Page 105 of Devilry

His voice blankets over me, immediately eradicating the tension. God, how I missed him.

“Hey.”

“How have you been?” I sigh into the phone, words unable to express the right answer. “Can you come over?”

“Now?”

“Yeah. We need to talk.”

I’ve been miserable these last few days, and prolonging this conversation is only going to add to that. “I’ll be there in twenty.”

“See you then.”

When I arrive at his front door, I have to stop myself from hurling all over the stoop. To say I feel nervous is a gross understatement. My heart is on the other side of that door, and I’m sure I don’t want it back.

Anxiously, I knock and then tuck my shaky hands back into my pockets.

The door swings open, and a disheveled Cole waits for me on the other side. I’ve never seen him so unkempt, so unsure.

It takes everything I have not to run into his arms. To curl into his hard body and beg him to tell me everything will be okay.

His tired gray eyes roam over my body, the low flame of desire for me still there.

He gestures for me to come in, and then leads us through the kitchen. It’s awkward and silent, nothing like our usual.

“Do you want a drink?” he offers, standing awkwardly inside his kitchen.

On the other side of the bench, keeping distance between us that I don’t like, I ask the only thing I want the answer to. “Cole, what are we doing?”

Abandoning the drink pretense, he bends over, resting his arms on the kitchen bench, scrubbing his hands up and down his face.

“When you told me to leave you with Aiden,” he starts. “I was furious. And then I was hurt and shocked, but now I’m just lost.” He visibly swallows. “I’ve never felt like this before, and I don’t ever want to feel like this again.”

I wait for him to deliver the blow, to tell me that I put the last nail in the coffin when I asked him to go, but it doesn’t come.

“I know now how stupid it was for me to show up unannounced. I knew it within ten seconds of seeing your face, and I knew it when I hurdled my bruised ego out of there. It was completely out of character for me, not to mention irresponsible. I could have never predicted just how shitty the night was going to end. And even if I had, it would’ve been nothing compared to how awful it really was.”

He goes silent, as if he’s regrouping his thoughts, refusing to look anywhere else but at me.

“I tried to give you space. The unanswered messages… that was me trying to be the adult, and not an asshole. Tried to talk myself out of doing this with y—”

“Wait,” I interrupt. “Before you say any more, I need you to know I should’ve walked out with you that night. I should’ve left Aiden and my guilt behind in that restaurant and walked out with you.”

He stalks around the bench, closing the distance between us, cradling my face in his hands. “If that was the only thing that was our issue, Elijah, I would’ve been knocking on your door demanding we hurry this shit up and get to the make-up sex everyone’s always talking about.”

It’s a light hearted joke, said at just the right time.

“But I’m stuck here, Elijah. The rules are explicit. In any language, at any school, in every country. Everybody knows this never ends well.

“I know now, more than ever, there’s no easy way out of this for us.” He runs his thumb across my lips, looking at me wistfully. “I know I should walk away, but when it comes to you, I am a weak, weak man. And so, I’m asking you.” Closing his eyes, he takes a loud, deep breath before meeting my gaze again. “I’m telling you. Walk away from me, Elijah.”

I shake my head in his hands, “No. No,” I repeat. “No, I won’t do it.”

“We can’t have it all, Elijah. And Aiden was right. There’s too much at stake here.”

He doesn’t loosen his hold on me as I continue to shake my head.

“I can’t walk away from you any more than you can walk away from me,” I tell him. “Please don’t ask me to be the person that ruins this.”

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