Chapter Twenty-Five: His Possessiveness Is as Uncontrollable as Kanye West
I love that moment between being asleep and waking up where just for that one moment you’re stuck somewhere between a dream and reality. I mean yeah, it sucks that you’ve got to get up and deal with the general soul-sucking nature of life, but isn’t it kind of awesome how two worlds collide? If you’re lucky and the dream is a really good one, the kind that leaves you feeling warm and fuzzy, then that moment right before you wake up will extend to your whole day. There’s something about having a fantastic dream that makes your outlook on the day that is to come really positive.
How I wish I’d had a good dream.
It takes me a little while to get my bearings. I must’ve been really exhausted the previous night to not remember falling asleep. I’m not the kind of person that falls asleep the second their head hits the pillow. It’ll take at least five mini meltdowns before I realize that there’s nothing much I can do about the fact that my stomach’s getting a little too round again for my liking while I’m wearing my Scooby-Doo pajamas.
Yeah, Bentley better stop kicking me out of the gym.
But, getting back to more important issues, I may be slightly disoriented, but not enough to forget whose bed I’m in or whose shirt I’m wearing. I’m surrounded by Cole’s scent and his arms that are usually wound tight around me but have loosened their hold in the night. The sun’s streaming in through the windows and it must be late morning now, around ten a.m. if I were to guess. My mental calendar tells me that it’s Saturday and that I shouldn’t panic because I’ve got nowhere to be, but there’s a sudden clawing at my chest. I feel a sudden panic grip me that makes me subtly struggle out of Cole’s arms and out from the bed. He makes a sound when I get up but goes back to sleep, I guess last night must have been exhausting for him too, I didn’t really know that he’d be back.
The thought fuels my actions and, on autopilot mode, I quickly change into my clothes from last night and grab my things; my phone’s battery is dead, but I’m sure Cole must’ve let Sarah know that her roommate didn’t wind up dead in the middle of the woods.
As noiselessly as I can manage, I sneak out of Cole’s room, only to run into his roommate, Eric, in the kitchen. He’s a nice guy, but we don’t usually see each other because of our schedules, and it’s a little embarrassing to meet him while I’m supposedly doing the walk of shame.
He’s helping himself to a cup of coffee and offers me one when I greet him.
“No, thanks, I…I’ve got to hurry.”
He raises a brow but doesn’t ask more questions; I obviously look a little frazzled. “Do you want me to tell Cole something?”
“No, uh, I’ll text him, but thanks.” I give him a small smile and feel his gaze on the back of my head as I leave.
“He was freaking out last night when he came back. Is everything okay?”
I pause at the door and think about my answer, is everything okay? Turning toward him, I give Eric a reassuring smile.
“Yeah, we just had some miscommunication issues. It’s all good now.”
He doesn’t look like he believes me. “Great, well, I don’t know if he’s gotten a chance to tell you, but my girlfriend wants us to have dinner with you two. Let me know whenever you’re free so she can do the planning she loves to do so much.”
He has such an adorable look on his face as he thinks about her that I smile despite my inner turmoil.
“Sure, we should be free sometime next week, before the professors start cracking the whips.”
“It’s essay season isn’t it? Welcome to academic hell. How’re you coping?”
I shrug, keeping my eye on Cole’s door. I want to leave before he gets up and by the looks of it, Eric wants me to stay. He’s a loyal roommate, I’ll give him that.
“Speaking of, I’ve really got to run. I have a study group in an hour and I need to prep for that. I’ll let you know about the dinner soon.”
Giving him a quick wave, I rush out the door, exhaling heavily. Though it’s when I’m outside the apartment building that I realize that Cole now has the keys to his car and that I’ll have to walk back to campus in the freezing cold, and I’m not exactly dressed for it. Oh well, I trudge through the chill and grab myself a coffee from the Starbucks around the corner. The walk allows me to think clearly because I hadn’t been doing so last night. I didn’t even put up a fight before going home with Cole, should I have? He’d basically shut me out and refused to talk to me while I’d been dealing with a problem he’d created. Despite his previous record of being an exemplary boyfriend, this is definitely a strike against him. He should’ve known better than to go ahead with his stupid plan without even talking to me, heck, a last-minute warning would’ve been fine, too. I think about the looks I’ve been receiving on campus lately, and it just makes me angry because most people probably thought I was pathetic, heartbroken, a fool.
The beauty of college, though, is that you only get to be in the limelight for a millisecond, so I know the worst is over. People have bigger problems than my relationship status, and this is evident because by the time I make it back to campus, I’m a nobody again, and the biggest news is the party that one of the fraternities is hosting tonight.
Thankfully, I make it to the residence halls without being stopped. I look like I should after last night, tired and weary. My eyes are puffy and a little red, had I been crying in the halls? I take my bag of toiletries and take a hot shower in the bathrooms. Since it’s Saturday, a lot of people are sleeping off a night of maybe drinking too much. Maybe I should’ve just gotten drunk too, who knows what adventures Drunk Tessa could’ve gotten up to. Oh well, maybe next time when my boyfriend decides to put me through the wringer.
Sarah is gone when I go into our room, knowing her, she’s either at the library or running around for any one of her extracurriculars. I use the opportunity to once again stalk the ESPN website, which Cami and Sarah had tried to block. I go through the interview and the words never change, the comments, however, continue to get more and more interesting as the readers mention all the depraved things they’d like to do to my boyfriend. The only break I get is from reading a certain, “KickInYourNuts,” who more than often has posted that the only depraved thing she’d like to do to Cole is one that’d leave him incapable of having children.
Oh Beth, how I miss you.
Thoughts of Professor Flynn’s paper come to mind. There’s still a chance that I’ll be able to get a redo of some sort, so I need to start working on that. She wants me to be creative and spirited, well, now’s as good a time as any. If heartbreak can make you win multiple Grammys, then a little stab in the heart may as well produce a good paper on Austen.
Scrolling through my laptop, I push aside the fact that I left Cole in bed, alone. Before I know it, all the stress from the past few days hits me hard, and my eyes begin to droop. For someone who loves sleep more than they love a limb, I haven’t exactly been sleeping well, so it’s no surprise that minutes into getting into bed, I’m asleep again.
***
Someone’s banging on my skull, I think.
Or they could just be knocking at the door, it’s hard to tell, but I’m woken up from a dreamless sleep too suddenly, which makes my heart start pounding. Shakily I get up and unlock the door, only to find Cole on the other side. I have no idea how long I fell asleep this time, but it must not have been long enough because Cole still looks dead tired. Beautiful as he is, he could use some rest because there are bruise-like shadows beneath his eyes that give away how he feels.
We stare at each for a while; I don’t make a move to let him in, and he doesn’t try to come into the room, which is very unlike him, but also goes to show that he realizes that he’s messed up big-time.
“Who let you in this time?”
He lets out a breath of relief like he’d expected me to go all snapping turtle on him the moment he tried to reach out to me. We’re close to that, Stone, pretty close.
“One of the girls on your floor, she, uh, recognized me.”
“I’m sure your newly acquired single status must’ve been a pretty good incentive for her.”
He flinches visibly and looks around; there’s no one around yet, but pretty soon, people will start trickling down to the dining halls. I would worry, too, if I were him.
“Can we do this elsewhere?” He tries to step forward but I stop him with an outstretched hand. “Oh no, you don’t. If you’re okay with me becoming a laughingstock, then I’d like to subject you to some public humiliation, too.”
His expression is tender, which, yeah, admittedly makes me want to pull him inside and wrap myself around him, but this is a fight where I can’t let his brooding “come hither” looks break my resolve.
“Tessie, you have to know that everything I did—”
“Was for my sake? Was to protect me? Well, congratulations, Stone, because you did just that. Whatever imaginary creature it is that you’re protecting me from by basically telling the whole world that you want nothing to do with me has been defeated. But guess what? The downside is that everyone thinks I’m just a quick fuck for you, the stupid, naive girl that you’re embarrassed to be with. While you’ve been busy ‘protecting’ me and ignoring me, you actually failed to notice how your genius plan backfired.”
His expression morphs into fury and despite me putting up a fight, he somehow forces himself into the room, slamming the door shut behind him. Cole grips me by the tops of my arms and pulls me into his chest.
“Who said that to you? You know I’d fucking kill anyone who even looked at you that way,” he growls.
“You don’t get to say that to me when you’re the person who put me in that position in the first place. It hurt, Cole, it hurt when all of that came my way without any warning.”
He blinks a couple of times and then drops his hands from my arms. He curses under his breath and then kicks the foot of my bed.
“You don’t realize what the press is like, Tessie, if they found out about you or about us, you’d never have a moment of normalcy again. Some of the guys I met…they told me about what their girlfriends had to go through, and I just…I didn’t want you to have to face that.”
I must really be out of tune with the world of college football because I didn’t realize that the dating lives of the players were given such importance. I don’t understand his world, and even as his college career is skyrocketing, with more and more attention from the media and pro scouts, I have never allowed myself to come to terms with the fact that our lives are changing.
“Why do you never ask me before you go off and do these things?” I cry out, feeling frustrated enough to want to bash my head against a wall. We’ve had this conversation so many times that I don’t even see the point of having it again. “What part of being equals don’t you get? Can you even imagine how embarrassing that interview was? And then, god, you shut me out so bad.” My voice breaks and I have to sit down on my bed, just so that my knees don’t give way.
I feel Cole hovering close by but he doesn’t try to touch me. “I knew you’d be hurt, trust me, I heard an earful from your brother, but I knew that if I talked to you, I’d just call the interviewer up and beg them to change everything I’d said. I…I’m sorry, I know I could’ve handled it better.”
I snort. “Yeah, you could’ve.”
He gets down on his knees and cups my face, moving in to kiss me, but he sees the panic on my face, and the hurt in his eyes kills something inside me. “You don’t want me to touch you.”
“I’m confused and hurt. I don’t understand where we’re going, and every single time we take a step forward, it seems like you move us five steps back.” I take a deep breath before continuing. “I’d do anything for you, anything to be with you. You mean more to me than all this drama, and I love you for helping me overcome so much this year, but now…now you’re just making me feel like I’m a damn burden you have to carry.”
He sucks in a breath. “No! That’s so far from the truth.” He lets out a bitter laugh. “Quite the opposite, actually. I’m waiting for the day you realize that you could do so much better than me and when I’d have to fall to your feet to convince you that even though you could, you’d still never find someone as desperate to have you in his life as I am.”
Tears sting my eyes and I know this is the boy that I fell hopelessly in love with. The cocky, arrogant bad boy who’s so vulnerable on the inside that it breaks your heart.
“It wasn’t supposed to be this painful being together, was it?”
Cole drops his head into my lap and I feel him shake his head. I run my fingers through his hair, and it feels like the first moment of calmness we’ve had in a long time.
“Let’s do this your way, let’s keep this, us, away from the everyone who could possibly destroy us.”
My breath hitches as I say this, and I know even as the words leave my mouth that it’s a bad idea. But with the way things have been going since the moment we got here, I know that we need to give it our all and fight like hell to be the Cole and Tessa that fell in love slowly but oh so madly. Lots of little moments led us here, dances and dresses, fights and jokes, ice creams and chocolates, first kisses and hesitant confessions. If it took you that long to find each other, wouldn’t you do anything in your power to keep that person?
And when Cole lifts his head from my lap and sits down next to me, gripping the back of my neck and kissing me with every ounce of love he has for me, I know I’ve made the right decision.
“I’m not ashamed of you or embarrassed. I love you, I’m in awe of you, you’re the strongest person I’ve ever met, Shortcake.” He looks me in the eye as he says this. “But I can’t be the reason you’re always doubting yourself or why other people look at you in a way that makes me want to become someone I haven’t been in a long time. If this helps me make you happier, then I’ll do it.”
“And how you’ll react when you won’t be able to hold my hand in public or when someone tries to hit on me.” I shouldn’t be this short with him but I’m a girl; we tend to lack the male sort of tunnel vision. I’m preparing myself for the times when Cole’s going to go apeshit and demand that I lock myself up in a room.
On cue, his eyes turn cold and he kisses me once more, a deep and admittedly dirty kiss that tells me that he’s got no intentions of ever letting a guy get close enough to attempt anything of the sort.
“We’ll still be friends, I’ll just be that asshole guy friend that has no qualms about beating anyone who looks at you to pulp.”
“Oh boy, you know you’re going to regret this, right?”
“I already am, but if this means you’ll still be around me when I’m eighty, then what’s a few attempted murder charges here and there?”
“To be honest, I don’t think you’d be able to pull off the orange.”
He raises his brow sexily, and his hands began to roam over my sweater, which just happens to be a burnt orange, and when his fingers slip underneath it, he kisses the side of my neck and whispers in my ear. “You were saying?”
“I think you misunderstood me.” My breathing picks up.
“Oh, I think I understood you perfectly.” Cole gives me a wicked grin, but just as he’s about to wander into seriously inappropriate territory, I have the good sense to think about Sarah.
“Oh no, you don’t.” I slip away from him. “I’m still mad at you.”
His face drops comically and I know we’re both trying to hang on to the last few moments of normalcy before we dive headfirst into something I know is a bad idea.
Because, Cole Stone? Yeah, if there’s one thing I really, really know about my boyfriend, it’s that his possessiveness is as uncontrollable as Kanye West. It tends to get the best of him at times, and I only have to count the number of times Jay’s been punched in the face to cement that judgement.
He thinks he can handle the repercussions of letting people think we’re not together because of some high and mighty ideals about making me feel happy?
Well, I think this is going to be something he learns the hard way.