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He focused on the gun first, and a harsh bark of a laugh jumped from his mouth. “Another pink fucking gun. Jesus Christ, I’m gonna go out getting shot by a fucking pink gun, huh?” He spread his arms wide and took a step back, off the porch and onto the gravel. “You know what? Fine. Fuckingdoit. Put an end to this bullshit right here and now. And make sure they put it on my tombstone that I got done by a pink fucking pop gun.”
His little rant threw Siena a bit. She barely knew him, but even so, that kind of fatalism didn’t jive with the little she did know. She’d figured him for a party boy, a typical notches-on-the-bedpost player, unserious and unflappable, turning everything into a joke.
His stupid and fucking typical obsession with the state of her chest jived very well with what she knew of him. This bitter despondency did not.
Actually, he lookedtired, not pissed.
She lowered the pistol and asked again, her tone calmer this time, “What do you want, Cooper?”
He dropped his arms and lowered his head. After a second or two, he looked up again. Now his exhaustion was unmistakable.
“I came over to apologize. I said something shitty and it obviously really fucked with you. I’m sorry.”
“That happened over a week ago. You’re just sorry now?” She was aware that it had taken her even longer to apologize for thinking he was up to no good with Geneva, but that wasn’t the point right now.
Apparently, he’d had the same thought. “Seems like neither of us is good at apologizing.”
He didn’t smile. She would have expected him to try some charm, but clearly he was fresh out.
Siena wasn’t especially charming on her best day, so she didn’t bother to apply a smile, either. “I guess not.”
“I don’t want open war with my next-door neighbor. I don’t care if you like me, we don’t need to be friends, but can we get to a place where we can, you know, fuckingwaveat each other when we’re out front at the same time? It’d be cool if I could live my life without worrying you weren’t over here plotting my destruction.”
“I’m not plotting your destruction, Cooper. I just don’t like you.”
Now he smiled, without a drop of good humor. She could imagine him smiling like that at someone he meant to hurt. It wasn’t hard to imagine him hurting people, either. Not only had she seen with her own eyes him bring down a larger, angry man and not break a sweat doing it, but she’d seen him in his kutte often enough to know that not only was he a member of the new biker gang, he was their president.
Of course he hurt people, and he probably grinned just like that before he did it.
“Ditto,” he said. “How about a truce? We exist side by side and don’t bother each other. Our driveways can be our own personal DMZ.”
“DMZ?”
“Demilitarized zone. Like between North and South Korea.”
Now she felt stupid. “Oh right, yeah. I get it.”
When he stood there, looking at her like he was waiting for her to do something, Siena finally registered that hewaswaiting for her to do something.
In some ways, this encounter was more stressful than any they’d yet had. Not because she felt threatened, but because he was acting so much differently from the expectations she’d formed of him. He was tired and tense, maybe even depressed, and she would have said he was one of those guys who never let anything get to them.
She hated guys like that; they were soshallow. Scratch the surface of any ‘YOLO’ dude and find an overgrown frat boy who hadn’t had a thought for another person in his whole life.
Cooper the overgrown frat boy was pretty easy to write off. She’d been badly hurt by what he’d said, when he’d said it, but it was an uncomplicated hurt—an asshole had been an asshole, end of story. Moreover, she’d recognized that, removing her particular situation from the equation, a situation he couldn’t know about, he’d been obnoxious but not really cruel. It was a shitty thing to say any way it was sliced, but her hurt was probably more acute than a woman who hadn’t had a preventative bilateral mastectomy and hysterectomy would feel. Still, she was that woman, and he really had hurt her.
The version of Cooper standing before her in the dark now, though ... it made her curious, maybe. She felt a little bit of compassion, maybe even concern for him. Or maybe her mama bear setting was so activated for Geneva these days that she was starting to feel it indiscriminately.
Her greatest impulse right now was to ask him what was wrong. But holy shit, no. No way would she give him any further opening to get close enough to hurt her. Not even the tiniest crack of suggested interest.
So she simply said, “Okay. A truce.”
Something in Cooper’s stance relaxed a fraction, and a more natural smile started forming on his face. His arm moved, and Siena realized he meant to step back onto the porch and offer his hand to, she supposed, shake on the ‘deal.’
She didn’t want him coming closer, and she didn’t want him touching her.
“Good night, Cooper,” she said and closed the door in his face.
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