CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Cole
I leave Reese and Cat’s place, go home, change, and jog five miles. Anything to get Lori out of my head. I fail. I do it again the next morning. I fail. I do it again Monday morning. Then I walk into work and she is there. I’m pissed for no reason. It fires me up. I’m brutal with the ADA I’m dealing with on numerous cases, but it works for me and my clients. If I can’t get my way with Lori, I’m getting my way at work. At least my frustration at Lori is contributing to the good of the company.
She walks into my office at noon in a damn light blue dress that hugs her ass. I hate that fucking dress because I love her fucking ass. “I have that case file you needed,” she says, and when she would cross to set it on my desk, I stop her.
“Give it to Ashley. You have to make your Stanford deadline. Finish your papers before you touch anything else.”
She stares at me a moment, like she wants to say something, but she leaves, and I watch her ass leave in that dress. I don’t see her, or her ass, again for the rest of the day. I go for another jog that night and somehow, I walk into the Tiffany’s store. I end up at home with a twenty-five thousand dollar ring they’d called the “Soleste” in its box and staring at me. I shut the damn box. She didn’t want to live with me. Why do I think she would marry me?
***
Lori
A full week passes without Cole. A full week of hell. He’s shut me out. Maybe I shut him out first. Saturday morning comes, and I go to the hospital to see my mother and then as usual stop by the accounting office. “I need to make a payment on the Havens account.”
I wait and the lady behind the counter says, “There is no open account.”
“That’s impossible. We still owe ten thousand dollars.”
“Says here it was paid off a week ago.”
“By who?”
“Anonymous donation. Wow. That’s nice.”
Cole.
I’m furious. I’m confused. I’m furious all over. He can’t keep doing this and he hates me now. Why would he do this? To make me feel bad? To prove he can control me? To—what? I turn away from the counter, and don’t even think about what I’m doing. I am in the subway on my way to Cole’s apartment, and barely remember how I got there. The ride is short, and I have no coherent thoughts during the trip, just adrenaline and this white-hot feeling in my chest. When I get to his building, I go straight to the elevators like I still belong here. I arrive at his door and I don’t knock either.
I open the door.
I walk in.
I feel the crush of emotions he creates, and I smell him everywhere.
I am angry all over.
I rush down the hallway to find him standing at the living room window on the phone, his back to me, a white tee stretched across his broad shoulders, jeans hugging his powerful lower body. He looks deliciously male. His voice is deliciously rich. I hate that I notice. I hate that my heart races just being this near him. “No,” he says. “That’s unacceptable. We need a full record of—” He turns around and his eyes narrow on me. “I need to call you back.” He disconnects the line and shoves his phone in the pocket of his jeans.
“What did you do?” I demand and I’m so angry, I’m now standing in front of him and once again I don’t remember how I got here.
“Which time, Lori? Because apparently I did a lot wrong.”
“Don’t turn this around on me. You can’t pay my bills. You paid the hospital bill.”
“Yes. Yes, I did. Because I wanted you out of that godforsaken apartment. I wanted to take care of you. If that makes me an asshole, then I’m gladly an asshole.”
“I don’t need you to take care of me. I can take care of me.”
“Do you think I go around paying random people’s bills? I don’t. I did that for you, just you.”
“Again. I can take care of me.”
“But you don’t have to. I’m in love with you, woman. That’s why I did this. That’s why I had to do this.”
I blanch, emotion welling in my chest, my eyes prickling. He’s said what I didn’t know I needed to hear, the words that change everything. “Can you say that again?”
“I will say it over and over for the rest of our lives if you let me. I love you. So damn much it’s killing me right now. But I get it. I need to pull you all the way into my life, I need to take care of you and you just can’t trust me enough to do it. But damn it, I have given you no reason not to trust me, and at some point you have to take a risk. At some point—”
“I love you, too,” I rasp out on a ball of emotion.
“What?”
“You know I do, Cole. You know I do.”
He shackles my arm and pulls me to him. “Then why are we apart? Why are we doing this?”
“I am scared. There. I said it. You could, you can, hurt me.”
“Sweetheart, I’m right there with you,” he kisses me, a fiery intense kiss, that has me clinging to him, until he tears his mouth from mine and says, “Marry me. Be my wife.”
“What? What?”
“You heard me. Marry me.”
“I —what about my job and your job and—”
“You don’t need that scholarship. You have me. You have to just let go of the money thing. It’s our money if you marry me anyways. But we can go to the board. Or we can wait until you graduate. Whatever it is we do, we will decide together. Just say yes. Lori. To us. To all of it. We’ll work out the details.” He turns me and sits me down on the couch and then he’s on his knee, a blue box in his hand. He opens it and inside is this stunning round, sparkling diamond. “Marry me.”
Tears start to stream down my face. “Yes. Yes, I’ll marry you.”
“You aren’t supposed to cry, sweetheart,” he says, reaching up and stroking away the dampness on my cheeks.
“I know. I just—it’s beautiful and we’re—I can’t help it.”
He sits down next to me and kisses me. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
Cole slips the ring on my finger and I stare down at it. He brings my finger to his lips and kisses it. “It looks good on you.”
“I can’t believe you bought a ring.”
“I couldn’t either,” he says. “I thought you’d turn me down. I wasn’t even sure you’d give me the chance to ask.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For pushing you away. For being too afraid to give you the trust you deserve. Cole, you—”
He kisses me, a deep, drugging kiss, and whispers against my lips, “All that matters is what comes next. Ask me what comes next.”
“What comes next?”
“Everything,” he says, and this time when our lips come together, we are wild, we are hungry, we are without limits. And that’s where I know we are headed right now, pleasure with no limits.