Page 99 of Whenever You Call

“But Iknewabout Cole,” I said quietly. “Everyone did. He wasn’t just a nameless face. He had a wife. You. He had a daughter. Bella. When he closed his eyes and we saw his heart rate decline, it was you guys that popped into my head. He wasn’t a machine I could fix up by using the right equipment. He was Cole Newman, husband, father. Adored by millions. I knew his songs, his voice, his lifestyle, even his cocksure smile that hung on billboards all over LA. So, yeah, I froze because the responsibility of saving him reminded me too much of how I’d failed Dale.” I shrugged again, trying desperately to hold back the emotion that mixing those memories together brought to the surface. “Could Cole have lived? Damn right, he could. He could have valued you and what he had. He could have seen the incredible life he had in front of him and allowed that to be enough. But he didn’t. He didn’t, and now people like me who failed to right his fuckups have to live with that. We have to carry that guilt around while people mourn him in the streets, lighting candles in his name, wailing his songs beneath fucking trees in the park. Cole could have lived a good life. Instead, he chose to ruin everyone else’s, and I am so sick of feeling like his mistakes are my fault.”

My breathing had turned ragged, my chest heaving up and down as I stared into her devastated eyes, waiting for her to run. Waiting for her to slap me around the face, accuse me of not being good enough.

“The day I met you was the first day I saw you,” I said as calmly as I could, taking a step closer to her again. “Something I couldn’t explain led me there, and from the moment we knew we couldn’t bring Cole back, my thoughts went to you and Bella. Two people I didn’t even know! I thought about Dale’s family and how they suffered when he died. I thought about his mom, his sister, his aunts and uncles, and I imagined how you two must have been feeling because I’d seen your faces, and…”

“And?” she whispered.

“You looked sad enough when he was alive, Hannah. Your smiles were already too rare. Imagining you falling apart because of something I could possibly have prevented… it stayed with me. It felt like something I needed to put right.”

“So, what? You followed me on a mission to use me to ease your own guilt?”

“I followed you once to make sure nothing happened to you.”

“You had no right.”

“I know. But if you’re asking me to regret it, I can’t. I can admit it was stupid. I can admit it didn’t make sense. I can admit to it sounding crazy to you, but I can’t regret it because you needed me that day, and I was so fucking relieved it was me who you ran into, nobody else. I knew my intentions were good, even if you still don’t.”

“I’m so confused about everything. I don’t know what to think anymore.”

I brought the back of my hand up to her cheek, brushing against the pink that rose there. “I can only imagine how this sounds, but all I can do is promise that my only intention was to watch you from afar and make sure you were safe. That you weren’t dying inside, the way I was when Dale died.”

“How do I know what you’re telling me is the truth?”

My hand trailed down her cheek, her neck, and around to the back of her hair, where I pushed my hands into the thick of it and curled my fingers tight, pulling her head back slowly. Her eyes closed involuntarily, and her breath hitched in her throat before she let her lids flutter open again, and she stared up into my eyes.

“Can’t you see it?” I whispered.

“I just… I don’t know,” she breathed.

“Lookat me, Hannah. Use your gut. Follow your instincts. Don’t ask me if you can trust me. Trust yourself enough to know what you see and whether you want it or not.”

Her eyes searched mine, and I could feel her on the precipice, ready to tell me. Ready to admit to herself what she felt deep down inside.

“Say it,” I whispered.

“I believe you,” she rasped, her voice heady, while my heart leaped at the sudden admission until she said, “But…”

“But what?”

“I don’t even know. It feels like there should be a ‘but’. It feels wrong to want this so soon after—”

I shook my head, cutting her off. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Worry about what everyone else will think. This is your life. You’re not taking breaths to keep everyone else alive. You’re taking them for you, so don’t make decisions on your future based on keeping everyone else happy, either. Decide what it is thatyouwant, and then fuck having to explain it to anyone but yourself.”

“I want…”

“Say it,” I whispered, unable to stop myself from leaning in. “Tell me what will make you happy so I can give it to you.”

Hannah sucked in a breath, and she fisted my T-shirt, pulling me closer before she pressed her mouth against mine, a low moan of satisfaction escaping her

She kissed me, stealing any words or breaths I had left to give, taking them all for herself instead… just the way I wanted her to.

This was love, even if only one of us felt it, and as I sank into that kiss with her, she became pure heaven against my lips in a world where everything else had always felt like hell.

Chapter38

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