Page 66 of Bad & Bossy

“I mean, honestly, baby, does he even need teeth?” he laughed, joining me before the steps retracted. “It seems like a recipe for disaster if he’s still occasionally breastfeeding?—”

The smile on Cole’s face fell, his eyes looking over my head and somewhere behind me. His hand tightened on Drew, holding him just a little bit closer, his body tensing.

I turned, following his line of sight, but came up only with a couple who looked to be in their early sixties with two teenagers on either side of them. A girl and a boy, lost in the screens of their phones as they stood still on the runway, a chartered private jet wheeling out toward them.

Cole didn’t take his eyes off of them. Something unspoken hung in the air, something thick and angry. I almost wanted to take Drew from him.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. His knuckles had gone white from the death grip he had on the handle of his luggage, but the arm around Drew remained calm and secure. Every bit of light I’d seen in his eyes for the last week came to a grinding halt. “Cole? Who are they?”

Blinking, he slowly turned to look at me, his mouth parted and his eyes more hollow than I’d seen in over a year.

“They’re my parents,” he breathed, his tone so cold, so dead, that I nearly didn’t comprehend it.

Chapter 23

Cole

Itried not to look at myself in the mirror as I slid my cufflinks on. I checked my shirt for any wrinkles, careful not to look at my face, and dabbed a couple of fingers of cologne on either side of my neck and wrists before sliding the jacket of my tux over my arms and shoulders. My hair would have to fucking do—I didn’t care enough to check.

The gala tonight would be a test. Without Dana by my side, the alcohol freely flowing at the event would be tempting beyond belief, but I’d have Grayson and Bobby to keep me in check. I just needed to get through tonight. Then I could go back to her and her son, wrap her in my arms, and try to forget about the overbearing reason that kept me from looking in the mirror.

I didn’t want to see my parent’s faces reflected back at me.

I hadn’t been able to avoid them on the tarmac of the airport. Not when my driver had shouted my name across the goddamn empty space, alerting them to my presence.

I’d fought my way through the mindless exchange with small talk, my hand firmly grasped within Dana’s. Apparently, at some point, they had settled in Bali, had two more children, and only came back to the states when they had business to attend to or people to see.

And, of course, it was just my luck they had business in Boulder.

I didn’t want to introduce Dana to them. I didn’t want to fold her into that part of my life, not yet, not before I had the chance to explain it all to her. But when my mother asked her point-blank if she was my wife, we’d had no choice.

“No,” I’d scoffed. I didn’t elaborate, and looking back on it, I probably should have. I didn’t want Dana to think that I was shutting that down as a possibility down the line.

“I’m his girlfriend,” Dana had said, her mood far lighter than mine as she reached out her hand to shake both of theirs. “And this is Drew, my son.”

My mother, always the one to put on a good show, had tried to say hello to him. I’d stepped away from her, tucking Drew in closer to my chest.

“We’ll be in Boulder for the next few weeks,” my father had said, his glasses halfway down his nose. He looked so much older. He’d aged less gracefully than Mom, though based on her looks, I suspected she’d probably had some work done. “We should meet up properly. It would be nice to chat and catch up.”

I had to bite my fucking tongue.

I made my way down the stairs, pushing the memory as far out of my mind as I could, trying to replace it with the good ones from our vacation instead. In the downstairs living room, the massive floor-to-ceiling bay windows letting in the last of the sunlight, Bobby relaxed on the sofa, his button-up shirt clean and crisp. He had gotten a haircut—his hair was shorter, similar in length to mine.

“Are you ready?”

He pressed a button on the remote, powering down the television. “Yep. Just got to put on my shoes.”

Tonight was as good a night as ever to take the BMW. Bobby and I settled into the car; Grayson was going to meet us there.

“You look stressed,” Bobby said, for once seeming a little wary when he spoke instead of just word vomiting without thinking. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” I lied.

“Is it your parents?”

“Yeah, man, it’s my fucking parents,” I snapped, turning a little too sharply onto the main road that would take us into town and out of the mountains.

Bobby hesitated before he spoke again. “It’s shitty of them,” he said, his eyes locked on the side of my face as I tried to keep myself calm. “Showing up like this, not even bothering to reach out beforehand. I mean, what kind of fucking parents do that? They abandon their kid then show up unannounced years later, with two more kids they actually seem to care enough about to keep around.”

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