Page 85 of Offside Angle

I get up from my chair and make my way around the long table toward Cole.

Nico is sitting beside him, halfway through some conversation with Jace, but one look from me and a small tilt of my head is enough. His eyebrows lift with immediate understanding, then he picks up his drink and vacates the chair without making me ask.

I drop into it.

Cole turns toward me slowly.

“What?”

No greeting. Excellent start.

I meet his stare anyway. “Are you going to hate me forever?”

For a few seconds, he just looks at me. Then he exhales and leans back, some of the hostility finally draining out of his shoulders.

“Probably not,” he says. “But I’m not done yet.”

“Fair.”

At the other end of the table, Damian and Viktor are both pretending not to watch us. Neither of them is particularly convincing. Apparently after the locker-room incident, I now require supervision when seated within punching distance of Cole.

I lean closer and keep my voice down.

“Look, man. I fucked up with her. I know that.” Cole’s mouth tightens, but he lets me continue. “But what was I supposed to do once she figured it out? Lie to her? Tell her everything was fine and keep pretending until we both hated each other?”

Cole rolls his eyes and folds his arms over his chest. For a second I think he’s about to start another argument, but when he speaks again, the anger is quieter.

“It’s been a pain in my ass watching her mope.”

I wince.

“She’s not crying all day or refusing to eat or anything,” he adds. “She works. She talks. She yells at me when I annoy her, so structurally she’s still Lena.” His mouth twists. “But she’s quieter. You know how she is. Normally she walks into a room and somehow the whole fucking room knows she’s there. Now she just…” He shakes his head. “I don’t know. She’s not miserable. She’s just not as bright.”

That hurts exactly as much as he probably intends it to.

Then Cole looks at me properly, and something in his expression changes. “And you didn’t come to me.”

I frown.

“You didn’t tell me anything,” he continues. “You didn’t call me and say, ‘Hey, Hollywood, apparently my entire brain is on fire and I have no fucking clue what’s happening.’ You just went off and dealt with it by yourself.”

There’s still anger there, but now I can hear what’s underneath it.

“You acted like I wasn’t your friend,” he says. “Like I wouldn’t have had your back just because Lena’s my sister.”

Oh.

For days, I’ve assumed Cole was furious because I hurt Lena. And he is. Obviously. But the way he’s looking at me now makes it painfully clear that isn’t the only reason.

He’s hurt because I shut him out.

And the shitty part is, he’s right.

“I should’ve come to you,” I admit. “I know that now. I just…” I scrub a hand over my face. “I didn’t know how to say any of it. And honestly, I was scared of what you’d think.”

Cole stares at me. Then his eyebrows shoot up. “What the hell, man?” His voice comes out louder, and a few conversations around the table start dying. “When have I ever not had your back?” he demands. “Seriously. When have you ever come to me and said, ‘Cole, I did something incredibly fucking stupid,’ and I didn’t help you?”

I open my mouth, but nothing useful presents itself.