Page 63 of Thunderstruck
“Unfortunately,” he grumbles. “Fine. You can come to my place for lunch, and then you can join me at Derek’s. As long as you promise to stop looking at me like that.”
Though I’m doing my best to keep my focus on the road, I can’t help but grin at him. “Like what?”
“Like you want me to do what I almost did in the dark.” He may be grumbling, but everything about his expression is telling me he wants the same thing.
I turn up the AC and lock both hands around the steering wheel. “How did this happen?” I ask.
“What?”
I move my hand through the space between us, returning it to the steering wheel before it gets any ideas. “This. You and me. You hated me just a few days ago.”
“I didn’t hate you. I was wary. And we’ve had this conversation before.”
“Not like this.” Against my will, my hand moves to the console between us.
Cole looks at it for only a second before he reaches over and tucks his fingers between mine. “You’re right,” he murmurs. “This is different. And I don’t know how it happened. I didn’t think I could…”
He trails off, leaving a thick silence between us.
I focus on the way his thumb brushes along mine, how his hand feels so natural. I’m far too comfortable with our current situation, so I find the best way to break the building tension. “Did you love Sage?”
His eyes flit over to me for only a second before returning to the road ahead. “Yeah. I wanted to marry her.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I didn’t want her to get hurt.” There’s more to his answer—I can practically feel it—so I keep quiet until he adds, “And maybe we weren’t as good together as I thought.”
A lot of articles from a couple of years ago called them “The Perfect Pair,” like they had been designed for each other. Was that the glamorization of the media because she was beautiful and mature and elegant? Every picture I saw of the two of them made them both look so majestic. Cole was always in some sort of suit or his football uniform, and Sage always wore a sparkling dress or a girlboss pantsuit. I doubt she ever wore sweats or a tank top with a unicorn on it.
It’s weird, though. I can’t picture Cole living in the spotlight like the articles all said he used to. Yeah, he was a celebrated quarterback who made bank because of his skills, but this man next to me is something different. He’s understated and down to earth. Humble and caring.
We reach his house long before I’m ready to say goodnight to him, but it’s for the best that we get at least a few hours apart. Something changed when I held him during the game, and I don’t know if we can go backward.
“Tomorrow?” Cole asks, turning his head to give me a small smile.
My smile is much wider, but I doubt it does to him what his smile does to me. I doubt my smile feels like a bolt of lightning straight to the chest. “Tomorrow,” I agree. “I’ll be thinking about you all night.” The blood drains from my face. “Wait! I mean I’ll be thinking about rules because we very much need them and…” I drop my face into my hand. “Wow, that came out so wrong.”
Cole’s hand wraps around my wrist, pulling my hand free, and I turn to him just as he presses a warm kiss to my cheek. “I’ll be thinking about you too,” he says and slips out of the car to head inside.
Yeah, we’re in trouble.
Chapter Eighteen
Cole
I feel like anidiot. A teenage idiot full of hormones as he waits for his longtime crush to show up for a study session set up solely to get some time alone with her. Not that I’m speaking from experience…
Though I generally consider myself a neat person, I spend Sunday morning deep cleaning my house. I order a grocery delivery with way more food than I could eat in a week—and I can eat a lot. I spend nearly an hour in the shower, both to ensure I am fully clean and because I have a stern conversation with myself about setting boundaries andstickingto them, which has never been a problem for me before.
But when Carissa rings my doorbell and greets me while wearing a flowery pink sundress that accentuates the blush of her cheeks, I’m ready to throw those boundaries out the window.
“Hi,” she says with a warm smile.
I think I smile back, but I’m not fully in control of my faculties at the moment. She doesn’t look any different than she did the last time she was at Derek’s, but something about Carissa in a dress has me stunned. Overcome.
She points a finger at me. “You’d better stop that, Coleman Evanson.”
“Stop what?” I manage to say.
