Page 32 of Forget Me Not

“Do what?” His head leans slightly sideways as his dark green eyes continue to stay locked on mine with a morbid sort of curiosity, considering what they must be showing him right now.

“Pretend like this is easy? Is it really? Is it...easy? For you?” He turns away and starts moving across the room, putting more and more distance between us. “Because it’s fucking killing me,” I sob, incapable of maintaining any sort of decorum anymore.

“Why?” He doesn’t turn around, but at least he stops walking again. “This is what you wanted. You should be happy.”

“Happy?” I screech so loudly my throat feels as if a set of claws runs down it. “You think this makes me happy?”

He spins back around, his jaws locked, the flicker of his teeth grinding back and forth visible just below his cheekbones. His eyes flash at me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him this angry...with me.

“It’s Reed, Cooper. The boy of your dreams. Yoursoulmate.” His eyes go wide and he brings his fingers up to do a twinkly little dance in the air for extra flare as he says it. “You can finally have the life you always dreamed of. What’s not to be happy about?”

“Losing you!” I shout, running up to get in his face. “Losing you is something I definitely can’t be happy about!”

His eyes narrow for a brief second. “What d’you expect me to do, Coop? Huh? Just pretend the last few years never happened? Forget the nights I held you in my arms until morning? Block every time we made love from my mind forever? Act like I’ve never felt the touch of your lips on mine? Just so I can sit by and watch while you share all of those moments with someone else?”

“No,” I breathe, rendered nearly speechless by his words.

“Good. Because I can’t do that.” His hands move over the bare skin of my arms. His touch is surprisingly gentle after everything and I feel myself giving into it, drawing the comfort it offers.

“What are we going to do?” I ask, daring against my better judgment to hope that he will produce just one last miracle for me and fix this.

“You know what I’m going to do, Cooper,” he says quietly, his eyes watching the way his fingers trace over my skin in circles. “I’m going to bow out. Give you your happy ending.”

“But,” I bite my shaky bottom lip trying to get a grip on it so I can finish forming the words I need to say, “I can’t have a happy ending without you.”

Slowly, his eyes come back up to meet mine. “Then that’s going to be a problem. Because I won’t be happy unless you’re happy. Same as you’ll be miserable watching me be miserable. And I will be miserable if you make me stay.” His mouth tightens up and I can see him swallow hard before he whispers, “Don’t make me stay, Cooper.”

Chapter Seven

Gun

7Years Earlier

“Wasn’t expecting to see you here.” I lean back in my seat, trying to appear casual. Doesn’t really matter how often I’ve sat in some dreary, little mirrored room of a police station, it’s still a little unnerving.

“Wasn’t expecting to have to come here,” Mr. B responds. He’s lacking the bitterness I’d have expected from a man I stole from. “But someone had to bail you out and drive you home.”

“What?”

“Were you expecting me to be here for some other reason? Think I was going to press charges or something?” He’s definitely angry, but apparently not for the more obvious reasons I would have bet on.

“You’re not going to?” It’s not usually in people’s nature not to screw me. Mostly because I don’t do a whole lot not to screw them. It’s not that I go out of my way to be the bad guy, just a matter of survival really. If I have to choose between Cooper’s well-being or someone else’s, she’s always going to win.

“No.” He shakes his head. “Not this time.” He waves his hand for me to get up. “Come on. We’ve got a lot to talk about, but we’re not doing it here.”

I’m really fucking confused right now. “If you didn’t report me for stealing the cash, what did I get dragged in here for?”

“Your own good probably. Now let’s go, we have a court appointment and we need to have a serious chat before we get there.”

I get to my feet, but I’m still not prepared to just walk out of here with him. I need answers. Some I can wrap my mind around. “You want me to come back to the house. After I ran away. And stole from you.”

“And let’s not forget the girl you’ve been sneaking in and out of there,” he points out. “But yeah, I want you to come back to the house.”

“Why?”

He studies me for a minute. Then he pulls out the chair across from me and has a seat, gesturing for me to do the same. “You want to do this here, fine. We’ll do this here.” He sighs, waiting for me to sit. Again. When I do, he slides a huge folder across the table toward me and continues, “I read your file, Gunnar. Every page. Every word. And we both know there are a lot of both. You’ve been getting screwed from day one.”

I scoff. That’s an understatement. And I don’t need to read that in some file to know it.

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