33. Bailey

"Simon?"I repeated what Cole had just said as my brain tried to play catch up with what was going on. Naps always made me feel disoriented, and the one I'd just woken up from left me particularly foggy-brained since I hadn't slept the night before. "What about Simon?"

Cole pointed to the entrance of my building. "He's here."

I turned my head, and sure enough, Simon was standing next to the glass entrance.

"What is he doing here?" I asked out loud as I reached for the door handle, but then turned back toward Cole. "Wait, what were you going to say?"

The light that had been in his eyes moments before was gone. It was extinguished. "Nothing. It doesn't matter."

"Yes, it does. I can just go see what he wants, and then?—"

"No, it's fine. I have to get home anyway."

"I thought everything was okay." When I'd woken up, I'd heard Cole's sister saying he didn't need to come home. "I thought it was taken care of."

"You don't know anything about my family or my responsibilities."

The harshness in his tone felt like a slap in the face. I had no clue where that had come from. I searched his eyes, and for the first time since our Trevor-arranged-meet-cute in the bathroom, he was shut off. In the few seconds it had taken for me to turn my head to Simon and then back, walls had gone up. It was the same look he'd had when I'd asked him if he wanted to speak to Lindsay at the wedding. It was cold and distant.

"Cole—" I started to reach for him, but he got out of the SUV.

As I sat in the passenger seat, trying to figure out what was going on and what I should do, my heart was beating so fast and so hard that I could hear it in my head. There were so many thoughts and feelings competing for the top spot right now. I wanted to know why Simon was there. He was supposed to be on his honeymoon. But, another part of me, a big part of me, didn't care and just wanted to hear what Cole was about to tell me.

It might be delirium from waking up after a couple of hours of sleep, but I was ninety-nine-point-nine-nine-nine percent sure that whatever Cole was going to tell me was important. I'd seen it in his eyes. I'd felt it in the atmosphere shift between us.

I was still trying to figure out how to handle the situation when the passenger door opened, and Cole held out his hand. I couldn't exactly refuse to leave his vehicle, so, not knowing what else to do, I took it. When I stepped onto the curb and looked up into Cole's eyes, it felt like there was so much I needed to say, but none of the words were coming to me. I opened my mouth to speak, but no sound came out.

The moment passed when he shut the door and headed to the back of the SUV. After he got my suitcase out, he set it on the sidewalk beside me. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that Simon was walking in our direction.

Acting on sheer impulse, I wrapped my arms around Cole, hugging him tightly. I buried my head in the crook of his shoulder and inhaled his musky scent. For a moment, he didn't move; his hands remained by his side, but then I felt them engulf me as he pulled me tightly into him.

Being in his arms made everything I was feeling—all the anxiety, all the nerves, all the uneasiness—quiet down. If I had one wish in this world, it would be to stay in his embrace forever.

"Thank you," I whispered against his neck. I wasn't even sure what I was thanking him for. The weekend. The hug. The sex. The way he'd opened up my world and shown me how it felt to be truly desired, truly cared for, and truly protected.

No sooner had I said those two words than he recoiled from me. He stepped back, and his arms fell to his side like he'd touched a hot stove. I stared up at him in confusion as to why my thanking him had caused him to react that way.

"Cole, I?—"

"Goodbye, Bailey." His farewell was clipped and impersonal. He walked back around to the driver's side, got in, and drove away.

"Bay."

For a split second, I'd completely forgotten Simon was there. All I'd cared about was Cole, what he was feeling, and what he was going to say to me. It was still all I cared about.

"Here, let me take this." Simon reached down to grab my suitcase.

"I've got it. What are you doing here? You're supposed to be on your honeymoon." I turned toward him and looked at him—really looked at him—for the first time.

His eyes were red and a little swollen, like he either hadn't slept or he'd been crying. In all the years I'd known Simon, I'd never actually seen him cry.

"Can we talk?" he asked.

"Okay." I nodded.

"Inside, maybe." He motioned to my building.

"Oh, yeah." Holy crap. I hadn't even considered the fact that I should invite him in. That was how differently I felt about him now.

If he had shown up a month ago, even a week ago, I would have immediately asked him to come up to my apartment. Sometime over the past three days, it had started to feel like he was…not a stranger…but someone from my past. Someone I didn't know anymore.

We walked inside the building and rode up the elevator with Mrs. Johnson and Cruella, her two-year-old Dalmatian, who was named after the breed's nemesis, ironically. It was a funny name for her in particular because Cruella was the sweetest, friendliest dog in the building. She loved everyone.

I reached down to pet her and say hi, and I noticed that Simon didn't acknowledge her or Mrs. Johnson. It struck me that that wasn't new behavior for him. Unlike Cole, who was friendly and didn't seem to meet a stranger, Simon didn't speak to the general public. I'd always thought it was just because he was reserved, but now I saw that he was dismissive. I was starting to see why Billie had always thought he was an arrogant asshole.

"You two have a lovely Sunday," Mrs. Johnson wished us both when the elevator stopped at her floor.

"You, too." I smiled and gave Cruella another pet as the duo stepped off the elevator.

Once we were alone, we continued up the building in silence. I didn't have the bandwidth to make small talk. My mind was too busy trying to process what had just happened with Cole. What had he wanted to tell me? Why had he gone from hot to cold on me so quickly?

When the elevator doors opened on the ninth floor, we walked down the hallway in silence. We didn't say a word to each other until I opened the door to my apartment, and we went inside.

"Can I get you something to drink?" I asked as I shut and locked the door behind us.

"Old fashioned."

I stared at him for a second, thinking he must be joking, not that he was ever that funny. When I saw he was serious, I explained, "I don't have bourbon or bitters. It's ten in the morning. I was thinking more like water or maybe coffee."

"Coffee's fine."

I nodded and walked into the kitchen, where I found Duke sunbathing in his favorite spot.

"You got a cat?" Simon had always been good at stating the obvious.

"Two, actually."

"When did you get cats?"

"Three years ago."

Whiskey got up from her morning chair and left the room, flicking her tail dramatically as she left the kitchen. She didn't like people in general, but she was particularly standoffish toward men. Except for Trevor, that is. She tolerated Trevor. Most men, though, if they tried to touch her, she'd try and claw their eyes out. It would be difficult since she'd been declawed at the shelter, but still, claws or not, I wouldn't put it past her.

I finished making Simon's coffee and handed it to him, then lowered onto the chair across from him. He took a sip, and I waited for him to speak. The look in his eyes was a combination of pain and confusion. I'd never seen it before. Ever.

"What's going on?" I asked quietly. "Why aren't you on your honeymoon?"

"There's not going to be a honeymoon. It's over."

"You just got married yesterday," I stated aloud what I was thinking in my head.

"It was all a lie. Everything. Devin told me she was pregnant. I did the right thing. We were supposed to have a quiet, intimate wedding. She turned it into a circus. There were three hundred guests. It was all too much. And then there was you. She knew who you were when she hired you. It was all a premeditated, calculated, manipulated lie."

"What was?" I asked just to try and keep up with the conversation. I was still trying to wrap my head around the ‘she's pregnant' statement. Of course, there'd been murmurs and mumblings at the wedding that it was of the shotgun variety, and I'd thought the same thing before she'd downed several glasses of champagne while dress shopping, but it was true. Simon was going to be a father.

"All of it. It was all a lie. When we got back to the hotel room last night, we had a big fight over you, actually."

I touched my hand to my chest. "Me?"

"She said she saw me looking at you all day. All weekend, in fact. And the night before the wedding, she accused me of being with you."

"But you weren't." I shook my head. "I'll tell her that if you want."

His jaw set firmly as his shoulders straightened. "It's over. It doesn't matter. We started fighting about you, but I'm glad we did because it all came out. She's not pregnant. She says she believed she was when she told me. She took a test that was a false positive, which is what she showed me. But then, when she went to the doctor's, she found out she wasn't, and she didn't come clean. She said she thought that I was just afraid to commit and that once we were married, it would all be okay. But how can it be when it was all based on a lie?"

I sat silently. All I could think was how Billie was going to react when she found all this out. Once again, my big sister was right about someone.

"She asked me, point blank, if I was in love with you, and I told her the truth. I am. I think I always have been, but I just…I don't know; I thought you'd always be there. But seeing you at the wedding with Cole… did something to me. I realized I've never seen you with someone."

Simon's confession had my head spinning. Duke must have sensed my anxiety because he hopped up onto my lap, something he only ever did when I was emotional. He curled up in a ball, as I began petting him as I tried to process what I'd just heard.

Simon scooted forward on his chair. "I love you, Bay. I want to be with you. I want to marry you."

"You got married yesterday," I repeated, because I'd been there. I'd planned it.

"It's not legal. I didn't sign the license after the ceremony. I couldn't bring myself to do it."

He didn't sign the license?

"Bay?" His voice was raw.

"I don't know what you want me to say." This was too much for me to deal with on two hours of sleep. Especially when my brain was obsessing over what Cole had wanted to tell me.

"Please, Bay. It's you. It's always been you. I want to marry you. I want us to have a family."

It was the words I'd been waiting to hear for twenty-two years. But all I could think about was Cole, and how I wished it was him sitting across from me.