Page 83 of Cole

He studied my face, nodding to himself. “I really shouldn’t, should I?”

I shook my head, the dark abyss of sleep calling my name. I needed to close my eyes again, just for a second. I was home, and safe. Cole was here. My nervous system was ready to shut down and rest.

“Kiki told me what a ladies’ man you are, and how she was finally getting her chance with you…” I trailed off. It felt good to get that little poisoned thorn out of my throat, where it had been caught since the night at the diner.

“Hmm, is that right? Maybe I’m not the only one who’s gullible around here. There is no me and Kiki. There is no me and anyone.”

I smiled through my delirium. “Except me.”

I let my eyes drift closed, promising myself it would only be for a moment. Cole was here and I wanted to talk to him. I needed to explain myself properly. I needed him to hear it.

His voice rumbled near my ear, words so quiet I wasn’t sure they were real.

“Except you.”

I needed to hold onto those words, and the fact that I wasn’t alone in the way I was feeling. He’d felt it too. He’d felt it. I lost track of how much time had passed as I rolled that whisper around in my head, but when I opened my eyes again, I was alone.

He was gone.

twenty-seven

COLE

The door to the visiting room opened and prisoners flooded in and sat down. In the years that I’d been going to visit my father in jail, it had never gotten less depressing.

I’d been coming to sit in this room for the better part of a decade, my own future staring me right in the eye. Ten fucking years. It had only gotten harder.

My father came in and sat down. He’d adjusted to jail. He seemed at home here these days, strangely.

“Cole, my boy. This is an unexpected surprise.”

“Is it?” I wondered.

He smirked. “Errol told me things went sideways. That was a big deal, Cole. You can’t afford to make errors. You don’t make your payments, then someone could pay the price.”

“I accept whatever price needs to be paid.”

“Except you won’t pay it. Someone else will. They always make someone else pay it. Someone you care about a damn sight more than yourself.”

I’d known he’d say that. Of course, it was the same fearmongering I’d lived with my entire life.

I scratched my jaw and looked up at the ceiling.

“Did you ever think there was more to life than this? Like, what life would have been like if you’d just become a plumber or something?”

My father shrugged nonchalantly. “I’ve never been any good at anything other than this.”

Considering he was in jail right now and looked to be for the foreseeable future, that was a sobering thought.

I watched a man next to us, a hardened felon, wipe tears away as he watched his little girl chatter away on his knee.

Was there anything more painful in this life than regrets?

“Maybe I could have been,” I muttered.

My father frowned at me. “Been what?”

I hadn’t realized he was even listening.