Ronnie had never been to Nashville; it was all Will. He had moved here, uprooted his life temporarily, in order to avenge Judd’s death. A death that I felt sad for and still wasn’t sure I could say I was blameless for.
“Stop thinking about it,” Cooper scolded me from his seat.
“It’s hard not to, Coop,” I replied. “It’s so very hard to let it go.”
“Yeah, I know how you are about letting thingsgo,” he muttered.
“Just tell me,” I said softly. “You’ve helped me, you held me as I lay beaten and bloody, you’ve been here every day — just tell me what happened in the library. It may not matter anymore, I mean, despite everything I know . . . what you’ve done for me, I’m thinking youmaybe an okay guy.”
Cooper looked at me for a long moment. “Well, that just emphasizes how fucked up we both are.” His head tipped back again, and I thought he wasn’t going to talk anymore. “She wanted a Devil.”
“The girl in the library?”
“Yes, she wanted to get fucked by a Devil, didn’t care who it was or where it was.” He let out a long sigh. “I was actually studying, and I must have fallen asleep. I woke up to hands trying to tug my jeans down as I had my head on the fucking desk. I jumped back. She says I kicked her, maybe I did, but she shouldn’t have been under the fucking table trying to suck my dick.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah,oh. I stood up, still not really sure what was happening, and this bitch crawls out from under the table. All eager and desperate.” Cooper glanced at me. “I don’t like desperate. I asked her what she was doing, and when she realized that she wasn’t getting any Devil that night, she started to cry.” He rubbed his hand over his forehead tiredly. “When she saw tears don’t work on me, she cried harder and told me I’d kicked her.”
“Which is when I turned up.”
“Which is when you turned up,” he confirmed. “And saw a Devil and a crying girl and made the assumption it was obviously me that was in the wrong.”
“You made a bet for your friend to have sex with me,” I told him quietly. “I’m not going to apologize for thinking the worst of you back then.”
“Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?”
The sincerity of his tone contradicted the gleam in his eye. “You’re so full of shit, Coop,” I told him. “There is nothing innocent about you.”
“True,” he said honestly. “But I never touched that girl.”
“I believe you,” I admitted softly. “I do,” I reiterated when I saw his reaction, doubt clearly stamped all over him.
A few hours later, Brenna chased him out, and he left grumbling about nurses with too much authority on a power trip, and she beamed at his back as he left, delighted she had wound him up.
“Will he be back tomorrow?” The expectation in her voice told me she wanted him to be.
“I imagine so.” He’d been my one constant visitor.
“Good, he can take you home,” she said with a flourish.
“For real?”
“Yes, should I go catch him, let him know?” she asked.
I shook my head. “No, it’s fine.”
“Is there someone else you want me to call to come and get you?”
Yes.
“No, I’m fine. Cooper will do it.”
“Okay, so,” she made a drum roll sound, “chicken or pasta for dinner?”
“It’s chicken pasta again, isn’t it?”
Brenna lost her smile. “Yeah, but tonight, there’s chocolate pudding.”
“Well, in that case, roll it on in.”
Her light laugh followed her out the door, and my smile faded. One more night of pretending I was fine, and then I could go home, back to reality.
