Page 48 of Thunderstruck
“Ouch.” Thankfully, he doesn’t seem too offended. His expression is more curious than anything.
“I’m just saying.” I hold my hands up in defense. “If you dated for that long and she never wanted to meet the man who raised you, maybe you should have questioned things.” And maybe I’m being too harsh, considering I’m the woman who didn’t question it when her boyfriend wanted to keep their relationship a secret fromeveryone.
“Huh.” Cole scratches his chin. “Maybe you’re right.”
“I’m always right. That’s definitely not true. But I’m right about this.”
He laughs again, and I’m so glad that he has relaxed after his panic attack. I should never have let him get behind the wheel in the first place, but now I know he wasn’t kidding when he said he gets severe anxiety while driving.
“Anyway,” he says, “because you are a beautiful, single woman, my family are unequivocally going to think we’re dating. And nothing I say will convince them otherwise.”
Beautiful. Telling myself to ignore that, I purse my lips as we both look at the house. It’s well maintained and surrounded by greenery, which feels out of place in LA but instantly makes me feel more at home than I have since coming to California. “What if I tell them there’s no chance I’ll ever be your girlfriend?” I ask, though the pit that forms in my stomach makes me wonder if I really mean that.
Cole shrugs. “They will try to talk you out of it. They don’t know we’re here, so if you don’t want to deal with a couple of old men telling you how gallant and handsome I am, I’m more than happy to have you take me home.”
“Not a chance. What else do I need to know?”
Cole’s smile warms the whole car, and I feel like I might combust. Hot dang, that’s a smile, and it might be the first full smile I’ve seen from him. It’s even better than the one he gave me at Derek’s house earlier this week.
That feels like ages ago.
“Gramps has apparently taken up kickboxing,” he says, still grinning. “And Dad will at some point wax long and poetic about my mom.”
“That’s adorable,” I say on a breath. “The mom part, not the kickboxing part. Though I think your grandpa doing kickboxing might be adorable too.”
“Nothing about Gramps is adorable.” Cole takes a deep breath as if gearing himself up for the next item on his list. “Both of them believe in the family curse as much as I do, no matter how many times they deny it, so it’s probably better if we avoid that topictonight.”
The curse. I agree with Freya when she said Cole is too smart to believe in something like that, but I saw the look in Cole’s eyes after we nearly crashed today. Real or not, the curse has him terrified of emotional intimacy. He’s so afraid that if he gets too close to someone, she’s going to die, which is why he never lets himself truly love anyone.
I gasp as a realization forms in my head. “Is that why you and Sage never got engaged?”
Cole’s thick eyebrows drop down. “What?”
Okay, yeah, I can’t blame him for being confused because he wasn’t following my thought process. I grab his hand as if the physical connection might let him see into my head. “Your curse. You were with Sage for so long but never got engaged. Because you didn’t want her to die!”
He opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. All the while staring at me with his dark eyes. They’re such a dark brown that when the sun isn’t shining on them, they look almost black. But they’re not black because when they’re in the sun they’re the color of the chocolate caramel sauce I was obsessed with at the ice cream parlor near my house in Philly.
Man, I miss that sauce.
“I don’t…” Cole frowns and looks down at our hands. “Maybe. Or maybe I saw all the red flags but refused to admit it to myself.”
“Mel and Moxie think she broke your heart.”
“She did.” But he presses his lips together, like he’s trying to understand something. His thumb brushes over the skin of my hand, rough but at the same time soft. His hand is so much bigger than mine, swallowing up my fingers. I’d bet if he pulled me into a hug, it would feel the same but on a full-body scale. That sounds incredibly nice. “But maybe it’s not as broken as I thought,” he murmurs.
What in the world isthatsupposed to mean?
A knock on Cole’s window makes us both jump and pull apart. An older man stands in the driveway, a wide smile stretching across his handsome face. His hair is peppered with gray, his skin lined with wrinkles,but I can’t decide if it’s Cole’s dad or grandpa because there’s so much life to him. For sure he’s one or the other because he looks so much like Cole.
Sighing, Cole pushes the door open. “Gramps.”
Dang, Gramps looks good for a seventy-five-year-old.
“Who is this little miss?” Gramps bends down to look past Cole and get a good look at me.
I smile, suddenly nervous. “Um, hi. I’m Carissa.”
“You’re Carissa.”
