Normally, I would have found myself gearing up to joke with him about something. Not now. Instead, I was bracing myself for whatever interaction we were about to have, and the feeling left me unsettled.
He came to a stop in front of me and jerked his chin up. “Hey.”
I mirrored the head movement. “Hey.”
“I talked to Trey a few minutes ago,” he said. “He told me you paused the work on the villas so you could come over here and work on fixing the packaging machine. Did you get it all worked out?”
I had done that. I’d been working in the villas every day for weeks now, but since those weren’t a priority when compared to the packaging machine in the factory, something Cooper would have normally dealt with, I decided to get it fixed for him. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s all good now.”
He nodded and looked away. “Thanks.”
I cared too much to pretend I wasn’t interested in knowing how things went for Ivy. “Did everything go okay at the police station?”
Cooper sighed. “Yeah. I mean, she gave them all the details she could about the attack, and they’re promising to get to work on it right away.”
I dipped my chin. “That’s good. I’m glad. Let’s hope they can find out who did that to her.”
“I sure hope they do. But with so little information about the guy, it doesn’t look promising.” Cooper might have been engaging in this conversation with me, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at me. Maybe things were worse than I had already suspected.
I was torn between wanting to call him out on it, so we could resolve it, and trying to put myself in his shoes. That was the side that won out, because it was just the kind of guy I’d always been. Getting worked up about things never appealed to me, and I preferred to let stuff go. If Cooper wasn’t interested in making a bigger deal about this, then I wasn’t going to put us in a position that made it worse.
As I took a step in the opposite direction, I said, “I’m going to head over to the vil?—”
“Marco, I’m sorry.” I stopped moving and looked back at him. His expression was filled with anguish. “I sat there in that interrogation room with her and listened to her tell them what happened to her last night. I don’t know how I didn’t start throwing chairs and flipping over tables. How she got away, I don’t know. But her terror was real, and it was agony to listen to and see that.”
If there was one thing in this whole situation that Cooper and I could agree on, it was that. It was knowing that either one of us would have preferred to be there to save her from that nightmare.
I had a feeling Cooper wasn’t done, so I waited, giving him the time he needed to pull himself together.
“I came at you this morning and said some things that were completely out of line. I saw the marks on her face, and I just lost it. And I know there’s no excuse for it, but I guess I saw her walk out in your shirt after you lied and told me nobody was there with you, and?—”
“I didn’t say what I did to lie to you. I just wasn’t going to betray her confidence,” I explained. “I’d already asked her what her plan was for talking to all of you, and she wanted to go to the police station first. I respected her enough to let her make that decision.”
He nodded furiously. “I know. I know. I can look back and see it now, but in the moment, I was just caught up and thought you two had something going on that you were hiding and lying about. Again, I was wrong for how I behaved, and I want you to know that I’m sorry for what I said to you.”
“I appreciate that. And I understand the fury you felt at seeing her like that. I was just as upset, and I just need you to hear me say that I would soonerdiethan lay a hand on her like that.”
His shoulders fell. “I know that. In fact, I need to be here not only apologizing for what I said and how I acted, but I should also be thanking you for taking care of her last night and not leaving her alone when she’d been so terrorized. Thank you for dropping whatever you had going on, staying with her, and putting her well-being above everything else.”
I dropped my gaze to my feet, the air rushing from my lungs. I hated that it took something so awful happening to her for me to realize what I’ve had in front of me all this time. Now, I worried that if I tried to act upon it, Cooper would only think I was taking advantage of her being vulnerable.
“You’re welcome, Coop. I should probably head over to the villas now, though,” I said.
“Yeah. Alright. Are we cool?”
I still had so many concerns about the things Cooper didn’t say, but I nodded. “We’re cool.”
I moved to walk off, but something hit me, and I turned around to face him again. “Hey.”
He looked up at me. “Yeah?”
“Is Skye okay? When you came into the hotel room this morning, you said you wanted to talk about what happened with Skye last night. Is she alright?”
Any of the lingering tension and strain that had been visible in his features when we were discussing Ivy and what had happened this morning vanished. The hardness was gone, and he looked like he had not a worry in the world.
“She’s pregnant.”
I don’t know what I thought Cooper was going to say, but it hadn’t been that. I blinked in surprise. “Are you serious?”