Page 45 of Sneak Attack

But Cole didn’t miss much, never had when it came to me.

“You followed me,” he finally said, in a low rumble. “All those years I spent looking for you, wondering where you were, and you were following me?”

There was a tinge of anger to his tone. Like I’d betrayed him by remaining hidden from social media.

I couldn't bring myself to admit it.

Next to me, his rocking chair groaned. “Fucking hell, Eden. Why are you here? And I don’t mean Marley. I mean here. My house. My space. To throw one fucking night with Selma in my face?” He scrubbed his hands down his face and groaned. “I don’t fucking get you. Not one single bit.”

I’d started wrong. I knew I had. I’d come to apologize for being so damn difficult whenever he wanted to talk. I wanted to ask him how he’d moved on. I wanted to ask him how in the hell he was doing so good with his own life when mine was still such a mess.

I’d come to ask him for help. To learn his secrets to getting over the guilt that still buried me every single day. All I’d had to do was sit my ass down in the chair and genuinely ask,How did you do it?

Instead, I was still stupidly fixated on the wrong thing. Selma and his son and none of it had anything to do withus. “One night?”

He shoved from his chair, the thing rocked wildly from the brute force he used to push out of it and then slammed his fingers to the railing. He gripped it so hard the wood creaked beneath his hands, and he spun, swiping a hand over his mouth.

“That’s what you want to know? With all the shit, you want to know aboutthat?”

“You have a son, Cole. He’s kind of important.”

“Damn straight he is.” He leaned toward me, his chest heaving and the ferocity in his expression chilled me to my toes. “Jasper’sit. The one thing. The only thing that pulled me out of that shit. You think, what? I decided to go to Vandy for thefunof it? I gave up my full ride to walk on at a lesser school like I wasn’t taking a huge ass risk to make it to where I am now? You think I did that for fun? Fuck you, Eden. God fucking damn it!”

He shouted and shoved off the railing, the wooden front porch trembled from the weight of his heavy steps back and forth, the path he wore in the wood scaring me and Cole had only ever scared me in the best ways.

“I’m sorry,” I said and stood even though I wasn’t sure I could stand. “I’m sorry. But I wanted to know, because I thought—”

“You thought, what? Hilary fucking died and I couldn’t have you, so I just said, ‘oh well, I’ll take this one’?”

“Of course not.” My hair flipped out of the holder as I shook my head. We were so severely off the track and like everything else, it was my fault. “I just…I was a wreck, okay? I could barely get out of bed. Formonths, Cole. I ruined everything—my own life. Yours. Hilary’s—”

I choked out her name and I still felt like such a low life every time I said it.

“It was a fucking accident!”

“That we caused!We’reto blame for that, Cole. And you…you just went to school, yeah, a different one, but you just kept on…and so yeah, I followed you. Yeah, I wanted to know what you were doing,howyou were doing, because I was so fucking destroyed my parents eventually had to drag my ass out of bed one day, forced me to do something because I was refusing to do anything and there you were…throwing passes, making touchdowns…living your life.”

“I wasn’t fucking living. I was surviving.” A low growl rumbled from deep in his chest and he spun, putting his back to me. My hands burned with the desire to go to him, settle my palm between his shoulder blades until he relaxed.

He wouldn’t want that from me.

Not now.

“I need a damn minute,” he finally said, and glared at me, freezing me to my spot. “You move a single goddamn inch before I get back out here, and I’ll hunt you down. You’re not leaving until we’re finished with this shit.”

He prowled toward his front door, and I jumped at the force of his slam.

“Well. Crap,” I muttered and took the time to close my eyes, use all those relaxation breathing techniques the therapist my parents forced on me tried to teach me.

They’d helped initially with panic attacks in large crowds but did little standing on Cole’s front porch, wanting to kick my own butt for how I handled this and more of Cole’s words sliding through me.

I was surviving.

Was it possible I’d gotten all of this so screwed up and wrong in my head this entire time?

* * *

Minutes passed and the step counter on my Apple phone increased to an obscene amount due to the pacing back and forth on his porch before his front door opened. Bongo, long since tired of my frantic back and forth walking, grew tired and collapsed onto the porch. I was on the far side of the porch when I heard the creek of the door, followed by the hinge squeaking on the storm door. Cole came out, hair wildly scrubbed and sticking in every which direction, holding two white coffee mugs.

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