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Every man nodded this time, until someone asked, so quietly the wind nearly swept his words away, “But what if that’s all we’ll ever do?”
Kev’s question landed like a blow, and Cole opened his mouth to ask—more like beg—Kev to elaborate, to let them in, give them a tiny hint about whatever was making him withdraw so hard it created a vacuum around him. A vacuum that was sucking Davis in too while she and Kev tiptoed around each other, the distance between them stretching farther and farther each day. But then his phone buzzed.
He silenced the call. And when his phone buzzed again, he wondered if he should answer it.What if it was Becks? Or Madigan? He’d sacrifice a big toe to put Madigan on speaker right now. Mad would know what to say. He’d know how to keep Kev talking.
Buzz, buzz, buzzzz.
“If you need to get that”—Tex pointed his chin at Cole’s shorts—“go ahead. We can keep things going here.”
Pushing himself up from his log, Cole said, “Sorry, guys. I’ll only be a second.” He turned away from the men, pulled his phone out of his pocket, and smiled at his screen. It wasn’t Madigan. It was Mira.
“Hey, sugar,” he said, keeping his tone light while the hairs on the back of his neck flicked up one by one. Mira hadn’t actually called him since he showed up in Red Falls, only texted. He wasn’t sure why, but these days, he always expected bad, or at least significant, news whenever anyone called him.
“Hi,” Mira said. “Are you busy?”
He glanced over his shoulder at the men, at Kev picking silently at his log again. Whatever the moment was, whatever Kev might have been about to say, it was over now. “I’m never too busy for you. What’s up?”
“Are you sure? I can call back. Are you with the guys? Are you working? Shit. You’re working, aren’t you?”
“I’m on a break. Is everything okay?” he asked, her rapid-fire speech doing nothing to restore his sense of calm.
“Yeah. Everything is good. Amazing, actually.”
“Funny,” he said, stepping farther away from the guys. “That’s exactly what I’ve been telling myself since I rolled back into town.”
When she laughed over the line, he was back in Seattle, lying in his bed, remembering how tightly he’d pressed his phone to his ear all night long so he wouldn’t miss a single word she’d said, a single breath. And while she told him about her call with the senator’s aide, he grinned so wide he probably earned a new wrinkle.
“It’s all because of you,” she told him. “If you hadn’t posted that reel, he never would have seen me.”
“Nah, sugar. That was all you. If you hadn’t done something so sweet for me, there wouldn’t have been a reel to post.”
“Is there any chance you might be free tonight?”
He ran his tongue over the tip of his left canine. “I mean, I’d planned on hitting you up after work.”
“Um, instead of getting laid, how does a night of pizza and cards sound?”
“Good?” he ventured, wondering if this was some sort of bizarre trick question. “I love pizza, and I’m great at cards.”
“We were going to celebrate tonight. And my mom wants, we all want, Ian too…and me.” She groaned, then said all at once, “Would you like to come over tonight for dinner and cards with me and my family?”
Either the sun chose that precise moment to break through the clouds, or it had always been shining down on him, and he’d only noticed it now. Either way, every inch of his skin warmed by a few degrees. “I’d love to.”
“You would?” She sounded genuinely surprised, which genuinely surprised him right back. Because how could she not see it? How could she not tell how far gone he was for her? It wasn’t like he was trying to hide it. Well, maybe a little. But that was only because he still wasn’t sure if she felt the same.
Despite how it looked, he really was trying to be more careful with his feelings, hold them closer to his chest instead of pinning them right out there on his sleeve. But while the guys were afraid of failing, Cole had whatever the exact opposite of that was. He was almost pathologically optimistic, diving headfirst off every cliff because there was no doubt the water would be deep enough, warm enough, safe enough.
He only had two weeks left in Red Falls, so of course he’d love to spend the night eating pizza and playing cards with Mira and her family. He’d spend an entire day sitting in uncomfortable plastic chairs at the DMV, getting two-for-one root canals, staring at taillights in never-ending rush hour traffic, anything, if it meant he’d be doing it next to her.
His head knew this was dangerous territory, that he was falling too hard, too fast. If he followed his craving for something real and lasting with Mira all the way through to the end like Tex had said, maybe he’d be able to see all the ways they wouldn’t work out, maybe he’d agree with her that they needed to keep things between them surface level. But his heart was incapable of looking into the future. It was too busy running to the edge of the nearest cliff and diving.
“What time do you want me, and what can I bring?”
CHAPTERTWENTY-NINE
MIRA
Renee,Senator Richardson’s daughter, had been somewhat vague on the phone about what she and her fiancé Amy wanted for their wedding cake. Aside from three tiers of lemon chiffon, they wanted it to look “Artsy, but not pretentious. Unique, but not annoying. Sweet, but not pretty.” When Mira had asked them to send her some pictures of the kinds of cakes they liked, Renee had told her, “We’ve looked on your website. We trust you. Have fun with it.”
