She nodded. “Good choice.”
I winked at her. “I think so.”
I didn’t look at Beau. I couldn’t.
Clara and I were cuddled on the sofa. Brownies were cooling—her eyes repeatedly darted to the timer on my phone which was counting down how long we had until they were cool enough to eat.
My hangover was gone.
Beau was in his office.
I felt safe. Secure. The weight of this little child against me, the smell of brownies in a home that wasn’t mine, was enough to trick me into a false sense of security.
Then there was a knock at the door.
“I’ll get it,” I told Clara. “You keep watch on the timer.”
I figured the person at the door would be Elliot, Calliope, or Clara’s grandfather. Or any of the Jupiter crew who had stopped by here and there since the birthday party.
Someone for Clara or Beau.
I did not expect a six-foot man with perfectly styled blond hair and a tan too glowy to be real. He was wearing a tailored pair of slacks and a fisherman’s sweater that molded to his broad shoulders.
I squinted. The attractive, well-dressed man was remarkably familiar. “Cole?”
“Yes, bitch. Take me in. In the flesh.” He did a twirl, showcasing more of what had to be an expensive outfit. He was muscular, much glossier than the last time I saw him, but still Cole. Even when he barely had enough to eat, even when he didn’t have money for clothes, he always managed to look glamorous.
Now he looked like he had more than enough to eat—and by the look of his biceps, I guessed it was protein-based.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him, confused, shocked, and pleased to see my childhood friend.
I’d been surrounded by strangers for so long. People who were perfectly nice, but they were strangers. They were people I felt the need to hide my past from. I didn’t need to hide from Cole. He’d seen all of it.
It was a relief to be standing in front of someone who saw me for what I was.
His perfectly groomed brows crumpled. “You haven’t been returning my calls, and I needed a trip to the ocean. And a wellness check.” His eyes ran over me.
I shifted under his gaze. I was wearing gray sweats and a faded tee, my hair piled on top of my head. Usually, I wasn’t this casual when I was working, but I’d been unable to put thought into an outfit. Luckily, Beau hadn’t commented on my overly casual attire.
Of course, that’s when my glitzy, perpetually stylish friend turned up unannounced. Except he didn’t comment on my outfit, as he was accustomed to doing whenever we were together. He’d always shake his head at my lack of interest in fashion, adjusting things here and there to make me look better.
“You still have both your hands,” he said bizarrely.
I winced, looking down at my palms. “What?”
“Your hands,” he repeated. “You still have them. So you can’t say you lost them in an unfortunate smelting accident, an acceptable reason as to why you couldn’t call me.”
The back of my neck heated in shame. “Cole?—”
He tapped his index finger against his chin. “Though they have a voice activation thing now, so even without hands, you could’ve powered on your phone. And you still have your voice, which means there is no tangible excuse for you to ditch me after finally leaving your loser husband and skipping town.” He narrowed his eyes. “I forgave you for that because I know Waylon is an asshole who would’ve made your life hell, and you needed distance. I accepted your bullshit texts and excuses. But then a year passes, and my best friend has essentially ghosted me like I was a blind date who used a ten-year-old picture in their profile pic.”
His voice was low, lyrical, calm as it always had been, but I knew Cole well enough to hear the anger in his tone. To feel the hurt underneath the anger.
I deserved it. All of the anger and hurt. I deserved to feel guilty and ashamed for cutting my friend out, although I was surprised. To see him here. He lived in New York. Had a whole new life, new friends. I knew this because I’d stalked his social media. I did that to make myself feel better for ignoring him. The big life he was living surely meant that he forgot his unfashionable, damaged childhood friend.
“Then I get a drunk text. I’m assuming it was drunk, given the amount of spelling mistakes and how forthright it was,” he continued. “A crash course in everything that’s been going on with you, otherwise known as a cry for help.”
My breath caught as I vaguely remembered my fingers flying rapidly over my phone, spewing out every detail of the past few months with Beau, desperate to share it with someone.
