Page 58 of Chokehold
“I don’t think you’re weak,” I rush out.
His brows furrow as he nods, looking pained. “I know…”
“What scares you, Cole?”
He pauses and looks up at me, his blue eyes flicking between mine.
I lower my gaze. “You don’t have to answer.”
His attention burns the side of my face for a moment longer before he sighs and runs his fingers through his hair. “Being alone.”
When I don’t answer, his chest expands on a shaky breath. “I don’t know how to explain it.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know…”
I lift my gaze to his face, and he smiles weakly. “I fear being alone, so I push people away. Ironic, isn’t it? I’m alone because I don’t let anyone close. I guess…” With a shrug, he screws up his face. “I guess it’s easier to push people away than face rejection. People have a way of hurting you in the end.”
I study the side of his face, craving more of his truth. Fuck, I’m falling for him and the pain he exudes with every breath.
“How about you?” he asks as he rubs his neck.
I answer without thinking twice. “I’m scared to kiss you.”
He stills.
I stare at the doorway. Why the hell did I tell him that? Some truths should stay guarded. This was one of them, but now my truth is out there, searching for a way past his impenetrable walls.
The ache in my chest burns brighter. “You need a villain.” I meet his eyes, letting him see what lurks beneath my own surface. “I fear being the hero.”
A myriad of emotions flickers in his eyes—emotions that are as foreign to me as the whisper of his breath on my lips.
Like a tidal wave pulled toward his sandy shore, I press my lips to his. I don’t even think as I invade his space. Cole stiffens, but he doesn’t pull away. Maybe he’s too shocked. A small part of me—one of pure longing—wants to believe his heart beats as frantically as mine.
He’s not breathing or moving a muscle. I kiss him harder and tentatively reach up to cup his face. The moment my fingers graze the stubble on his cheeks, he pulls away. It’s not a sudden move. He doesn’t wrench away like the thought of kissing me repulses him—it’s a subtle move, a slight tilt of his jaw, but he could have just as well smacked me. I feel dazed, disoriented.
“Don’t,” he says, his voice cold and detached.
Outside, the snow sails through the air.
Peaceful.
Soundless.
Cole stands up without another word and walks out, leaving me behind to swallow down the hurt lodged in my throat. The door clicks shut. I fall back onto the bed and dig my fingers into my eyeballs. “You stupid idiot. What the hell is wrong with you? Why the fuck did you do that?”
I’m not a vulnerable person. Even when I was a kid and I watched havoc rain down on my life every single hour, I held myself together.
Letting someone else into my headspace when it’s like a wrecked fucking battlefield with debris and blood and horror, is not something I can do. Even when I was all for being with Allie, I couldn’t let her in. She still doesn’t know much about my past. Just the little tidbits I’ve shared when I was drunk and needed someone to talk to. There’s never been a reason to tell the people around me. Mom knows, and she’s the only person who needs to know. She witnessed most of it, after all.
She told Blaise’s dad, who most definitely told his son, maybe as a heads up on having a fucked-up stepbrother, going on the words he threw at me at the cabin. I need to lower my walls down and let people in.
Why? What good does that do to let others see my different shades of messy bullshit? For them to know everything my own piece-of-shit father did to me?
The thought alone has my leg itchy, making me shift uncomfortably in my seat while I drive us home from the airport in the middle of the night.
Blaise is the passenger for once – he usually sits in the back – and Mia is asleep in the backseat, with a blanket wrapped around her that her ever-loving boyfriend threw over her. He cares about her, that much is obvious, and it fucking annoys me. And it annoys me that it annoys me.
