“I don’t know, I just didn’t take you for a nineties soft rock kind of guy.” I let him tug me close and put my hands on either side of his neck, letting my fingers trace the line of hair behind his head. The skin there was warm and soft, and I leaned in to get an extra deep sniff of his scent as the words to the song began.
“I think you’ll find, babygirl, that I am a man of many interests and talents.” Cobb’s words were murmured in my ear, and my whole body shivered at his use of a new nickname.
Leaning back in surprise, I took another long look at the man in front of me. I was half-convinced that he had been kidnapped and replaced by someone else entirely. “Who are you, and what have you done with my grumpy FBI agent?”
I could feel the chuckle in his throat as it vibrated out of him, “Same old me. Wait—scratch that—new and improved me. Old me would have already run screaming from this house since it reeks of commitment.”
I snorted, “I take it that you and Theo finally made up?” I knew that the rest of Pack Simmons had probably been listening to our conversation last night, and judging by the effortless smile on Cobb’s face, I knew that I was correct in my assumption. Hey, at least some good had come from the absolute nightmare that was the past twenty-four hours.
“I’m really happy for you, Cobb, for both of you.” The smile I returned was genuine. I’d watched the two of them pine over each other for the past few weeks, and it had been painful to watch. Even Matteo had been muttering to himself for the last week about locking them in a room together so that they could sort out all of their shit. Thankfully, the closet plan was not required because it looked like Cobb and Theo worked it out all by themselves.
As we continued to sway, my shoulders still felt completely stiff, we danced through the pile of flour on the ground and around the island, trailing powdery, white footprints in our wake.
“Thank you,” Cobb murmured when he finally answered my congratulations. He looked a bit shy, and I watched the top of his cheeks darken as he thought about the blue-eyed alpha. Honestly? I felt exactly the same way about him. Theo Nilsson was enough to make anyone swoon, girls, guys, or otherwise.
Cobb’s blush faded as he seemed to realize that I was still standing stiffly in his arms. “You need to relax, Tibby, or the dance therapy won’t do you any good.” His hands, which had been resting on the sides of my hips, smoothed up my back and began to knead at the stiffness there, as if his warm hands could force me to relax.
“Dance therapy?” I snorted, “You know, in the almost ten years of seeing my therapist, I don’t think he ever mentioned that kind of therapy.” I couldn’t help but tease.
“I guess that would make sense,” Cobb played along. “After all, he didn’t attend the Loretta Collins school of dance psychology.”
“Oh, I see, that would make sense then.” I laughed, surprised that it came so easily after how I’d been feeling all morning. “I take it you were a student at this school then?”
“You know it. In fact, I was the valedictorian of the whole damn place. Whenever I came home in a negative or pissy mood my grandma wouldn’t let me go upstairs. She would put her finger in my face and say: ‘little boy, you are going to come over here and dance with me until you don’t have such a nasty look on your face anymore’.”
The last strains of the song ended, and when the next song played, gone were the nineties soft rock. They were quickly replaced by the crooning voices of the Righteous Brothers’Unchained Melody.
I loved this song. One of my only good memories of my mom was dancing on top of her feet when I was three or four, in our grimy little kitchen in Los Angeles. I finally felt my body begin to relax against Cobb’s, the muscles in my back and neck, which had been twisted up with tension, finally started to loosen as we swayed quietly together. Then, much to my surprise, Cobb began to sing along to the music. His voice was smooth and rich, like many of the singers who sang about love in the fifties and sixties, it was like a mix between Frank Sinatra and Andy Williams.
“Everytime you sing you surprise me!” I gasped with delight as he sang the chorus of the song. I’d only ever heard him sing to Marvin Gaye, and when he’d done that his voice had been high and bright with a clean vibrato. The fact that he was so good at impersonating famous singers, and doing it so well, impressed the hell out of me.
“I sang in the choir at my grandma’s church every Sunday from five years old, up until I graduated high school.” Cobb said before continuing to sing the song to me, his eyes sparkling with pleasure as he watched my probably hilarious expressions while I listened. I was completely blown away by Jacob Collins, and it probably showed clearly on my face.
As the song ended and the speaker turned off with a chime, Cobb and I continued to sway in the silent kitchen. At this point, we’d spread the flour all over and, as we stepped from left to right, the white powder puffed up around our feet.
Moving my hands from around Cobb’s neck, I slid my arms under his and hugged him close, laying my head on his chest so that I could hear his heartbeat against my ear as we finally came to a stop. All day, I had been trying anything and everything to keep myself busy, and keep my dark thoughts at bay. But this was the first time since I had woken up alone in my nest this morning that all of the crazy thoughts finally just...stopped.
“Thank you for that,” I murmured into Cobb’s shirt, inhaling his calming scent deeply into my lungs and letting it work out the last bits of tension in my back and shoulders.
“Anytime, babygirl.” He pressed his lips to the crown of my head, and I shivered again at the new nickname. It would take some getting used to, and I really hoped that I would be around long enough to do so. “Actually, I was just coming to find you before you started your flour-geddon.”
Cobb’s grin was playful, and I whacked his back with my free hand, not ready to let go of him yet. Cobb reached over to the nearby counter and picked up a manila file folder than I hadn’t noticed before. He must have brought it in with him when he came to check on me earlier.
Cobb’s expression lost its boyish happiness for a moment as he held the folder out to me, it was sealed with a strip of red tape. “These are your sealed court documents and records. I had them resealed this morning after I kicked the ass of the man who sold your information to the press.”
I gripped the folder in my hands like it was a snake, ready to strike out and bite me at any moment. “Did you read it?” I asked, not that it mattered anymore at this point, they already knew more about my past with Hezekiah Jordan than they could ever want to know.
Cobb shook his head, “I don’t need anything from it. It’s yours now.”
Biting my lip, I looked down at the folder again, “But is it? This information in here is already out for the world to see. So, it’s not mine, not really.”
I started to move away, the pleasant, fuzzy feeling from before was gone now, and I needed to clean up the flour. Cobb was having none of that, however, and he tugged on my hand, pulling me until I was standing with my back to his front.
“Stop,” He murmured. “Don’t do that. Don’t let yourself fall into that kind of shitty thinking.”
I turned my head so that I could look into his eyes again and let him see the anger that hadn’t quite fizzled out from earlier. “Why shouldn’t I? It’s not shitty thinking if it’s true.”
Strong hands gripped my hips and whipped me around, and now there was anger in Cobb’s dark eyes too as our formerly tender interaction turned blazing hot. “Those people on the TV don’t know shit about you, Tibby. Not a damn thing.”
