Page 95

“Why did she marry you if she didn’t love you?”

“You’d have to ask her.”

“That’s not an answer.”

He sets his jaw. “Maybe she thought she did. Maybe I was… someone different.”

“What do you mean, different?”

Cole does pull away then, even as I try to stop him. He turns his back to me, shoulders stiff.

“I’m not… I can’t be on all the time. At least I couldn’t back then. I’d thought when I met Belle that finally, finally someone would see the real me.”

My heart aches for him. “Cole⁠—”

He whirls around to face me.

“Everyone puts on a mask, right?” he asks, voice strained and almost desperate. “But my father… he taught me to do it so well. So well that sometimes I don’t know where I end and it begins. But I thought… I thought she’d know.”

“Because you loved her.”

Cole freezes. Then nods, looking away.

“Cole, I⁠—”

I’m not sure what I’m going to say but it doesn’t matter because Cole interrupts me, pointing out the glass doors.

“Marcus is back.”

I breathe out a sigh of relief, taking a few steps back. Marcus comes in with the box and a bag on top of the box.

He drips on the floor as he walks by us, setting it down by the counter.

Marcus shakes off like a wet dog and it makes me laugh out loud.

He looks up at me, hair falling into his eyes, smiling slightly, and my heart skips a beat.

Oh, these men. My men.

“Thank God. I was starting to get worried,” I admit.

“Got a little hairy,” he admits.

Cole disappears from the room, down the hall, maybe to the restroom. Maybe just to get some air.

I watch him go with my lip caught between my teeth.

Marcus glances at the door and then back at me.

“Something wrong?”

I look at him. “Maybe. I asked him about Belle.”

Marcus whistles. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.”

Gabe walks back in from the hallway.