27. Cole

Chapter 27

Cole

I wanted to fucking cry.

The look in her eyes, the way she'd stared at me with so much worry and fear behind them.

And I'd lied to her.

Lied to her so easily, just like I lied to everyone else, just like I lied to myself.

I should tell her. I knew that. I knew it as surely as I knew my last name, knew it like I knew I was an alcoholic—a no longer recovering one. I needed to tell her, I needed to apologize, beg her to forgive me for caving. I needed to tell her that I need help, I need to go to a meeting or go back to rehab or whatever the fuck the next step was.

But I couldn't. The words wouldn't come.

I knew she'd drop it because she cared. She'd let it go on the possibility I was telling the truth and how pressuring me could be a trigger, and that's what I counted on.

But that look in her eyes haunted me.

"Let's get you cleaned up," I sighed, opening a drawer of my desk and whipping out a handful of unused napkins. I separated them into two piles with my shaking hands, one for between her legs since I'd obliterated her underwear, and the other for the smeared makeup.

She leaned back against the edge of the desk, her eyes focused far too intently on me as I dabbed a napkin against my tongue for moisture. I hoped she couldn't smell it as I swiped under her eyes gently, picking up the little crumbles of mascara that had broken free from her lashes and smeared against her cheek. She still looked beautiful, fucking heavenly even, but I'd taken her too hard.

I probably shouldn't have without speaking to her about it first.

But time blipped and I lost it, and before I knew it, my belt was around her forearms and her face was pressed into the glass. I couldn't rewind and fix that without answers.

"I'm sorry," I breathed, and her eyes narrowed just a hair. "I shouldn't have fucked you like that without talking to you first."

She shook her head. "It's fine. Honestly. I like it when you're rough with me," she chuckled, the beauty and magic of her laughter not quite hitting the way it used to. "Just, maybe next time, let's not do it when we have an event we're supposed to be at going on downstairs."

I huffed out a laugh and nodded.

————

I didn't even have a moment to walk her back to Lottie, Hunter, Grayson, and Penny before I was grabbed by Damien Horsted.

"Cole! Been looking everywhere for you," he said, his overgrown graying mustache damp from where it rested on his mouth.

I clutched Dana's hand, ready to pull her into the conversation so I didn't have to go it alone, but she gave me a small smile before releasing it and shooting off toward our friends. Dammit.

"Damien," I said, forcing a grin as I shook his hand. The bald patch on the top of his head had gotten wider since the last time I saw him, and I made a mental note not to mention that if I had any chance of securing him as an investor in the new product line. "Apologies, we had a work issue I needed to address so I stepped out for a moment."

One fluffy brow rose as he glanced at the back of Dana's form blending into the crowd. "A work issue?"

"Something like that."

The man, probably in his fifties, if not sixties, laughed as he turned back to me. "No problem, son. I know how it is. Events like these always bring out the seediest women, always wanting their own investment," he chuckled.

I bit my tongue so hard I tasted iron.

"I've heard whispers through the grapevine that you're thinking of adding a zero percent," he added.

I nodded. "One for each flavor of the new range, as well as one zero IPA and zero light," I replied. "If we're going to do it, I'd rather go big, then narrow down if the demand for certain ones aren't high enough."

His grin widened but I couldn't help but look past him, over his shoulder, at Dana laughing with a beer in her hand as she stood with our friends. I wanted to be over there, a beer in my own hand, that not being the worst thing in the world for me. I just wanted to relax and enjoy myself with her. Wanted fucking everything with her. You've ruined it already, fuckwit.

"If you can make that happen, I'll gladly invest," Damien said, his words barely reaching my ears. "Only wish you had some of them on offer tonight so I could try them."

"We're still perfecting them so that they taste like the real thing," I explained, the words clocking that he offered an investment. "But thank you. I'm glad you'd like to play a part in this."

He offered his hand to me and I took it, giving it a solid shake before something unexpected caught my eye.

No.

No, no, no. Not tonight. Not here. Not in the one goddamn place I had left that they hadn't sullied, not in the place I'd built on my own.

Dana's eyes met mine in a flash of worry, and before I knew it I was abandoning Damien and moving toward her, needing her, aching for her or booze or something , I didn't know what. She was moving toward me too, her eyes glancing back at the four of them as they slotted themselves into the crowd as if they belonged.

"I can get them to leave," she offered, her gaze caught between whatever look had plastered itself to my face and my parents in the distance behind her. "I can ask Ben to get security?—"

"No," I said, the word feeling imprecise in my mouth. "Thank you, but no."

Her eyes went wide. "No?"

"It would only cause a scene." Even with her in front of me, that unmistakable ache flared again in the base of my throat. I need a drink. I need a drink. I need a fucking drink. But I couldn't, at least not with her here, not with the inability to cover it with toothpaste and a mint. "Maybe I should go."

"Cole, it's your event. Not theirs."

I watched them over the top of her head, watched as my mother and father worked the room as if this success was theirs while the two teenagers they kept in tow hung out on the sidelines. I watched as they took hors d'oeuvres from a waiter, watched as they took a free drink from the bar.

Dana squeezed my hand, and then my forearm, my bicep. I glanced down at her, watching her lips move but hearing nothing but ringing. It grew louder, blocking out anything else, minimizing the growing concern on Dana's face as Hunter and Lottie stepped up behind her.

I blinked, and once again, time blipped.

My feet were moving, a hand around my wrist pulling me back, a sea of people dividing as I beelined for my father.

I blinked, and he was backed against a wall, Dana's voice seeping through. "Get them out," she pleaded with someone.

But I didn't care.

They'd left me. Crying, barely thirteen, with a stashed bottle of top-shelf scotch in my backpack and a suitcase full of clothes at the foot of my aunt's driveway. The summer sun beating down on me from above, the mountains in the distance, a look of irritation on their faces.

"Don't bother thinking you can come back," Dad had said.

Mom looked bored as she'd adjusted her sunglasses and checked her lipstick in the mirror of the sun visor.

I blinked, and my hand was around my father's throat, pinning him to the wall.

"Conrad!" my mother shouted.

"Stop, stop, stop!"

A hand about the size of mine gripped onto my forearm, pulling me off of him, dragging me back. I didn't fight it. The adrenaline raced in me but I didn't have the will to do anything with it, to drag myself back to him and beat his face in until my knuckles were bloodied and he was mush, until I was being escorted away in a police car and charged with fucking murder.

I wanted to.

But I didn't.

"Cole," Hunter said, his face in front of me, his hands on my shoulders. "Do you understand what just happened?"

Behind him, security was escorting out my mother and father and the two little shits they'd brought with them. My father had said something about them, just before my hands wrapped around his throat.

"Dana," I rasped. The high was slowly coming down, reality settling back in. "Where's Dana?"

"I'm here."

A hand slid into mine, her fingers so fucking small between my own. I turned to her, taking in the hint of fear and trepidation in her face, the way her brows rose and her lower lip quivered. Fuck .

"I'm sorry," I breathed, squeezing her hand as I looked between her and Hunter, and behind them, Lottie and Gray, Penny in his arms and burying her face in his neck. He was the furthest away from me.

That hurt.

"I don't know what happened," I said, sucking in a shaky breath. "I don't… fuck, man, how badly did I mess up?"

Hunter shook his head as he slowly released my shoulders, his tie and shirt askew. "I stepped in before it got too bad. I don't think anyone heard much other than a few choice words."

"I'll get you some water," Dana offered, and although it shouldn't have, although it was just her way of trying to help, it stung.

"I need to go."

"What?" Dana said, squeezing my hand tighter, but I dropped it.

"I have to go. I'm sorry. I can't, I can't be here."