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I folded my arms on top of my desk. “Does that mean it’s handled?”
Cooper leaned back in his chair and stared at me for a moment.
I sighed. “Come on, Coop. Don’t make me beg for information.”
He cleared his throat and his expression darkened. It was clear he didn’t want to talk about it—but if he expected me to let it go and move on, he needed to bring me up to date. As much as I was resistant to share my secrets, Cooper was just as reluctant to share just about…anything.
“I told you I’d take care of it, Allison. Why can’t you just trust me on this?”
“What did you do?”
Cooper stood and paced the three steps away from my desk, headed for the door. “You know, I came down here to take you out to a nice dinner. Things have been so fucked up lately—I really wanted to just unplug from all of that tonight.”
He had a point. We’d spent the past few weeks so consumed with gathering evidence and having meetings with lawyers and investigators. Any free time not spent working on the case, was used up with the overhauling of Plush and transforming it into a new, all-natural company, which was a deeply satisfying project, but also exhausting. By the end of the day, we were both too wiped out on every possible level to focus on our new relationship and the next steps we wanted to take.
On top of the physical and mental exhaustion, my spare moments turned into combating the dark thoughts related to the trial, which then depleted my emotional capacity, leaving no room for even daydreaming about Cooper and the merging of our lives.
It was all a big, tangled clusterfuck.
“Cooper, wait!” I pleaded, right as his hand hit the lever on the door. He turned around and I got up from my desk and went to join him by the door. The office outside was nearly abandoned as it was well past seven o’clock, and I let myself melt against his chest. “I’m sorry,” I breathed. The faint scent of his cologne reassured me as he wrapped his arms around me and held me tight, as though he’d been waiting all day to hold me.
“You don’t have to be sorry, baby.”
“I am though. I know you’re only trying to cheer me up and take my mind off the stress, but it’s hard for me to set everything aside. It’s not the flick of a switch, you know?” I looked up, resting my chin against his firm chest, and he nodded.
“Tell you what,” he started. He ran his hands down my sides and grabbed a hand in each of his. “I promise to tell you all about it tomorrow. But tonight, it’s just you and me. Okay?”
A glimmer of seduction sparked in his eyes and I knew, without words, exactly what he was thinking. A slow smile spread across my face and I licked my lips to let him know his message had been received. Loud and clear. “Sounds pretty perfect. You and me.”
We froze in a beat of silence, savoring the words, before Cooper tugged me back into his arms. “Good. Now, let’s get out of here,” he growled into my ear.
* * * *
The night with Cooper unlocked the pent-up stress and worry in my heart, and although I never pressed him for details, the next day the emails and phone calls relating to the trial all stopped pouring in, and as I archived the old emails and messages, I ordered myself to let it all go. As the rest of the week went on, the pressure that had built up inside of me over endless thinking and stressing about the trial finally erased and I felt more myself than I had in over a month. By the middle of the week, my mood improved enough to attend the in-office birthday party for Sammy, one of the newest team members in the IT department. Since my office was still located in the IT department, I’d built relationships with all my co-workers in that department during my frequent coffee and snack breaks, and had gotten to know the new girl well enough to organize a miniature party for her twenty-fifth birthday.
By half past three, I’d gathered the entire floor into the break room and had people on either side of me as I presented the cake lit with sparklers. The group was three bars into a very pitchy rendition of the birthday song, when my phone buzzed in my pocket. I ignored it and sang along, but the buzzing wouldn’t stop, so I pulled it out of my pocket to see who was blowing up my phone. I was surprised to see my mom’s name flashing at the top of the screen. She’d called three times already, and was beginning her fourth call, by the time I was able to break free of the pack and answer the phone.
“Mom?”
“Allie! Thank God!” Her voice was high and hysterical.
My body tensed as I took a few more steps out of the kitchen where the singing was on a crescendo towards the end of the song. “Mom? What’s going on? Is everything okay?”
“—I didn’t know what else to…the accident…”
“Mom, hold up,” I raced down the hall, plugging my opposite ear to muffle the singing and cheering from the break room. “What did you say?”
“Your father has had a heart attack.”
All the air left my lungs like a popped balloon. I crashed into the nearest wall, the words ringing in my ears. “What?” I gasped, gripping the phone so tight I didn’t miss a word.
“He—he was…” My mom’s voice broke and there was a pause that stretched out forever as I waited for her to be able to continue.
“Mom?”
There was a flurry of rustling sounds and then a new voice answered, “Allie? It’s Ben.”
“Ben!” My older brother’s face popped into my head and a warm relief surrounded the bubble of panic in my chest. Ben was there. Everything was going to be okay.
