As simple and perhaps small-talkish as that question was, no one had ever asked me such a question before.
Apparently, there were a lot of questions I had never gotten asked.
Apparently, there were a lot of things no one had ever done for me.
“Difficult,” I said with a smirk. “There’s no escaping attention. There’s no focusing on anything else when you’re the only child. At its best, you feel so loved. At its worst, it’s suffocating and an absolute nightmare.”
“And how was that for your childhood?”
I felt so uncomfortable getting these questions, but I recognized Cole wasn’t asking with malicious intent.
“For the first several years, I’d say it was fine, my mother was great,” I said. “But then she died. And after that... my father just... I don’t know. If I am being nice, he feared losing me too. But honestly, I’d say he just became an asshole and never let me have freedom.”
I waited for Cole to make an off-the-cuff remark about my father, one perhaps justified for all he had done to Cole and his bikers. But it never came.
He just... listened.
No one listened like Cole did.
And yet, if he could, he’d kill Dad without blinking.
“Why are you listening to me?” I said. “You should hate me.”
“I should?” he said sincerely.
“I’m the daughter of Lex Sartor. I’ve heard you call him Lucius. Is that not enough for you to not listen to me?”
Cole shook his head.
“You are the daughter of that man. You are not that man. You are a woman who has her own opinions, her own values, and her own beliefs and ambitions. You wouldn’t have run away just to set us up somehow, and even if you had, I would have picked up on it. I don’t hate you. In fact, truth be told, I kind of like you.”
If I had the maturity and sophistication of a twelve-year-old, that was becoming doubly true as the warm glow from my stomach became so powerful, I could barely breathe. What was this feeling? This feeling of... liking him?
I could admit that. I actually could.
“I can’t believe... I can’t believe you’d listen to me like this,” I said. “I feel... you make me feel safe, Cole.”
Cole smiled and leaned forward on the couch, coming within just a foot of me. Oh, that warm glow had turned into something like a burning hot ember within the depths of my stomach. I think my body actually started to shake.
“I still don’t... it still doesn’t... my father…”
“Lilly.”
He said my name gently but firmly; with kindness but authority; with tenderness but assertiveness. The mere mention of my name had frozen me, prevented me from shaking, but also locked me into place, free to let Cole do as he wished.
He leaned forward some more. There was no resistance. I didn’t want to resist. I wanted to let whatever happened…
Cole’s lips came within inches of mine. His eyes closed. Mine remained open longer, but just seconds before he made contact, I closed mine.
And then he kissed me.
Cole Carter, President of the Gray Reapers, one of the arch enemies of my father, had just kissed me.
And I liked it.
I really, really liked it. I—
And then he pulled back.
