Page 14 of Not Before Game Night
Before I could reply he winked at me, tucked his hair behind his ear, and left. Left me staring after him.
I sighed with frustration. What the hell kind of a hell door did I walk through this week?
Chapter 4
Cole
* * *
Why didit feel so good to be bad?
Everything seemed to be on my side, making this little bet of mine with Denver so much easier than I thought it would be. I thanked my lucky stars when my PA, Trish, called me yesterday and told me about this little article the marketing agency wanted to do on me. It was so much the better when I found out that the person who would be doing it was none other than my dear Vanessa.
I had to agree with Denver and Matt that she played a mean game of hard to get. I really thought I’d reached some part of her when I made that comment to her the other night about her in my bed. I’d hoped it would break down that resolve of hers somehow.
But no, it did not. Not in the least bit. She was still uptight and still mad at my ass.
I saw it today, and truth be told, I could see that I really did hurt her way back when.
I knew I had and it was clear she still hung on to it. I also noticed from the disbelief on her face that she wasn’t buying my bullshit about ending up in jail because she’d been sixteen. I could almost read her mind as she’d wrinkled her nose at me. She didn’t believe me, and she was right not to. At the time, I was eighteen, and she was a day shy of seventeen. That, however, wouldn’t have stopped me.
So, what did stop me?
The truth, plain and simple, which no one would believe was this… I couldn’t do it.
I didn’t sleep with her because I was an asshole, and I wanted to sleep with her because I was an asshole. A double negative that left me in jeopardy. It was the look she’d given me. Filled with purity. And while I’d wanted nothing more than to dirty her up and pop her cherry, something stopped me. Something actually stopped me, and all these years, I’d always wondered what it would have been like to have her.
I’d find out sooner or later. My plan didn’t simply involve the night before the game; it was just included.
Tonight, though, my mind would be free of the outside world because I was spending the evening with the most important person in my world.
My mother.
Mom walked into the room with the paint supplies. “I swore I ordered the Tennessee red,” Mom said, shaking her head. “Can’t find it anywhere.”
Her Texan accent was always stronger when she was flustered.
“You sure you bought it? Maybe you just looked at it and didn’t get it.” She was famous for doing that, especially when it came to buying paint. She shopped online a lot because most of the colors she wanted had to be ordered in.
“Boy, don’t you make fun of your mother.” She chuckled, setting the paints down near the easels. One for me and one for her.
This was what we did when we got together.
Paint.
Mom was an artist. She sold a lot of her art in Europe, and before she got sick, she ran a very successful gallery.
I’d almost lost her a few years back. Another parent gone, and if I had lost her it would have been in close succession to Dad.
He died four years ago.
When I lost Dad, a part of me died. If I’d lost her, though, the world would have ended. For me, it would have just stopped.
I looked at her as she grabbed the paint brushes and smiled.
She still wore a scarf because she didn’t like her hair so short. I tried to tell her that she looked beautiful and many women wore their hair short, but she thought I was just being nice. Nice wasn’t me. She knew that. She was the nice one, and I never got my personality from her.
I got that from dear old Dad. Something else to claim in similarity.
