Page 102 of Bad & Bossy

Before I could even breathe, his lips crashed against mine, knocking me off balance before his hands grasped my waist to keep me in place.

My heart thundered against my ribs, my body frozen as I tried to take it in. He was here, he was working on getting sober, he was kissing me. I wanted it, yet I hated that I wanted it. I wanted him.

I didn’t move a single muscle when he pulled himself from me, his eyes wide, his demeanor so fucking small again. “I’m sorry,” he breathed, peeling himself from me finger by finger as if he couldn’t bear to let go all at once. “I… I shouldn’t have come.”

My body finally gave way, my layers of ice melting. I grabbed him by the collar of his white button-up and pulled him to me as if he was air and I was fucking suffocating. I wrapped a hand around the back of his neck, feeling the warmth of his skin, forcing him to close in on me again. His forehead pressed to mine, his breathing heavy and uneven, we stood in deafening silence just an inch from each other’s lips.

“I missed you,” he rasped, the little crack in his voice shuddering through my chest.

The pause that thickened the air between us shattered in an instant.

I kissed him as he drove me against the wall a little too roughly. A mumbled apology filled the space between our mouths but I devoured it, savoring the taste of him that I’d missed and imagined every fucking night as I fell asleep. He lifted me, slotting his hips between my legs and forcing them around his waist, desperate for contact anywhere either of us could get it.

With one arm around his neck, I pulled him in tighter, refusing to let him back away if he tried, but from the way his fingers dug into the bare flesh of my thighs and clung to my shirt, I couldn’t imagine a reality where he wanted to leave. He kissed me as if he’d never get the chance to again, as if he needed this more than I did. Maybe he did.

“I’m sorry,” I swallowed, his lips leaving mine only to press against my cheeks, my chin, my jaw. “I’m so sorry. I should have told you about Drew sooner.”

“Don’t be.”

A knot formed at the back of my throat, tainting my words as I tried to speak. “But you’ve missed out on so much,” I said.

My shirt rode up as he held me to the wall, exposing the entirety of my lower half. He didn’t even bat an eye as he pressed a kiss against the tip of my nose. “I know.”

“You missed his first word,” I croaked. The backs of my eyes burned. “You missed his first steps.”

He huffed out a breath as his forehead rested against mine again, his eyes closed tightly, his brows furrowed.

“You missed his birthday.”

“I can’t tell if you’re mad at me for this,” he admitted, and I almost laughed. Almost.

“I’m mad at myself.” I buried my face in the side of his neck, cherishing his warmth and breathing him in. I missed how he smelled. I missed everything about him. “And a little mad at you. But maybe if I’d told you sooner, if I gave you something to cling to, none of this would have?—”

“Stop, baby, stop,” he sighed, one hand coming to rest on the back of my head as if I were seconds from pulling away. “Neither of us knows what would have happened. I was out of my fucking mind.”

The longer he held me, the more I had time and room to think, and for me, that was never a good thing.

The t-shirt rode up higher around my body, tugging and settling at my waist. The sensation of it pulled me closer to reality, to the situation at hand, to his I’m trying. I wanted this, I wanted him, so fucking badly I could easily lose myself in it. But I couldn’t let that happen, for Drew alone. What I wanted didn’t matter. What he needed mattered.

And Drew needed a father, yes, but more importantly, he needed a father he could rely on. He needed someone that had their shit together. Someone that wasn’t just trying but succeeding.

I’d let my feelings for Cole cloud that.

But I didn’t want to let go, didn’t want to push him away again. I wanted to stay right there, in his arms, invite him back to my bedroom and shut the door to the world. I wanted to love him easily.

The tears came too quickly, too suddenly, as I realized I was making my mind up on something I wanted to live forever in vagueness with. I dug my fingers into the side of his neck, shuddered breaths wracking my chest as I took what I knew would be the last of what I’d get from him for too long.

“What’s—”

“We can’t,” I sobbed, and his grip tightened. “I’m sorry, Cole, but we can’t do this.”

I could feel my weight shift heavily on the wall as he struggled to keep us upright, but I couldn’t bear to pull back, to look at his face, to take in the ways that I knew I was hurting him.

“I need you to be better,” I said, each word cracking the ache in my chest and increasing it tenfold. “I need you to be sober. Fully.”

He held me in silence for what felt like hours but judging by the clock hanging beside my front door, it was only minutes. I cried and he shook, his fingers so deep into my skin that I was sure he’d leave little half-moon bruises from his nails.

Until slowly, finally, with every bit of restraint in both of us, he lowered my legs and set me down.

---