could see the man looking at his phone instead of at the car that he was crushing.

“Ummm,” I hesitated. “Why exactly do you still employ him?”

Coke looked up, releasing his lip, and focused on me for a long, heart-stopping second, then looked out the window to see his employee on his phone. Again.

He sighed. “He’s my father-in-law’s nephew from his sister who passed away. He’s a complete fuck up, but he’s sort of kind of family. I’d feel terrible if I fired him.”

That made a whole lot of sense but…

“At what point is your obligation to that family over?” I asked. “I mean, honestly? It doesn’t make sense that you feel required to employ that kid. He’s awful. It doesn’t matter if he’s family or not. Which, technically, he’s not. Not anymore. Yes, your father-in-law did you a solid by making sure you had this business but…what about what he didn’t do?”

He sat back in his chair and waited for me to continue.

I didn’t disappoint him.

I let him have it. Just like he’d let me have it a few days ago when he called me on my false bravado.

“Your father-in-law forced you to get married to his daughter, knowing that she was a bitch.”

Coke’s lips twitched.

“You’ve done your duty. Over and over again. You’ve paid off the loan he gave you. You’ve given that horrid woman a whole lot more time than she deserved, and he was a part of that.” I waited, allowing that to sink in. “Did you ever ask him why he forced y’all to get married? This isn’t the dark ages. The day when you’re forced to marry is long gone. He didn’t help you live. You did that. You went into the army. You provided money for your wife and child to live here when you could’ve gotten housing for free where you were stationed, but she despised the idea of giving an inch. I’m sure the only reason you took anything from him was because he offered. Right?”

His lips quirked.

“It was an incentive.”

My brows rose.

“I got injured. When I got home, Beatrice made my life a living hell. Trying to recover while dealing with her was even worse. She was screaming at me, and I couldn’t scream back. I was at my wit’s end, and I think my father-in-law knew it. He saw what I was about to do—which was divorce her ass—and he offered me the money to buy this place. At first, it wasn’t really something I wanted to do but the more I thought about it, the better it sounded. Plus, it gave me a few more years to get Frankie straightened out while having both parents home.”

“Frankie straightened out?” I asked.

He sighed. “Beatrice ignored the fuck out of her. And with me being active duty, and Beatrice refusing to move where I was stationed, it was really fucking hard to make sure that I was there for her like I needed to be. Then, as Frankie excelled in school, and Beatrice did her utmost best to push what she wanted for her—which was marriage to a good man at eighteen—Frankie rebelled even more.”

I moaned.

“If that woman wasn’t already facing jail time, which I think is quite hilarious to see a woman like her facing jail, I’d go kill her just because of what she put you and Frankie through.”

He chuckled and got up, walking around his desk and ruffling my hair before leaning over to grab his Yeti cup that was sitting on the edge of his desk opposite of where he was standing. “I’m going to go pull a transmission for a customer.”

I was too busy looking at his crotch to process his words, and before I could say anything in response, he was walking out the door, his tight ass mocking me as he went.

I closed my eyes and realized that maybe he was right. Maybe I was just a girl. Maybe I was too nice.

Maybe I wasn’t good enough.

I was such a coward.

Tonight, I’d go home.

Maybe being in my own space would help me gain purchase in my life and give me the courage to tell him that I had some serious feelings for him.

Feelings that only got stronger the more I was around him.

***

“I think I’m ready to go home tonight,” I lied. “I’m going to give it a try…but be ready just in case, okay? I might call freaked out in the middle of the night.”

He blinked. “You don’t have to go if you’re not ready.”

I gave him a shaky smile. “I have to.”

But not for the reasons he was probably thinking.

He studied my face, reading the resolve written all over it, and nodded once. “Well, then. It sounds like you know what you want. I’ll honor that. But if you need me later, I’m there. I’ll likely be up late working on my project truck anyway. I have just a couple more months until Barrett Jackson in Vegas, and I’m almost where I want to be money wise. If you hear me, and you’re awake, come on over.”

I snorted. “I’d have to be drunk not to hear that, Coke. Then again, maybe drinking might make me actually forget that I’m on my own tonight…” I paused. “If you’re drunk, does that make you sleep better?”

“You’ve never been drunk before?” he asked incredulously.

I shook my head. “Hello? Psych problems already. Do you really think I’d add to those problems by drinking?”

He blinked. “I really don’t understand you.”

My brows rose to my hairline. “Why?”

“You say you’re not ‘right in the head.’ Well, let me tell you something, you’re more right in the head than any other woman I know. Sure, you might have an actual diagnosis, but seriously? You can’t go through life not doing things just because you think something is wrong with you. If everyone lived by that motto, this world would be a shitty place.”

“There is something wrong with me,” I pointed out.

He got up and headed to the kitchen, coming back moments later with a glass of something brown in both hands.

“Try it.”

I looked at him incredulously. “I should probably be at my own home if I intend to get drunk. I really do think I need to try to stand on my own two feet. It’s been a week…”

He shrugged, then dangled the drink in front of my face. “You can do that tomorrow. Tonight, we drink. Come on. Experience life.”

I took the glass and smelled it experimentally.

Then gagged. “It smells like rubbing alcohol.”

His smile widened. “Tastes kinda like it, too.”

I shook my head. “I’m only doing this because you’re making me.”

He raised both hands and shook them in mock fear. “I’m shaking in my boots.”

I looked down at his feet. “You’re only wearing one boot. So technically, you’d be shaking in your boot.”

He rolled his eyes, then bent down to get rid of his other boot.

When he’d walked in the door, I’d been examining the label on the Jack Daniels bottle. I’d had it up to my face, an idea in my mind on where I wanted to go with the project I was working on when he’d opened the door to his place.

Then he’d asked why I’d had the bottle up to my face, and I’d then had to explain. Which led us to now.

Him asking me if I thought about drinking it instead of studying it.

“To experience the fullness, I think you should drink it. You might learn why they did it like that.”

“You’re thinking the people who created the cover were drinking Jack at the time?” I asked.

He shrugged. “No better way to get to know something than to try the product itself.”

I just shook my head, then took another sniff.

“What can it hurt?”

Apparently, that was the wrong question to ask.

It could hurt a lot, in more ways than one, including making a grown man feel awful for taking advantage of a younger woman.

***

Hours later, we were well on our way to being sloshed and talking about stuff that I never, ever thought we’d be talking about.

“You’ve never had a blow job before?” I asked, eyes wide.

How had we gotten on this subject?

“No,” he admitted. “Beatrice didn’t do those.”

“But you’re…how old are you again?”

He grinned. “Thirty-five.”

“Holy shit, Coke! How have you never had one of those before? That’s like a staple in a sexual relationship. Even the women who don’t like giving them give it a go on birthdays and anniversaries. Oh, and that steak and a blow job day, too. At least, that’s what I’ve read. And you’ve never tried to get one from another girl after your divorce?”

He looked pained as he took the beer bottle from his lips.

It was his tenth…or maybe his eleventh. I wasn’t quite sure.

We’d been drinking for hours. Even though he gave me a glass of water for each drink I consumed, along with lots of food to soak up the alcohol, I was still well and truly drunk.

At this point, I wasn’t even sure if I was making sense when I spoke.

“I’ve had sex with a grand total of five women. Beatrice was my first. And there were four after our divorce. I don’t know if it’s because I didn’t trust them enough to do that to me or what, but I didn’t want those other women getting that close. I think Beatrice broke me.” He leaned his half-filled beer bottle against his temple and closed his eyes.

A sick thought occurred to me.

“All those years that you were with Beatrice…did she…did y’all…you know?”

He blinked his eyes open and grinned. “Yeah. A man has needs, and even if it was just another means for her to control me, I took it.”

That made my stomach sink.

“Beatrice sounds like a real bitch, and I really hate her. I didn’t think it was possible to hate someone so much, but I do. I hate, hate, hate her. I want to shove my foot down her throat. I can’t believe that you stayed married to someone that vile for so long. She manipulated you, held stuff over your head to force you to stay, and generally made your life a living hell for years. I just…I just can’t,” I admitted. “I’m so sorry.”

An idea started to form in my head. One that, once it started to take shape, I knew that I’d have to act on it.

“Don’t feel sorry for me. I got some. I didn’t like who I was getting it from, but even despite being married to Beatrice, I did have good things in my life. Frankie was my girl. I had a career that I loved. Then I moved on to the salvage yard. Sure, my sex life was shit, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy other parts of my life.” He sighed and downed the rest of his drink. “I’ll be back.”

He got up and left, disappearing into his bedroom to, my guess, use his bathroom.

I worried my lip as I thought about my next step, and I knew that I was going to do it.

I just had to get undrunk first.

Why?

Because Coke was just too good of a man to allow me to do this when I was drunk—he’d insist on that.

But it was okay.

I knew I’d be able to do it—drunk or not.

Tomorrow I was going to make Coke one happy man—and in the process, I’d give him something that both of us had been dying for.

***

Coke

I walked into my room after using the restroom and came to a stop next to my rumpled bed, eyebrows wrinkling in shock.

I knew for a fact that I hadn’t left it like that. I’d meticulously made it that morning and knew for a fact that there hadn’t been a single wrinkle.

Then I saw the foot that was poking out of the sheets and realized that on the opposite side of the bed, where I didn’t ever sleep, was Cora’s drunken form.

I smiled.

Then I got into the bed just drunk enough not to see the problem with this scenario.