Chapter 25

"Isn"t this nice?" Eden sat with her hand raised while the technician painted her nails her favourite colour, purple.

"It"s been too long since we did this together." When the technician painting my nails tapped my hand, I slipped it into the dryer and offered her the other one. Mine were a bright, cheerful pink, which helped to elevate my mood somewhat.

"I told you this was a good idea," she said. "This vacation was just what we both needed."

We landed about three hours ago and made our way to our hotel. When we arrived, we were told the accommodation was fully paid up, including an upgrade to a beachfront penthouse.

I wanted to go somewhere else, but Eden convinced me to take advantage of the gift so obviously from Cole. If it wasn"t from him, it was one of the other guys. I shouldn"t be surprised they were keeping tabs.

We'd left our suitcases in the hotel and went to explore the sunny Gold Coast. At one point, we passed a group of excited women pulling trolleys along behind them. The trolleys were all stacked high with books. Apparently we arrived at the same time as a reader event was taking place in a nearby hotel.

One of them mentioned Elenna Draeger, one of our favourite authors, but as far as I could tell, tickets were sold out, so Eden and I opted to get our nails done instead.

I was about to say something else when movement near the salon door caught my eye. I looked up to see Cole step inside. He glanced over at me, nodded, then spoke to the woman at the desk. I couldn"t hear what they were saying and the conversation only lasted for a minute before he ducked back out again.

"I"m starting to think he"s stalking me," I said. That was just what I needed. Not.

"He does seem to appear wherever we are," Eden agreed. She only had a slight frown on her brow. She seemed less concerned that he was following us, than worried he might interrupt our vacation and stress me out.

"Let"s try not to think about him," I said. "As long as he leaves us alone, we should be fine. Right?"

"Exactly." Eden nodded. "Maybe he was asking for directions." She didn"t look like she believed it either.

"Doesn"t everyone have a GPS on their phone these days?" I asked.

"To be honest, I could get lost even with the help of a GPS," she said with a laugh. "He might be the same."

"If he is, it"s the mother of all coincidences," I said. No, he was definitely here for a reason. One we discovered when we went to pay for our pedicures and manicures.

"They"re already paid for," the woman at the desk said with a smile. "That cute guy who popped in paid for them, for you both. I think he likes you."

"Yeah, maybe," I said. I followed Eden out of the salon and glanced around, looking for Cole. "First the hotel, now this. Is he going to follow us around and pay for everything the whole time we"re here?"

"It would seem like it," she said. "I can"t decide if that"s the sweetest thing I ever heard or the creepiest."

"I"ll take all of the above," I said. "I never asked for him to do anything like that."

"Isn"t that the point?" She gestured over to an ice cream shop and started walking. "He"s trying to do nice things for you."

"If he thinks paying for me to get my nails painted will make up for what he and the others did, he"s going to have to think again," I said. I ordered my ice cream and stood back while they made it.

The server placed a scoop of chocolate and a scoop of chocolate mint on a cone and put it in front of me before making Eden"s order.

"I"ll have the same as her," Cole said, stepping into the shop behind me and pointing to my cone. "I"m paying for these."

I turned to him and gave him my best side eye. "What do you think you"re doing?"

He shrugged. "Getting ice cream."

"That wasn"t what I was referring to, and you know it," I said. Before I could stop him, he had his phone out, tapping the screen. He took his own cone and stepped back out of the shop.

With a frustrated growl under my breath, I took my cone, smiled at the server and stepped back out to the footpath.

"What Marley wants to know is, are you stalking her?" Eden asked.

Cole licked his ice cream in a way that had me stopping and staring in spite of myself.

I forced myself to look away before he could affect me too much. I reminded myself of what he did and why I was pissed off at him.

"I wouldn"t call it stalking," Cole said. "I"m just following around the woman I love and making sure she has everything she needs."

"That sounds like stalking to me," I said. "I came here to get away from you, not so you could be there every time I turn around. Do the others know where I am?"

"Not specifically," he said. "They know roughly where you are and that I"m keeping an eye on you. I told them you"re all right, but need some space."

"And yet, here you are," I said. "Not giving me space."

He took a step back.

I rolled my eyes. "Shouldn"t you be in training? Kage is going to be pissed off with you." Not that I gave a shit. That was his problem, not mine.

"I told him I had an emergency," Cole said. "I had a family member who needed me. Nothing about that isn"t right."

"We"re not family," I said.

"You"re my family," he said. "Even if you hate my guts, you will be. The way I feel about you, it"s not going to go away."

"Apparently, neither are you," I said.

He actually smiled at that. "No, I"m not. Like I said, I"m keeping an eye on you and making sure you"re okay."

"I"m not okay," I said. "Not even close. I"m not sure I ever will be. If you wanted me to be okay, you shouldn"t have done what you did."

"There aren"t words to tell you how sorry I am about that," he said. "But if I have to spend the rest of my life trying to find a way to make it up to you, then that"s what I"ll do. Fuck playing hockey. This will be my job if that"s how it has to be."

"Until you run out of money," I said.

"I"ll find a way," he said. "Nothing in my life is as important as this. As you."

"What about Toby?" I asked.

"I care about him too, but you"re my first priority at the moment," Cole said. "He can take care of himself."

"Why did you do it?" I asked. "You could have told Oliver no."

"I could have," he agreed. He licked melted ice cream off his fingers.

I tried to ignore the way my clit throbbed at the sight of his tongue.

"Why didn"t you?" I asked insistently.

"Because my family is fucked up," he said finally. "I wanted a family that wasn"t fucked up, but I went about it in a fucked up way."

"You can say that again," Eden said. "Families aren"t a thing that you can force. They happen or they don"t. And sometimes they don"t work out the way you think they will. Going behind the back of one family member with another is a surefire way to mess everything up."

She seemed to be referring to something specific, but couldn"t focus on that just now. I turned back to Cole.

"You"re right, you did go about it in a fucked up way," I said. "I don"t know if I can ever forgive you, but I appreciate that you didn"t try to lay the blame on Oliver or Toby. You could easily have tried to say they convinced you."

"It was Oliver"s idea, but I went along with it," Cole said. "I own what I did. And I own what I should have done. I should have talked to you. That"s something I"m going to have to live with for the rest of my life." He opened and closed his mouth a couple more times before shaking his head.

"I"m not going to stop looking out for you. But I"ll keep my distance for now. If you need anything, you only have to?—"

"Look over my shoulder?" I suggested.

He glanced down and back up again. "Something like that." He gave us both a slight nod before slipping away down the street.

"He seemed genuinely sorry," Eden said.

"You think I should forgive him, don"t you?" I asked.

"I think you should do whatever is right for you," she said. "If that means forgiving him and moving on, then you should at least consider it. If never seeing him again is best for you, then that"s the choice you need to make. But I genuinely think he didn"t mean to hurt you. You did want children someday, didn"t you? Maybe not now, but some day."

"Definitely not now," I said. "It"s not the baby that"s the problem, it"s them thinking they could control me."

"I think it"s safe to say they"ve learned their lesson there," she said. "I very much doubt they"d pull anything like this ever again."

"If I forgive them, they might," I said. "They might see it as a sign to do whatever they want."

"Judging by the look on Cole"s face, he"d stop them before they did anything stupid." She bit into her ice cream cone.

He might, but that was no guarantee. They"d broken my trust. It would take a lot more than nail polish and ice cream to patch that up. I had no idea what it would take, but more than that at least.

"Do you think he was serious that he"d give up hockey for me?" I asked. "Just so he could keep trying to make things right?"

He seemed adamant that"s what he would do, but hockey was his life. Something he"d worked for since he was a kid. To even think about giving that up for me, was huge. Bigger than huge. What would he do with himself if he wasn"t on the ice, defending the goal against aggressive opposition players? Being my shadow would get old pretty quickly, wouldn"t it? I"d get bored if I was following myself around.

"If I was him, I"d give it up in a heartbeat," Eden said. "I can see how much he loves you. You"re more important to him than slapping around a puck with a stick."

"Maybe," I said uncertainly. "I think I"m going to need a nice, long swim to work off all of this ice cream." That might help take my mind of him for a while. One of the best things about the Gold Coast was being able to shop in the morning, swim in the afternoon and eat in a fine restaurant at night.

"I was going to suggest that," she said. "A good, long swim followed by a massage, then dinner. Somewhere really expensive."

"Is this where you tell me not to forgive him too soon, so we can enjoy a five-star holiday at his expense?" I asked dryly.

"I hadn"t thought of that, but now you mention it, you have a point," she said. "Why shouldn"t we enjoy ourselves as much as we can? I haven"t had lobster in years." She grinned and wiped her fingers on her napkin.

I didn"t know if I wanted to take advantage of him that way, but lobster did sound good.