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“I won’t promise not to make decisions based on you, Lori. I won’t. But I will tell you that having you in my life, worrying over you, isn’t a bad thing. It’s everything. Like you’re everything.”
His mouth closes down on mine again, and with a lick of his tongue, I’m against the wall, and he’s lifting my leg, pressing inside me. The fighting is over, and now the fucking begins. And that’s what this is. He’s driving inside me, lifting me and pumping inside me, and every angry word we’ve spoken today evaporates into passion and need. Into his mouth on my mouth, his lips on my lips, his hand on my breast, my nipple, everywhere. He is touching me everywhere, and when it’s over, we stand under the water, our foreheads pressed together in silence, that good kind of silence that says we don’t need words. We just need each other and there is a shift between us, an understanding that we can fight and we can disagree, even under terrible circumstances, but we are one, and that cannot be broken. I think in all our many separate broken pieces, we both needed to know that together, we’re whole.
Chapter sixty-eight
Lori
It’s a long time after that shower when Cole and I sit on the living room floor with Chinese food in front of us, me in one of his T-shirts, and him in his pajama bottoms. “So, it went well with Gabe Maxwell?”
“Actually, I saw Reid, his brother.”
“Oh,” I say. “He’s the one Cat has real issues with. She says he’s a lot like her father and that’s not a compliment.”
“I don’t know the details of Cat’s relationship with her father or with Reid, but her father is, or was before his stroke, one of the best corporate financial attorneys in the business. In that light, Reid is indeed like his father.”
“He has a heart. He hides it well, but tonight, I saw a little glimpse of what’s beneath. He’ll do right by the people we want to do right by and in a big way.”
I set my fork down, seeing a chance to get him to talk about what he never talks about. “Cat and her dad, I think—well, I think they are a lot like you and your dad. He wanted her to be like him. She isn’t. She never will be. They didn’t speak for a very long time, but he had a stroke, and she started to rebuild a relationship, a fragile one, but a relationship.”
He sets his fork down. “You want to know about my father.”
“I want to know how it affects you. It’s still fresh, Cole. Less than two years. I’m wondering if that box you thought sealed only opened because his death cracked it open. You were ripe for an emotional stumble. All this has to be a trigger for you. I mean—when did you start hating him?”
He inhales and lets it out. “You’re right,” he surprises me by saying. “His death is likely a trigger. Bastard that he is, he probably did crack open the box. He made me think about his life, my life, my mother.” He moves to sit on the couch, lowering his head and running his hand over his neck.
I quickly join him, scooting close, my leg and hip pressed to his. “When my mother had her stroke right after my father died,” I say. “I had this freak-out over being alone. There’s just something about no longer having a living parent on this earth that still steals my breath just thinking about it.”
He looks over at me. “Exactly. I hated that man but somehow the world was right when he was here for me to hate, up close and personal.” He takes my hand. “As for him opening the box, how very him to try to get between us, even after his death.”
I squeeze his hand. “He’s not coming between us, Cole. One thing I can tell you about me is that despite my misgivings about my father, after his death I saw the devotion between him and my mother. They had good and bad times, and they worked through them. I’m not a fair-weather person.”
“If you were a fair-weather person, sweetheart, you wouldn’t have made the sacrifices you made for your mother. And in his own way, my father loved my mother, too. It’s just not my way.”
“And that means what to you? Because if you mean you wouldn’t have let your mother get attacked the way your father did, he couldn’t have stopped that. Not the way you’ve described it happening.”
“That’s not what I meant,” he says quickly.
“You couldn’t have stopped my attack either. Is that the problem? You’re comparing yourself to him? Us to them? Because if you are, we’re in trouble.”
“Making sure I am not like him is the opposite of trouble.”
“Not if that means you are holding yourself and us to standards we can’t possibly keep.”
“By that, you mean what?” he asks.
“The only way to stop that attack was to have never taken that case.”
“If I think a case is dangerous, I need to pass it on to someone else.”
“And think about what that might mean. Would another attorney have gotten that innocent man off? Would another attorney have gotten Royce Walker involved and linked the cases to help catch a killer? How many more would have died? My attack was nothing.”
He cups the back of my neck and drags my mouth to his. “Your attack should never have happened.”
“But it did and I’m okay because you were right there to save me.” I touch his jaw. “And we saved other lives together. I should never, never have suggested I resign. I love what we do together.”
“Me too, sweetheart. Me, too.” He brushes his lips over mine. “I told you. I’ll get by all this. Give me space without stepping away.”
“That’s a confusing statement.”
