Conflicted (26 page)

“That’s my ex’s name.”

“Well then you can call me whatever you want.” He ground his hips toward me again.

He thought I was a slam dunk, and while maybe I was since I’d decided I wanted sex with a stranger, I wasn’t sure that young blonde Cole was my best option.

He leaned down and ran his lips long my neck, baring his teeth.

“Ouch!” I jumped when he nipped my skin.

He smiled playfully, and it was clear he thought he was doing something to turn me on.

He wasn’t.

This wasn’t going to work.

“Well, Cole… Is Cole short for something?”

He nodded. “Colton.”

“Thank God. Colton, it’s been lovely dancing with you, but I should really get back to my sister.”

“Or you could just keep dancing with me.” He grabbed my hips and pulled me closer to him. I set both of my hands on his chest and pushed, but he didn’t budge.

A bit of a panic settled into my chest. The haze from the last shot I’d taken jumbled my thoughts. I thought I’d wanted one night with a stranger, but this stranger was overly aggressive. His arms came around mine, and he pinned them to my side as he managed to place his hands on my ass. He pulled me closer against him as I was trying to push him away, which only served to frighten me.

“Stop, Colton,” I said, my voice forceful. He paid no attention to my plea.

“Stop,” I repeated, my voice loud and clear.

I looked around again for Kaylee, but we were buried in the middle of the dance floor, loud music pumping all around us as bodies swayed in a blur.

I pushed against him again, but he still didn’t move. Instead, his fingers dug painfully into my hips as he kept attempting to pull me closer, and he lowered his head toward my neck again. I pushed his chest as hard as I could as I felt his lips on my neck, sucking and slurping. Sickness burned my stomach as bile rose in my throat.

My heart started beating wildly. Could he hurt me right here in the middle of the dance floor?

“No!” I yelled, hoping someone around me would hear me. Everyone was too caught up in having a good time to realize someone they didn’t know might be hurting someone else they didn’t know.

This was supposed to be a fun night out with my sister, but this wasn’t fun.

No matter how hard I tried to push him away, he didn’t move. His arms still had me pinned, so my shoves against his chest were weak compared to his strength.

In my adrenaline-fueled panic, I thought about kneeing him in the nuts and running, but he was holding me so tightly that I couldn’t lift my knee to get to him.

When I’d first felt his hard body against mine and assumed he worked out, I’d considered it a bonus. Sexy. Exciting.

But now all that strength just scared me.

He wouldn’t stop, and no one was listening to my cries for help.

I had no idea what to do.

One of his hands came up and yanked my hair back so he could continue assaulting my neck, and I yelled out in pain. “Stop!” Once again, my cries were drowned by the loud music.

One second I feared for what this guy could do to me, and the next he was on the floor, holding his face as a ring of drunken dancers who were suddenly interested in what was going on formed around us. Blood poured from Colton’s nose as he looked up and behind me.

My heart leapt up to my throat. “What the—?” I yelled in confusion. I turned around to see what he was looking at and found myself looking right into Cole’s dark eyes.

My Cole.

Cole Benson.

His eyes were murderous.

He shook his right hand, which had blood all over it, and he averted his eyes from mine as he looked at Colton down on the floor.

“You broke my nose, you motherfucker!” Colton yelled through his blood-covered hands.

The song switched, and a brief moment of quiet fell over the bar between the beats of the new song. Cole knelt down and spoke directly to my would-be assailant. “When a woman tells you no, that’s your cue to stop. You’re lucky I didn’t fucking kill you.” He stood, leaving Colton lying on the floor writhing in pain. He turned back to me.

He didn’t say a word. His eyes, though…that was a different story.

They said everything he didn’t.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Taking care of your drunk ass. Again.” He turned to leave, and I grabbed his arm.

“Wait.” I wasn’t sure what I was going to say. He’d just appeared out of nowhere and attacked a man who was about to attack me.
Thanks
seemed underwhelming.

His eyes burned into mine, and I was transported back to the day I’d walked out of his office. No time had passed between us even though we’d been apart for eight months.

I still felt everything I’d felt the second I left his office. I still wanted to be with him. I still loved him.

And every unsaid word between us still spoke volumes as his eyes darkened.

I’d caught everything I’d needed to see in that one simple glance before his wall came back up.

He still loved me, too.

“Um, thank you for taking care of my drunk ass. Again.”

His eyes softened. “You’re welcome.”

He turned and walked away from me, and I lost him in the sea of people.

My heart felt full, though. Just seeing him again, just knowing that he’d be there to take care of me even when I hadn’t seen him or spoken to him in months…that meant everything to me.

I had no idea how he knew I was here or how he found me. I had no idea how he knew I needed to be saved.

But none of that mattered. Maybe all that mattered was that he’d shown up when I’d needed him, and maybe that was enough.

Or maybe I’d never get enough of Cole Benson and I’d regret it for the rest of my life if I didn’t go running after him to tell him how much I loved him.

The crowd dispersed once Cole left. His friends pulled Colton up from the floor, and I lost them in the crowd. I walked the perimeter of the bar to find Kaylee, who sat way in the back scrolling through her phone.

“Can we go home? Like right now?” I asked.

“We can go to the hotel. I shouldn’t drive.”

“Fine. Can we go to the hotel?”

She nodded, and we walked out of the bar and down the block in silence. We checked in and got settled in our room. After I took a shower where I attempted to scrub every last remnant of the evening off my skin under scalding water, she finally spoke. “Do you want to talk about what happened with that hunk of man back there?”

I filled her in, and when I got to the part about Cole, her jaw dropped.

“Lucy! Oh my God. You have to call him. You have to see him. You have to figure this out.”

I shook my head. “I thought that, too, at first. But you know what? If he wanted me after all this time, he wouldn’t have walked away.”

“Don’t you think that maybe he was just doing that because he thought that’s what you wanted?”

I shook my head. “Cole isn’t the type of guy who cares what other people want. He takes what he wants when he wants it.”

“He didn’t just take you right away when you were married to John.”

“No, he didn’t. But he also doesn’t know I’m divorced. For all he knows, John and I worked things out.”

“Don’t you want to at least try?”

“I don’t know what I want. I’m still under the influence of whiskey, so this might be a better conversation for the morning.”

She sighed, wished me goodnight, and turned out the light.

We hadn’t shut the curtains, and I stared out the window at some tall building across the street from ours, the lights of the city twinkling in the close distance. Cole was somewhere in this city, the same city as me. Maybe even thinking about me.

Maybe missing me.

And for some reason, that comforting thought lulled me to sleep.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

“Good morning, sleepy bear!” My sister’s loud voice cut through my magical dream where Cole punched out some drunk asshole and then ravished me properly for the rest of the night.

“Blurgh.” It was supposed to be a word, but I wasn’t sure which one. My mouth was dry and my words were garbled from whiskey, drama, and sleep. I rolled over and pulled the pillow over my head to block out the sunlight.

“Today’s the day you’re getting Cole back!” she exclaimed with enthusiasm.

I grabbed the pillow off of my head and threw it in her direction. “You’re downright insane.”

She giggled. “You missed. And you’re hungover.”

“That’s what happens when you keep shoving your shots at me.”

“I told you last night and I stand firmly by it. You needed them more than I did.”

“Be that as it may, I kind of hate you this morning.”

“You’ll get over it.” She stood from her bed and stretched. “Let’s hit Denny’s for a greasy breakfast and then find Cole.”

“Let’s not hit Denny’s and let’s not find Cole. Let’s just go home.”

She walked over and sat on the edge of my bed. “I just want you to be happy, Lucy.” Her voice was soft.

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not. I’ll admit it was rough when you were with him. But I’ve never seen you as happy as you were when Cole was standing next to you. You had this glow about you, this radiance. And I haven’t seen that since the day you moved in with us.”

I sighed. “I was happy with Cole, as brief as it was. But it’s in the past. Too much time has passed.”

“He showed up when you needed him last night.”

“But he left. We’ve been over this.”

She leaned back on the headboard and crossed her feet in front of her. “Why are you fighting this?”

“Why are you pressing this?” I countered. “You don’t even know him.”

“You’re right. But clearly you do, and clearly you still love him.”

“What makes you say that?”

“You were nearly attacked last night, Lucy. But you didn’t fall apart. You didn’t freak out like you should have. Instead, you calmly found me and asked me if we could leave, but that glow was back. That radiance. I knew the second I saw you that something important changed in the ten minutes I left you to dance with that stranger. And when you told me that Cole had shown up, I knew that was why.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?”

There was no arguing with Kaylee once she thought she was right, so I didn’t answer.

But she’d given me an awful lot to think about.

Thankfully she dropped it and we walked back to the bar to pick up her car. On the ride home, though, the questions started again.

And she wasn’t subtle or tactful.

“Tell me again why you aren’t hunting down that man and thanking him with your body?”

“Jeez, Kaylee.”

“Well?”

I stared out the window and watched the California landscape rush past. The cloudless sky was a clear and vibrant blue, and the mountains hovered out in the distance.

“I can’t get my heart broken again,” I whispered.

“Isn’t he worth the risk?”

I didn’t respond to my sister, and she finally turned up the radio and let it go. I knew it was just for the moment and it would be short-lived, but I appreciated the time to think things through on my own without her badgering.

She wanted me to be happy, and I wanted that, too.

But I hadn’t known real, true happiness for a long time, and I seemed to be getting by just fine.

***

The house was silent when we arrived home. Madi was at school and Kevin was at work.

I finally called Lincoln.

“Lucy Vance,” he boomed warmly.

“Lincoln Mathers.” I forced my enthusiasm to match his.

“Come in next week for an interview,” he said. “It’s just a formality. The job is yours if you want it.”

“I need it. I’m ready to get out of my sister’s hair.”

“That sweet niece of yours is going to miss you.”

“I’ll miss her, too. How are the kids?”

“Bailee is getting a sassy little mouth on her, and Jackson is climbing everything.”

“Sounds about right. How’s Alexis?”

“She needs a lunch date with you soon.”

“Well when I’m permanently in the city, maybe we can have lunch dates more often.”

“She’d love that.”

“So would I.”

“Email Sierra,” he said, referring to his secretary, “to set up a meeting.”

“Consider it done, Mr. Mathers.”

He chuckled. “See you next week.”

Once I had my job prospect lined up, it was time to look for a place to live.

I scoured the internet for an apartment, but there were so many choices that I became both overwhelmed and confused almost immediately.

I emailed an old college friend who was now a realtor. She replied almost immediately, and we exchanged phone numbers and set up a meeting for the same day as my interview at MTC.

I took a deep breath.

I was finally taking my life back.