Page 61 of Beautiful Scars

Chapter 15

CILLIAN

His hands are on her.

His fucking hands are touching her and I don’t like it.

I don’t like anything about this situation. I thought I was prepared for it. I thought I knew what would happen—it’s happened many times before. The moment a girl, any girl, realizes there’re two of us. Realizes she could take her pick. She could have either. Maybe she could have both at once? That’s always a lip-biting moment before her hopes of a threesome are dashed and she chooses Cole because, hey, at least Cole was up for it, right?

I knew that would happen and I told myself I wouldn’t care.

Business. That’s what it is. That’s all it ever can be.

When I came in and found her playing in her little fort. Fuck. There is no denying that was adorable as shit. And I’m not a man who finds things adorable but for whatever reason, she amuses me. She makes me forget, temporarily, that I have to be switched off. That everything needs to be black and white.

Lying in that stupid fucking fort with her I started to think maybe gray wasn’t so bad. Let’s face it, there was nothing appropriate about the thoughts I was having. There’s nothing appropriate about any of this. We’re chalk and fucking cheese. She’s immature and some fucked up mix of bratty and innocent… pampered as a princess but somehow still broken. She giggles and she cries, and she does both like she means them. And me? I constantly feel like an old man at the end of his life, a tired, used-up war veteran just begging to catch pneumonia or some shit so I don’t need to wake up and keep my own conscience in a box.

Meisie has nightmares? I don’t even dream.

Meisie acts like a child? I don’t even know what being a child means.

We don’t mix.

We’re not suited.

We shouldn’t work.

She should hate me. And when she straight-up refused to be reasonable, rejected me again… I guess it hurt because it gave me my answer clearer than the kick in the balls she provided for good measure. Shedidhate me. She knew deep down we wouldn’t work.

So I came here, and I told myself it wouldn’t matter if she looked at Cole the same way she looks at me. Like she’s scared but intrigued. Like she doesn’t know if she wants to fuck me or run away from me.

I told myself I wouldn’t care.

But she’s not looking at Cole like that.

Not at all.

She’s looking at Cole like she’s seeing him, clearly, for what he is.

And that’s the first time I’ve ever witnessed anyone looking at him like that.

How can I refuse to care when she’s the first girl, ever, to look at Cole and not just see a better, less-empty, version of me?

“Cole.” I glance at his hand.

It takes him too long to tear his eyes away from Meisie’s face. I don’t like that either.

When he finally sets his eyes back on me, I can see there are a thousand things running through his mind. Cole has too many feelings and he’s not good at keeping them from showing on his face, especially from me.

He knows.

I watch him fitting the pieces together in his mind like a jigsaw puzzle. There have only ever been two pieces. Two identical pieces, except they’re mirrors, and they fit together perfectly. But there’s another piece now. He can probably sense it better than me, because even now I’m still trying to deny it even exists. But it does. It’s standing beside me and clutching little fingers onto the back of my thigh.

There’s a third piece, and this one doesn’t fit into our puzzle.

The look in each of our eyes says we both know it.

It’s what he’ll do with that knowledge that I can’t begin to figure out.