He's So Fine (20 page)

And with that sage advice, she gave him one last teacher-to-errant-pupil look and then turned and walked inside her gallery.

Leaving him standing there wondering,
What the fuck?
Shaking his head, he headed back to his place, where he showered and got into his truck.

He needed to get the hell out of the Twilight Zone.

He needed answers.

And he wasn’t going to find them on the “World Wide Web,” either.

C
ole headed south. It was four hours to Salem, Oregon, but that suited him just fine. He needed to think.

Halfway there, the weather turned to shit as promised. According to the insanely cheerful weatherman on the radio, Cole was heading directly into a nasty, temperamental weather system that was sporting for a fight.

That suited him, too.

Dark, tumultuous clouds were churning the sky as he parked outside the address he’d used Google Maps to find. He took in the house.

Susan’s house.

It was a small blue-and-white Craftsman-style. The yard was neat and trimmed, matching the rest of the street. There were oak trees lining the sidewalk and bikes and toys in the yards, with inexpensive cars that suggested a young but hardworking neighborhood.

There was lace hanging in the windows, a stroller on the front step, and a swing hanging from the tree in her yard.

Cole closed his eyes, let out a long, ragged breath, and thunked his head on the steering wheel a few times.

“Gonna knock something loose in there.”

Cole turned to the familiar female voice.

Susan, standing just outside his truck, gave him a small smile as he cursed. “Hey,” she said.

She looked the same, and the two years fell away. Willowy, serene, her pretty hazel eyes warm.

“You’re a surprise,” she said, and opened his truck door. She got a look at his expression. “Oh,” she said. “Were you planning on just sitting here and staring at my house, then?”

He gave her a rueful smile. “Actually, I hadn’t decided yet.”

“Fair enough.” She leaned against the truck and studied the sky.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Waiting for you to decide.”

“Shit.” He got out of the truck and leaned against it next to her. He could see that she was holding a baby monitor and he had to laugh. “I have no idea why I’m here.”

“I do.”

When he met her gaze, she gave him a small smile.

“Shit,” he said again. “Who called you, Tanner or Sam?”

“Both. They tracked you on your Find Your Friends app and figured out where you were headed.”

“Christ, it’s like they’ve joined Lucille’s geriatric gang,” he muttered.

She lifted the small monitor. “Listen, the baby’s still sleeping, but I’d really rather be inside where I can be closer. Coming with?”

“Yeah.” What the hell. He wanted answers, and she had them. “Sure.”

They sat in her small but cozy kitchen while she poured some coffee and he tried not to stare at the wedding ring blinding him from her finger.

She set a mug down in front of him, ruffled his hair like she always used to do, and sat across from him. She held out her hand with the ring and they both stared at it. “A year,” she said.

“I didn’t ask.”

“You wanted to,” she said. “The baby’s two months old.” She smiled with so much love it made his heart squeeze. “Sierra’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“So you’re happy,” he said.

“Very.” She paused, studying him. “And you want to know how I possibly can be.”

He blew out a breath. “I’m not judging.”

“Yes, you are. And that’s okay, I get it. I told you I loved you. And while I loved you I fell in love with another man.”

“My best friend.”

“Yes,” she said, voice even, only her eyes revealing a past pain. “And now, two years later, I’m in love again. When the real thing comes along, there’s nothing like it. And,” she said, “you don’t, or can’t, understand.”

“I don’t,” he said honestly. “I want to, but I don’t.”

“Some people have to learn how to love by going through it multiple times. That was me.” She paused. “And some people love so completely with their entire heart, every single time.”

He closed his eyes. “Me.”

“You,” she said softly. “Why are you here, Cole?”

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “There’s a woman.”

She nodded. “And you…aren’t sure?”

No, he was sure. Or he had been. Now he had no clue.

Susan drew a breath and then spoke carefully. “I know you’re angry at me about my feelings for Gil. You’ve got a right to be. But Cole, don’t be angry at Sam and Tanner. It wasn’t their doing. And it wasn’t their place to tell you about it, either.”

“No, it was yours,” he said. “Yours and Gil’s.”

“Yes,” she agreed easily. “It was. And now I’m going to say something really important to you, so I need you to hear me.” She reached across the table and squeezed his fingers until he met her gaze. “And I need you to believe me.”

“Just say it.”

“At the funeral, when my feelings for Gil came out, you left. You left and you wouldn’t speak to me about any of it.”

“You broke up with me right then and there,” he reminded her. “While I was spinning and heartsick. Can you blame me?”

“Yes,” she said. “Because there were things you needed to know.” She drew a deep breath. “Gil and I—”

He closed his eyes. “Susan, don’t—”

“—never slept together.”

He opened his eyes. “What?”

“What was between us was never acted on, Cole. Gil didn’t want to be that guy,” she said quietly. “He refused to be that guy.” She hesitated. “I’m not saying that we were innocent, because we weren’t. After we realized our feelings, we tried to avoid each other for months, couldn’t even look at each other, but eventually we couldn’t do it anymore. It was wrong, it wasn’t planned, it wasn’t fun, and we never felt good about it. We fought it.”

“Out of guilt,” Cole said.

“Out of respect and love for you,” she said. “I’ve always hoped you would forgive me. But honestly, Cole? That’s your choice, not mine. And as it’s out of my control, I’ve let go of it.”

He had to be impressed by that, and how she’d gone on with her life. “I just don’t get it,” he said. “I can fix just about anything—except myself and my own relationships.”

“Not true,” she said. “You’ve got some of the best relationships of anyone I know. You’ve got Sam and Tanner, who would lay down their lives for you. Your sisters, who worship the ground you walk on. Your mom, who can and does depend so much on you. And last, but so definitely not least, Gil. I know you feel betrayed by him, and by, well, everyone else. But whatever your feelings are on how we handled things, Cole, please don’t let it ruin the relationship you and Gil had. Or what you and Sam and Tanner have.”

“But they knew,” he said. “They knew and didn’t tell me. I don’t know how to get past that.”

“Cole,” she said slowly, gently, “everyone knew. It wasn’t that hard to see. Everyone saw it except you.”

He stared at her. “That…can’t be true.”

She let out a long breath, and he saw it in her eyes. Well, damn. Olivia wasn’t the only one who could create a fiction all around her. Apparently he was good at it as well.

“I know there’s someone new,” she said. “And I know she wasn’t completely honest with you about her past.”

“Seriously,” he muttered. “Going to kill Tanner and Sam.”

“Just don’t judge her from my actions,” Susan said.

He shook his head. He wasn’t sure how to do anything but.

“What she did probably had nothing to do with you, Cole. Do you get what I’m saying? She probably didn’t mean to hurt you, but sometimes shit happens.”

“That’s it?” he asked in disbelief. “That’s your big piece of advice—shit happens?”

“We’re all different,” she said. “We’re not all good, or all bad for that matter. The world isn’t black or white; you know that. Everyone’s their own complicated puzzle, with a bunch of mismatched pieces. You put the pieces together the best you can and accept the flaws. Even learn to love the flaws.”

“Easier said than done,” he said.

“I know,” she said, smiling when he swore. “You can be a little…rigid and unbending once you get an idea in your head of what you expect from a person.”

“I always thought I was so easygoing.”

She laughed, which he didn’t give a lot of thought to as they said their good-byes and he made his way back to his truck.

Bullshit he was rigid and unbending.

Right?

Okay, so he hadn’t exactly been a good listener when Olivia had tried to talk to him, but he’d been…

An ass.

A rigid, unbending ass.

O
livia called the TV Land producer. “I’m in.”

“Making my day, sweetcheeks.”

“On one condition,” she said. “Well, make it two.”

“Name ’em,” he said without hesitation.

“Call me sweetcheeks again, and I kick
you
in your sweet cheeks. And two, you film my part of the retro special here in Lucky Harbor.”

“You don’t want to come to the studio? We were going to re-create the set of
Not Again, Hailey!
for you.”

“No.” She shuddered. God, no. “I want to do it here, where my life is now. Just a quick interview, and if you need an audience, we’ll use locals.” She wasn’t hiding here in Lucky Harbor, she was living the way she wanted to. No shame in that. Time to prove it to both herself and her world. “In my shop.”

“Done,” he said. “People will love the current look-see into your life. Can you do something wild and crazy to help ratings?”

“No! And I want to do this in the next few days.” She wanted this over with. An incoming call beeped. She looked at her screen.

Cole.

Surprise, anxiety, and hope hit her. Along with a good amount of anger. God, she was mad at herself, but she was mad at him, too. “I have to go,” she said.

“Just hold on a second. I’m working my mind around trying to get up there that fast,” he said. “I don’t know.”

“Take it or leave it; I have another call.”

“Jesus, you’re as difficult as they say.”

“Yeah, I am. You’ve been in a hurry for this for a long time,” she said. “And now I’m in a hurry to be done.”

“Killing me, Sharlyn.”

“Olivia,” she said. “My name’s Olivia. Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

God help her, but it was done. “Fine. Gotta go.” She clicked over to Cole, but he was gone.

About an hour into Cole’s return trip to Lucky Harbor, it began to rain. It came down in long, steady slashes that made seeing out the windshield a challenge.

This didn’t bother him any. Hell, he could remember being five years old and sitting on his dad’s lap in the family truck, hands on the wheel, steering while his dad worked the accelerator and brake.

And then being ten and driving his dad’s truck better than any of his sisters. Or his dad, for that matter. The old man had gotten a big kick out of that, and had let Cole drive on the back roads whenever they were out there together.

By the time Cole had turned fifteen, he could drive anything, with wheels or without. Hell, he could’ve parked a semi in an asscrack. Backward.

He’d been given free rein with the family boat two years before he was legal, and that had cemented his love for all things with an engine.

His mom had worried that they’d bred a daredevil, but Cole had never felt compelled to be stupid.

Just fast. Smart.

And good.

He was still those things, or so he liked to believe. On and off the road. And on and off the water.

But as for real life?

Not so much, apparently.

In matters of the heart, for instance, he was slow as a fucking turtle in peanut butter.

And stupid to boot.

What was real?
he’d asked Olivia.
Any of it?

She’d actually taken a step back, as if he’d physically slapped her.

All of it…

It’d certainly felt real. Before her, he’d been just floating through life. Living but not experiencing. And then she’d jumped off that dock and nearly drowned him, and he’d thought of little but her ever since.

He had people in his life, good people, and he’d always been loved, accepted. Wanted.

She hadn’t been so lucky.

And yet she instinctively knew how to love, how to give back, and in fact, she was better at it than he was. She’d jumped into the water after a perfect stranger to try to help. She’d given a piece of her past so a little girl in need could have the costume she wanted for Halloween. She’d braved his entire family with a smile and no visible fear—and only now was he realizing just how hard that must have been for her.

Had he accused her of acting her way through life? Jesus, what a complete idiot he was. Her emotions were always there for him to see, whether she was facing him down, laughing with him, or simply making him ache like a son of a bitch as she lay beneath him by moonlight, rocking up into him, eyes locked on his, hiding none of her feelings…

We all create a fiction
.

Yeah, she’d been as honest with him as she could. He knew that now.

Could he say the same? Had he given her everything he had or held back out of his own damn fears?

When the real thing comes along, there’s nothing like it
.

Until recently, he wouldn’t have recognized the real thing if it’d hit him in the face.

Or jumped onto his head in the water…

But he knew it now. The real thing was back in Lucky Harbor, and he’d let it go.

Let her go.

Two hours into the drive, the rain turned to sleet. And then thirty minutes later, snow. Visibility went down to zip. Cole shifted into four-wheel drive and slowed accordingly to meet the road conditions.

He was one of the lonely few in that regard. Over the next five minutes he watched cars playing Slip ’N Slide across the road.

Damn. He knew what came next, and sure enough, not ten minutes later—during which time he’d gone a whopping half a mile—Oregon Department of Transportation shut the highway down.

He exited into no-man’s-land and found a tiny hole-in-the-wall inn on a stretch of highway across the street from a McDonald’s. No WiFi. The bathroom sink dripped in an uneven rhythm that made him want to crawl beneath it and fix it. The toilet ran. The bedside lamp kept flickering. And there was a low-level hum coming out of the smoke alarm that made him wish for a BB gun to shoot the fucker.

Or himself.

With nothing else to do, he lay in bed and stared at the lights from the McDonald’s arches dancing across the ceiling.

It was six thirty at night, and he was alone with his own stupidity. He played the images on repeat through his mind. Like walking away from Tanner and Sam in anger…The three of them had fought plenty over the years, sometimes quietly, sometimes not so much, and yet they’d never stayed mad. They threw words, and occasionally a shove or two, and they got over it.

No one had ever walked away.

He regretted doing that, hugely.

Drip, drip, drip.

The bathroom sink was going to give him an embolism. That is, if the flickering light of the lamp didn’t give him an aneurism first…

Shit. He rolled out of the bed, pulled a few tools from his cargo pants, and took the lamp apart.

And then put it back together.

And then, because he’d lost all self-control, he fixed the bathroom sink.

He was looking around for something else to fix—or toss through the window—when the power went out. On the bright side, he no longer had to worry about the lamp. And hey, a side benefit—no more slashing yellow light from the McDonald’s across the way, either.

Six forty-five.

He had two bars of battery left on his phone. Nope, make that one bar. Since he was going to die in this godforsaken hellhole, he blew through some time checking email. His mom wanted to get a Christmas list together early this year because she liked to shop on the Internet. Cindy’s laptop was still not working. Sam wanted to know if Cole was over himself yet.

Tanner hadn’t been so politically correct.
You’re an asshole
was all his email said.

Right. He’d just make a note of that.

There in the dark, he began a fun little game called Torture Yourself by Replaying Your Most Idiotic Moments.

Such as acting like a first-class asshole with Tanner and Sam.

Such as acting like a first-class asshole with Olivia.

And then he pictured Lucille, standing out there by her mailbox in her bright red lipstick and rheumy blue eyes, suggesting he get on the Internet.

He looked at his phone and decided what the hell. Why not waste his last bar doing something productive?

He looked up
Not Again, Hailey!

He vaguely remembered the show, though he’d never seen it. He hit Wikipedia first. Holy shit, Wikipedia was a veritable cornucopia of…shit. The pictures and YouTube clips he found numbered in the tens of thousands, and he just started at the beginning, working his way through some of the interviews and clips of the cast and crew.

As he flipped through hundreds of pics and articles, watching clips of Olivia singing and dancing and acting her little heart out, he got grim, and more grim.

She’d been plucked out of obscurity by a pushy stage mom. She’d carried an entire show from the age of seven until she’d hit sixteen. With that birthday had come a maturity that could no longer be hidden. And then it’d come to an end. Everything and everyone she’d known had scattered.

She hadn’t handled it like an adult, but she hadn’t been an adult. And ouch on the DUI, but he forced himself to keep watching and reading. It was like a train wreck, and he couldn’t look away. In the pictures and clips from after the show had ended, her smile was all wrong.

No one had seemed to notice. How had no one noticed? She’d had all those people around, but they’d been looking out for numero uno—themselves. Who’d had her back? Who’d protected her?

She’d been forced to do that herself, and she had—by burying her past. Her right, he realized.

He wished he could kick his own ass.

He tried calling her again, and just as it rang once, his phone shut off and went dead as a doornail, whatever the fuck that meant. Dead as he’d felt after Gil’s death, after his dad’s death…

But there was something that was no longer dead.

His heart.

And he knew who to thank for that. The person he’d walked away from, and God, he couldn’t believe he’d done that to her, when all her life, people had walked away from her.

He didn’t deserve a second chance with her, he knew this, but he was going to ask for one anyway, and spend the rest of his life trying to make it up to her.