16. Dana

Chapter 16

Dana

P anic. Pure, raw panic coursed through me as I clutched my phone in my hand. Down the line, the sound of shattering glass made me jump from the bed.

Please. I'm sorry .

I'd never heard him sound so broken. " Where are you ?" I demanded, plucking Drew from his crib as he cooed playfully at me before pushing my way out the bedroom door.

Cole sniffled down the line, his breathing shaky. I stepped into the living room and placed Drew in his bassinet, nudging my sister to wake her up from where she slept on the couch.

"Vee," I whispered, angling the phone away from my mouth. Her eyes flickered open, widening the moment she saw the fear on my face. "Watch Drew. I need to go."

"O-okay," Vee said, scrambling until she was sitting up.

"Cole?" I pushed. Grabbing my keys from the hook beside the door, I yanked the front door open and raced down the front steps toward my Camry.

" Flagstaff Spirits ," he had answered, his voice shaking violently.

My heart dropped into the pit of my stomach. He'd lied to me. It was a problem.

But at that moment I didn't care.

"I'm on my way," I said. I ended the call and slid into the driver's seat, backing down my driveway far too fast. Flagstaff wasn't far from me at all, a five-minute drive at most.

————

The rain pelted me as I slammed my car door. Cole sat on the curb, his feet stretched out in front of him. His arms were wrapped around his middle, his jacket and jeans soaked. Behind him, near the front door of the liquor store, was a damp, brown paper bag with glass shards protruding from it.

Oh my god.

Darting across the parking lot I ran toward him, nearly tripping over the hump of the sidewalk to kneel down next to him.

"Cole," I rasped, gently touching the back of his head with my palm.

Slowly, he looked up at me, his eyes red and raw. I realized then that the quivering beneath my fingertips wasn't from the chill of the rain, it was from him. He was rocking himself back and forth and my chest ached for him. "I don't know what happened," he broke. He relinquished his grasp on himself only to push his hands through his hair instead. "Time kept fucking hopping and before I could stop it, I'd bought a bottle. I don't even remember doing it. It just happened, Dana, and I'm sorry I lied to you. I have a fucking problem."

"Hey, hey, it's okay," I insisted. I wrapped my fingers around his and pried them from his hair, replacing them with the softer touch of mine. "It's okay. Did you drink any?"

He shook his head. "I don't think so."

"Good. That's good," I said. "Deep breaths, Cole. You're okay."

"I lied to you," he gulped.

"I know."

"You came anyway," he whispered. A hand snuck around my waist and pulled me into him, tight and unwavering, and I couldn't have cared less that he was wet. The rain was picking up anyway and we'd both likely come out of this soaked to the bone. All I cared about was making sure he was okay. "Thank you."

I nodded into the crook of his neck and wrapped my arms around him, squeezing him back.

"You were right," he said. His fingers dug into my side, his grip almost bruising. "That night—last year—that was only the tip of the iceberg. I was fucked, baby. I couldn't stop. I spiraled further after that, got worse, drank myself into fucking oblivion every chance I had."

I swallowed and pulled back enough to look at him. The realization of his words slowly began to seep into me, creating a tidal wave inside that challenged the unwavering support I wanted to give him.

"The rumors are true. I was in rehab," he sniffled. His eyes met mine, striking and bloodshot. "I'm almost at eight months. Almost. I don't want to throw it away."

"I know you don't," I breathed. But worry reared its ugly head again, screaming at me to run away and never look back, to block him from my life in every way possible, take my son and go. He was like Mom, though Mom had never made it eight months. But I didn't want to leave him, not like this. "What can I do?"

"Stay," he croaked.

I shook my head. "I'm not going anywhere. What else?"

His eyes left mine, veering off to the broken bottle behind him. "Can you check the seal?"

I let out a shaky breath and nodded, pushing out of his grasp with relative ease. The paper bag fell apart the moment I touched it, waterlogged and fragile, and as I peeled back the layer that covered the top of the bottle, I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that the seal hadn't been broken. "You're good, Cole. You didn't open it."

"Oh, thank fuck." He laid back on the sidewalk, clutching the sides of his head again as he half-submerged himself in a puddle. "Thank fuck, thank fuck, thank fuck."

I kneeled down next to him again, taking his hand and forcing him to sit back up. "Do you have a sponsor?"

He nodded. "Yeah, calling her was the first thing I did," he sighed. "I thought it had helped. But then I ended up here."

Slowly, I interlaced my fingers with his. I could tell he needed the grounding comfort. "Okay. Good. You did all the right things."

He shook his head. "I haven't been to a meeting in days. I didn't do all the right things."

"We can find you a meeting," I offered. "If you think that will help, we'll do that. I'll take you."

His eyes met mine again. Every feature in his face that had been tense seconds ago released. "You'll do that?"

"If that's what you want."

"Please," he breathed, squeezing my hand so tight I thought it might break. "I don't want to go home and fuck up all over again."

————

With his hand still locked in mine in a convention center in downtown Denver, we listened as the others spoke. It was nearing midnight. I had no idea that AA meetings ran so late, but apparently they were available for people needing them at desperate hours. We'd had to drive almost an hour but I was happy to do that for him. With him.

Even though every second of it was breaking my heart.

He'd changed into a fresh set of clothes in my car after pulling out a gym bag from the trunk of his. I wasn't nearly as soaked as he was, but he'd offered me a fresh shirt and hoodie anyway. I glanced down at it as a man across from us spoke about his struggle after losing his wife, and remembered I still needed to give back the hoodie I'd stolen from him weeks ago.

It wasn't my first time at an AA meeting. I'd been once before during Mom's longest stint of sobriety when I was eighteen, when she'd made it a whole six months. We'd all gone in support of her but the next morning, the booze on her breath had stunk up the breakfast table.

"Do you want to share?" I whispered to Cole, careful to keep my voice low enough that it wouldn't disturb anyone else.

Cole shook his head. "No, just listen."

He squeezed my hand again, his thumb tracing the back of it. When I'd first heard about his alcoholism and put the pieces together, I wished I could have gone back and changed things. I didn't mean in the way of Drew, not in a million years, but if I could have had him with someone else…

But sitting there with him and knowing how hard he was trying, how much further he'd gotten than Mom, I was fighting it. I didn't want Drew to grow up with an alcoholic father in his life, but if Cole was genuinely making improvements and could be one of the few who could make it out the other side, who was I to demonize him? And if he struggled occasionally, did that make him a horrible person? Surely not. My gut instinct was to help him but I couldn't quite tell what my mind thought of him. But I knew how my heart felt. I knew that I cared about him no matter what—he was the father of my son.

A woman across the circle spoke about how she was almost eight months sober and I could feel Cole relax in his seat. Another person almost at the same milestone as him, struggling with the same issues, speaking her mind for him. "It's overwhelming," she sighed. "Sometimes I don't feel like I have control when the cravings hit. Shit happens and all I can do is hope for the best."

Cole squeezed my hand again, a silent me too.

————

"Tell me about him."

I cracked a grin as I shoveled a mouthful of pan-fried hash browns into my mouth. The saying was true, "You don't plan to go to Denny's. You end up at Denny's . " Either way, breakfast at half past midnight was a solid choice. "Drew?"

Cole nodded and sliced into his stack of chocolate-chip pancakes. "I want to know."

"Well, he's four months old," I began around a mouthful. "Almost five. He lost the last of the hair he was born with the other day, so he's looking a bit like a bald old man."

Cole chuckled and shoved a bite of pancakes into his mouth. It was the first real, happy sound he'd made in hours.

"He only babbles right now. I thought he said mama once but Vee said it sounded more like la-la so I'm not counting it."

"Is he a handful?" Cole asked. His foot tapped against mine and a little wave of fondness washed over me.

"A bit but for the most part, he's fairly good. He doesn't shriek for attention like Brody," I laughed. "He sleeps through the night about half the time. He's… he's great, honestly."

"Do you like being a mom?" Cole asked, his words a little hesitant as he watched me.

I leaned forward onto the table, resting my head in my hand. "Yeah," I grinned. "More than I thought I would. Though that answer could change once he starts teething."

He laughed and the weight I'd felt on my shoulders when all this began suddenly felt lighter.

————

His house loomed high above though I could only make out points of it with my headlights off. The drive back had taken us well into the morning hours—it was almost two o'clock—and I didn't feel comfortable leaving him back at the liquor store where he'd left his car.

My phone dinged in my bag and instinctively Cole reached down to grab it. He passed it to me, and my screen lit up with a text from Vee.

"He's finally asleep," I sighed, flicking the screen off and leaning my head back on the headrest.

"That's good." I turned my head on the cushion, looking across the center console at Cole. He'd calmed down so much since I'd met him at the liquor store. There seemed to be an ease now between us, something that felt far more like comfort instead of the underlying tension since he'd found out I had a kid.

"The last time you were here," Cole started, his hand creeping across the center console and coming to rest on my bare mid-thigh, "When you left, was it because of him?"

"In a roundabout way, yes." I shifted, turning onto my side. "I needed to pump but I'd left it in my car back at the restaurant."

"And you didn't want me to know that?"

"It wasn't that I didn't want you to know," I lied. Thinking on my feet, I threw out the one plausible thing I could come up with that wasn't I didn't want you to figure out he's your kid . "I just… I don't know. People get weird about having sex with a new mom, you know? They think things aren't quite right down there, or that it's like throwing a sausage down a hallway, and I didn't want you to get weirded out, I guess."

His bloodshot eyes softened. Gently, his hand tightened its grip on my thigh just a little more, and my thoughts turned somewhere much darker. "I wouldn't have been weirded out, Dana."

I wanted to believe that I did. But when it came with the possibility of him putting those goddamn pieces together, it was hard. The lie wasn't entirely a lie—there had been men I'd met since Drew had been born, and the moment a baby was brought up, it was as if I were spoiled goods. There was no telling if he wouldn't have been the same.

"Are you okay to be by yourself now?" I asked. The twisting in my gut had only amplified, and although I was happy to be able to talk about Drew and my life casually now, that stone still sat at the bottom of my stomach, constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. Part of me wanted to run for too many reasons, but the other wanted to stay as long as he needed me.

His hand tightened again on my thigh as he leaned a little closer. "Do you want me to be honest, or do you need to get home?"

My chest tightened, his face just inches from mine. I wrapped my fingers around the seatbelt, needing something, anything, for support. "Honest," I breathed.

The warmth of his breath ghosted my lips, sending my pulse skyrocketing. Why the hell did he have this much power over me? Why was I incapable of controlling my attraction to him? Why did my chest fucking ache for him when his hand cupped my jaw, his thumb so gentle as it swiped back and forth over my cheek?

"I still need you, Dana."

A switch flipped inside of me. As if by primal instinct, I warmed so wholly to him that it almost frightened me. His lips met mine and I sank into him, something in my gut aching for his touch. "Then use me," I mumbled against his mouth.

He kissed me gently, almost hesitantly. His hand inched higher up my thigh, the skin-on-skin contact making me tremble, and I knew damn well that the heat building between my legs would be my undoing. My shorts were already riding up from the cheap leather of my Camry, and all it would take was the lightest touch?—

His kiss turned deeper, his tongue delving into my mouth, his hand shifting to the back of my neck as his other crept higher, ghosting the frayed hem of my shorts. I pressed lightly against his chest, fisting his shirt in my palm. His heart beat erratically beneath it, thumping almost in time with my own.

Until his fingers slid up and inside my underwear.

My pulse hit a peak and I sucked in a shaky breath, gaining nothing but his air. "Cole," I hissed.

"Fuck, you want me," he replied. The tip of his finger slid down my cotton-covered slit, forcing a tremble through my body. "You still want me."

I did.

I really fucking did.

"Inside," he huffed, and within a second, his hand was gone, focused wholly on unbuckling our seatbelts.