Page 12 of No More Spies

“Cooper, what you did tonight was wrong, but Ian’s wrong,too.” His father moved in front of him so his face was all Coop could see. “Iknow you didn’t mean to hurt her feelings. I know she can push you. I’ve alwaysbeen worried she would push you too hard and you would end up doing somethingyou weren’t ready for. You were right to tell her no. You have every singleright to decide what you do with your body and when. And I also understand howcomplex your feelings are. You were wrong to go behind our backs. You weren’tsupposed to have visitors, and you’re going to be grounded for that. The restof it? Cooper, it comes with being a teenager, and you navigated it as well asyou could.”

He felt something wet on his cheek. He was crying. He hatedit. His mom would tell him boys needed to cry as much as girls, but he alsoknew how everyone who wasn’t a therapist would see him. Weak. Emotional. Still,the tears came. “I’m sorry.”

He didn’t have anything else to say.

His dad sighed and drew him in for a hug. “It’s going to beokay. I would bet she’s on her way to Lou’s.”

He didn’t think so. Lou promised she hadn’t heard anything.Lou had been the one to tell him if he didn’t get the parents involved, shewould. Lou had been so worried. But he wasn’t going to argue with his dad. He’dfucked up enough for one night. “Sure.”

His dad stopped. “Cooper, it’s going to be okay. Kala isactually quite capable. She wouldn’t do something stupid.”

Oh, but she could. She was capable of burning downeverything around them when she was angry. Was this her way of taking him downwith her?

He hated he’d even had the thought. Why had he thought shewas dragging him down?

Because his friends told him so. Because his athlete friendsthought she was weird. Because the cheerleaders who were also flirting with himtold him he could do better.

Ian was right. He was playing a role. Golden boy. He wantedto be the big man on campus, and he wasn’t going to let a little thing likelove get in the way.

How many times had she heard his friends make fun of her?How many times had she seen him wave it off and move on?

“Go out and stay in the lobby. Your mom will follow Tashaback to her place and take you home.” His dad sounded tired.

Cooper did as he was asked, wiping his eyes and trying notto look like the snot-nosed kid he apparently still was. When he got to thelobby, Tasha was talking to her cousin. Kyle Hawthorne definitely wouldn’t cry.Hell, he’d killed someone and probably hadn’t cried. He’d been a badass. Kylewasn’t a Taggart by blood, but he fit in. Like Tash did.

“Remember what I said about staying inside,” Kyle remindedher. He nodded Cooper’s way as he moved down the hall. He was walking oppositethe conference room.

Kala wasn’t the only drama playing out tonight. What washappening to Kyle and MaeBe was serious and could end in someone dying.

He sat his ass down.

Tasha sat beside him. “It’s going to be okay. She’ll turn upand I’ll have pissed off all my siblings for nothing. I’m pretty sure we’re allgetting grounded, and they’ll blame me.”

He didn’t care about the grounding. He had a lot of thinkingto do. He didn’t like the person he saw in the mirror right now. “Are you notworried?”

“About Kala? Of course I am.”

Not the question he was asking. Tash might be the only onewho understood. “I mean…aren’t you worried you disappointed them?”

“My parents?” She huffed. “Weirdly I will have disappointedthem and they’ll be proud because I covered for her. They’ll ground us all, butat some point I’ll hear my dad talk about how I remind him of him at this age.He would have covered for Uncle Sean. He’ll say his kids are a team and he andMom made us that way, so they can’t be too pissed.”

“My dad won’t say anything like that. I left Hunter and Vivialone.” Guilt was a pit in his gut. He’d talked to his brother, and from whathe understood his sister slept through the whole thing. They were fine, buthe’d left them.

Tasha put a hand on his arm. “They’re fine, and don’t takemy dad’s words to heart. He’s scared, and he kind of processes fear as angersince he understands anger better. At least that’s what my mom says. Trust me,my wayward sister is going to get a full-on dose of my dad’s fear as angerresponse.” Tasha sat back with a long sigh. “She’s going to be utterlyimpossible to live with.” She turned his way, her gaze oddly both sympatheticand a bit steely. “You need to let her go. You need to break it off with her ina way that doesn’t keep her dangling on a string. You and TJ are being cruel.”

“TJ loves Lou.” And he loved Kala.

“But he doesn’t want to be with her,” Tasha pointed out.“Any more than you really want to be with Kala. I don’t blame you. You’reobviously not a good match.”

Oddly, her words bugged him. Even though he’d heard them amillion times before, wondered about it himself. “I think we’ve always beengood friends.”

“She’s always chasing you, and you like to be chased,” Tashareplied. “It doesn’t make you a bad guy, but after this if you don’t let hergo, you’re moving into bad-guy territory.”

He couldn’t actually imagine his life without Kala. Itsomehow didn’t compute in his brain. Like he needed both his golden boy athletelife and the moments he had with her.

Was he hurting her?

His mom didn’t think he should be with her either. Notbecause she didn’t love Kala. Because they were… What word had she used?Volatile. He’d had to look it up. Incendiary. Unstable. Like a bomb waiting togo off.

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