Page 137 of The Love Haters

Cole nodded. “Maybe there was an element of revenge, too.”

“Because you knew I liked her? But how did you know? We weren’t even talking!”

“Rue knew,” Cole said. “Rue could tell.”

Hutch ran his palm over his burr cut and turned back to Cole.“So… Rue told you that she thought I liked the coworker you sent down here to do your job—and you decided to lie to me that you were dating her?”

Cole nodded. “When you put it that way, I sound like a dick.”

“You have got to stop competing with me, man,” Hutch said.

“That’s easy to say when you’re the reigning champion.”

“I’m not the champion of anything.”

“Spoken like a champion.”

“You must think I’m totally untouchable,” Hutch said. “Is that how you see me?”

But Cole was ready to own it. “Of course. Yes. That’s who you are. You’re Hutch. You’re perfect. And you get everything you want. If you want to make straight A’s, you just make them. If you decide to run a marathon, you just run one. If you want to be a rescue swimmer, you’re one of five guys total who make it through AST school. You’re a machine. You’re unstoppable. I’ll spend my whole life competing with you, and I’ll never win.”

Wow. That was a lot of self-disclosure.

“But none of that stuff about me,” Hutch said, “has anything to do with you.”

“It has everything to do with me,” Cole said then. “Because you just had to be a hero and save me.”

For a second, everything went quiet.

Then Hutch sat up in the grass. “Do you mean,” he asked, not looking over at Cole, “the night of the accident?”

Cole sat up, too. Then, after a long pause, in a barely audible voice, he said, “You should’ve saved Mom instead.”

Hutch looked over at Cole like he was seeing him for the first time. “Is that—what this is?”

Cole kept his eyes on the grass.

Hutch was shaking his head at the revelation. “Is that why you’re so angry? Is that why you always want to prove yourself?”

Cole didn’t answer.

Hutch shook his head, still putting the pieces together. “No wonder. How could you ever measure up to that?”

“To what?” Cole asked.

“To what we lost.”

Cole looked away.

Hutch was studying him now. “Was that it? Was that what it’s been all this time? You thought you were the reason she wasn’t here? You thought I saved you instead of her? That if I had chosen differently, Mom would still be alive?”

Cole was blinking now, like he’d never expected that question.

“Because, Cole…” Hutch went on. “I didn’t make that choice.”

“What?”

Hutch swallowed. “Mom told me to get you.”

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