14. Dana

Chapter 14

Dana

T he silence was so deafening I wondered if Cole could hear my racing heart from across the table. It was quiet enough to hear a fucking pin drop, and I was positive the thumping in my chest was far louder than that.

I swear I could actually feel the stress running through my veins. Say something, I screamed at myself. The silence only made it worse, solidifying the answer before I could. There wasn't the option to say no. Any normal person without a child would have already explained it away, not stare at him like a deer caught in the headlights.

Making a mental note to berate Hunter later, I cleared my far too tight throat. "Yes," I said. "My sister's watching him today."

Cole's gaze dropped back to the photo and studied it for a moment longer before seeming to nod, almost to himself. My stomach churned, full of Hunter's gumbo and bile. Please don't put the pieces together. Please. He couldn't find out like this. Even with Lottie and Hunter by my side for damage control, the idea of him learning that Drew was his without me actually telling him felt like hell. I should have told him. I should have?—

"He's cute," Cole said, a half-assed, forced smile tugging his lips back.

"Thanks," I breathed.

"You know, Brody has started doing this thing lately where he screams at the top of his lungs because he thinks it's funny," Lottie offered. I appreciated her attempt to shift the conversation, but even I could tell there was a stiffness to her, a lurking unease at this unspoken-until-now secret. Cole had to have at least figured out that he was the only one in the room left out of this knowledge.

"He does it in the middle of the night sometimes," Hunter added. He chuckled and it sounded so forced. "Just one short screech and then a fit of giggles. It's kind of terrifying."

Cole's eyes met mine again briefly before abandoning me. "That sounds horrible," he said, huffing a light laugh as he slowly, agonizingly, turned the page to the next set of photographs.

"Dana, can you help me clean up?" Lottie asked. In her eyes, I could see a million apologies sparkling back at me, as well as an invitation.

"Of course."

We gathered the dishes strewn across the table as quietly as we could to not wake Brody as the boys idly talked about Hunter's company. A heaviness hung as I slipped my hand in front of Cole to take his plate and bowl, a brief second of eye contact making my stomach lurch. He had to be at least a little confused, and confusion meant he was thinking about it, and thinking about it would inevitably lend itself to figuring it out.

I wanted to vomit.

"I'm sorry," Lottie said, her voice so quiet I could barely hear her over the running water of the sink. She rinsed each dish as I handed them to her before putting them on the rack in the dishwasher. "I've made so many of those stupid scrapbooks, I didn't even think for a second it would be the one with that photo in it."

I watched as Cole slowly started to relax in his seat across the room. He laughed at something Hunter said, his tone more animated now. "Maybe I should just tell him," I sighed.

"Is that what you want to do? Or is it because you feel like you have to?"

"I don't know. Both?"

Lottie's lips pressed into a thin line as she watched me. "I'll support you either way. You know that."

"I just… I don't know, Lots." I passed her another plate, staring at the water as it dripped off the edge of it. "A part of me wants to. But the other part of me—the sane part of me—remembers what happened a year ago. And the rumors I keep hearing at work?—"

"What rumors?" She instantly cut me off.

"That he's an alcoholic," I said. "It makes sense after last year. I just don't know if I can have that around Drew, not after the shit I went through growing up."

Lottie was one of the few people I'd allowed myself to open up to fully about what happened in my childhood. We'd shared a room in Hawaii during the few months we'd worked there on a ranch, and not having cell service or Wi-Fi in the apartment had meant we'd had to actually talk to one another.

"Some people say he was in rehab, others are saying he was in Vegas on a binge for months on end," I told her. "Either way, I know how that ends."

Lottie avoided looking at me. She took the dishes quietly, reaching out blindly, and something in my gut told me she knew something.

"Lottie," I deadpanned.

"What?"

"What do you know?"

She took a deep breath and met my gaze. There was a sadness in her eyes, a glistening that confirmed for me that she knew things I didn't. "It's not my place?—"

An ear-piercing shriek rippled from the bassinet next to Hunter's chair, followed by a fit of giggles. Hunter reached in and plucked out a wide-awake Brody, not a hint of glee on his face, and looked across the room at us. "Told you he likes to randomly scream."

"He's probably hungry," Lottie said. She wiped her hands on a dishtowel and shut off the water, abandoning the conversation, and walked across the room to snatch her little boy from her husband. "If your mom fed him at the right time, then he's not eaten for hours."

"We should probably head off, anyway," Cole added, pushing his chair back with a deafening screech of wood-on-wood. He glanced back at me as he stood. "If you're okay with that, I mean."

"Uh, yeah, sure." I shoved off from where I was leaning against the counter. That awkward unease was back between the four of us, too many unspoken words to count hanging in the air.

Lottie grabbed a jar of something small and red from the cabinet. "Honestly, that's probably in your best interest. He's not very cute when he eats and this shit gets everywhere," she laughed, pulling out the high chair from the corner with her foot and plopping Brody down into it. Another little scream, another fit of giggles. "Plus, I think he's running out of good-behavior-energy."

Cole and I quickly gathered our things and slid on our muddied boots, a silence between us that felt far too charged for my liking. I wished I hadn't agreed to ride with him, at least then I wouldn't have to sit in the car next to him on the way back into town. That gave him far too much time and opportunity to ask me questions.

We said our brief goodbyes, and I kissed Brody on the top of his head just seconds before the jar of food was opened. Quick hugs were dispersed filled with silent apologies from both Hunter and Lottie. I wasn't mad at either of them, I was mad at myself.

I still wasn't entirely sure what had possessed Cole to drive his Mercedes-Maybach down Lottie's dirt road. Surely, he had something less fancy, something that he wouldn't mind getting covered in mud and grass, but he didn't seem to care that the rims and lower end of the shiny black car was slick with dirt. He hit a button on his key fob and the car beeped twice then unlocked. All I could do was stare at the handle of the passenger side door, worried I'd ruin the leather interior with my boots.

"It's fine," he said, and for a split second, I wondered if he could read my mind. I'd be seven levels of fucked if he could. "I'll get it detailed tomorrow."

Hesitantly, I slid into the passenger seat, careful to keep my boots outside of the car. Knocking my feet together, I tried to get as much dirt as I could off the soles, but as I finally brought them into the car, I couldn't help but notice that Cole hadn't even tried to clean his off before sitting down. The footwell on his side was covered in mud.

We didn't say a word as he turned the car around and started the long drive back down Lottie's dirt road. With the insane suspension on his car, we barely felt any bumps, but an uncomfortableness still hung between us, blaring at us from all angles.

I had to say something, anything. If I didn't, I knew in my gut he'd bring it up first.

"So the new summer range," I offered. I tugged at the seatbelt across my chest, loping it under my breast to give me a little more breathing room—it felt like there wasn't enough oxygen in the fucking car. "I heard you and Hunter talking about it."

"Dana," he sighed.

"You said something about a non-alcoholic range?" I added. Please take the fucking bait.

He went quiet for a minute, his eyes focused on the road in front of him. "Yeah, we've only got one that's zero percent at the moment, and to be honest, it tastes like shit."

I let out a sigh of relief. "Yeah, it does."

He chuckled lightly, a little less stiffly than he did back at Lottie's. "I want to make a good one. One that people will actively reach for instead of Bud Light zero, or the Peroni zero, or any other zero, for that matter."

"That's fair," I said. "Probably better for you to drink that other than the shit you used to drink."

He hit his brakes, stopping far more violently than a normal person at a red light. Why the fuck did you say that?

Silence hung over us for a moment, charged and angry, but when he finally spoke, it was as if the question hadn't even phased him. "I like what I drink. I'm not picky, but I prefer shit that tastes good instead of having to mask it with juices and syrups. I wouldn't say the non-alcoholic option would be better for me."

I stared at him. Openly. "You wouldn't get violently drunk on non-alcoholic beer," I retorted, the words falling from my lips before I could even process them.

"I wouldn't get violently drunk anyway," he said. The words were spoken so fucking casually that I thought I'd misunderstood.

"What?" I blurted, turning in my seat and wincing from the seat belt digging into my rib cage. The light turned green and he took off, the car revving in anger as he picked up speed far more quickly than necessary. "You can't apologize for what happened last year and then try to say that you didn't get insanely drunk. You were drinking fistfuls at seven in the morning?—"

"Yeah, because my friends had just gotten married and I wanted to keep celebrating into the next day," he interrupted, glancing at me briefly with a warning in his eyes. "I wasn't proud of that. But you don't have to make it sound like I did that all the time."

I stared at him in disbelief, my lips parted, my nostrils flaring. Why was he avoiding the obvious? Or worse, was he being truthful? Was that genuinely just a one-time thing that got out of control, and all the talk about him being an alcoholic was completely unfounded?

"Why did you stop drinking then?" I asked, deciding that confronting him head-on was the best solution.

Another glance, another warning. "Who said I stopped?"

"Like, half the girls at work," I snapped. "They think you've either been in rehab or went on a binge in Vegas for six months."

His nose scrunched, a scoff echoing in the small space, but I caught how white his knuckles were as they gripped the steering wheel. "And you honestly believe there's truth in their gossip?"

I didn't know what to say. A part of me wanted to push him more, tell him how I'd heard story after story about how he'd shown up drunk to work on more than one occasion. Or the time he tried to lead a tour when he could barely walk. But there was a part of me that wanted to trust him, wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.

But I also knew how fucking good alcoholics were at hiding their addiction.

"Can you drop me off at Safeway?" I asked, killing the conversation. "I've got to pick up a few things then I can Uber home afterward."

He glanced at me again, that air of warning wiped away. "I'll just go with you."

————

"Since when is milk this expensive?"

I glared at him as I leaned over the handle of the cart. The casual conversations going on around us while we communicated in tight, irritated sentences was definitely odd. It felt like we were some old married couple that hated each other's guts, forced to work together on a grocery trip before spending the next week avoiding one another in our own house.

Either that or just two people who almost dated and had a baby together but one of them didn't know.

Guess which one?

"Do you not do your own shopping?" I grunted, plucking the gallon with the latest expiration date off the shelf and dropping it in the cart.

"Not really."

"Shocking," I mumbled. I glanced down at the list in my hand, filled with necessities, and knew damn well that this would leave me strapped for cash until the end of the month. Exhaling an annoyed sigh, I noticed him looking at it before pulling the front of the cart toward the meat section.

"Is all of that just for you?" he asked, glancing back at me warily before staring down at the selection of ground beef I had placed in the cart.

"No, my sister's staying with me at the moment."

"To watch your son?"

I swallowed. We hadn't brought him up until now. I wondered if that was on purpose, if he had planned to discuss it here, in public, where I couldn't openly berate him if he pissed me off. "Yes. To watch Drew."

His gaze lingered on the pack of ground beef. "That's his name?"

And there it was again, that feeling of wanting to hurl my guts all over the floor of Safeway. "Well, it's Andrew, but I call him Drew for short," I explained, my throat closing, forcing my voice to come out as a squeak.

"It's cute," he said as he pulled me and the cart toward the other end of the store.

To the fucking baby section.

He'd either read further down the list than I thought or decided to head there on his own. I wasn't sure but either way I felt unsettled, and the heat in my cheeks was nearly burning as we turned down the aisle.

"What do we need?" he asked, his voice a bit gruff as he met my stare over the cart.

We. I knew he didn't mean it like that, but god fucking dammit, the brief idea of my son having two parents made my chest ache. Clumsily, I unfolded the list again. "Two boxes of diapers," I said, pointing toward the massive boxes on the shelves.

"Size?"

"One in size two and one in size three."

"He's growing?"

"Well yeah, Cole, that's what babies do," I sighed, helping him load the boxes to the bottom of the cart. "He's almost grown out of size two, so I need to be prepared."

"Right, yeah, that makes sense."

"Can you grab a couple of boxes of baby wipes? Store brand is fine." I kicked the box of size three a little further back and grabbed for the list again. I couldn't remember if I'd put diaper cream on there, and for the life of me, I had no idea if I had any left at home.

A few packs of baby wipes landed in the cart, my attention barely picking it up.

"Can I get him this?"

I glanced up from the list. Cole stood with a box in his hands roughly the size of his torso. On the front of it was a baby about Drew's size, sitting on a play mat in front of a short tower with buttons covering the front. Music With Me, it said across the top, and the more I looked at the nautical-themed item, it looked like something he could press buttons on to make different sounds.

Then I glanced at the price tag on the shelf.

"Cole, that's a hundred and fifty bucks."

He shrugged. "So?"

He didn't wait until I'd said yes to find space for it in the cart. He took the time to move things out of the way gently, carefully shifting them so he didn't damage any items and slipped it into the empty space.

"Okay," I breathed.

I stared at the massive toy knowing damn well I wouldn't have been able to afford that on my own. I hoped he hadn't already put the pieces together and was buying it as a gesture of goodwill or an offering of a truce. I needed to tell him, needed to just spit the words out, but by the time they'd barely formed in my mind he spoke again.

"What's next on the list?"