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“Cole, you promised that you’d bring him back with you,” she hissed. “You promised. You blatantly lied to me, didn’t you?”
“No. I said I would try. Your father knew the risks.” Cole paced as he spoke. “He sees turning himself in as the only way to force Dobson’s hand. I happen to agree with him, even if I don’t like it. Do you think I wanted to leave him behind?”
“I don’t know what you want or don’t want,” she snapped. “All I know is that I had my dad back for a few hours and now he’s gone. For how long, Cole? Forever?”
He yanked his phone from his pocket and walked closer. “Here, we can track him with the GPS in his belt.” Cole enlarged the image. “He’s still at the base, right where I left him.”
“Great. Right where you left him—alone with a man who wants him dead. Job well done.” Her tone was snarky, but she had no desire to control it. “A blinking dot isn’t what I want. I want my father to be here. I want him to hold his grandson, dammit.”
“Listen,” Cole said. “Being on the base is a good thing under these circumstances.”
“What?” She checked the level of her voice at the last second. “What are you talking about?”
Cole grimaced, knowing she wasn’t going to like his answer. But he needed to be honest with her. “Dobson wants information from your father. And he’s probably going to use…aggressive means to get it. But there are limits to what he can do at the base. There are too many people around, and Dobson can’t afford to draw any attention to himself. Since they’re still on the base, Edwin is safe for the moment.”
“The moment,” she repeated. “I want more thanthe moment.”
“I get that, but your father knows how much is at stake here. You need to look at it that way. See the big picture. If Dobson goes unchecked, more SEAL missions will be in jeopardy. More lives lost, Kels. I know you don’t want to see that this was the only way, but you’ve got to. Edwin made a tough choice, but it was the right one.”
“And you let him.” If she were being fair, she’d acknowledge that no one could control her father’s behavior. He did what he thought was right. Always. She’d known that to be true even when she was a small child. He chose duty and justice over everything else—including her—time and again. Cole was doing the same damn thing, and something in her just snapped. Call it panic, fear, or pain. She’d had enough of these men dictating how things were, leaving her to face the consequences without them. Cole was no better than her father in that way.
“This just proves that I can’t rely on you.Wecan’t rely on you,” she said, intentionally choosing words that would hurt him. “Just like when I told you that I was pregnant, and you chose to walk out on us. On me when I needed you. I thought I could depend on you through all of this, but I was wrong. You always let me down in the end.”
“Kels…” He was looking at her, his face full of anguish, but she couldn’t stop.
“We’re done,” she declared. “Done. Do you understand me? Because I can’t…I just can’t.”
“Do I get a say?” He strode closer to her, but she backed away.
“Did I get a say when the door shut behind you last December?” Her voice had risen. She was angrier than she could ever remember being. Angry, hurt, and on the verge of an ugly cry.
“You as much as told me to go,” he shot back. “You made it clear that you didn’t need me. Ever.” He paused, his jaw tightening as they glared at each other. More than a minute must have passed before he continued. “If you’re going to throw that back in my face every time we argue, I guess wearedone. I knew it would go like this—that if I tried to commit, it would just find some way to blow up in my face. I should have stuck to my guns and just not gotten involved at all.”
Sothatwas what he’d been keeping from her all this time. The reason he kept things casual—it was because he didn’t believe in lasting relationships after all. How foolish of her to have hoped for more. She straightened her shoulders but didn’t trust herself to speak. Hurt and fear were overcoming anger, and she had to fight to prevent her chin from wobbling. She’d let herself fantasize that they might have a future together, but that wasn’t going to happen. She’d known on the day of the parking lot attack that she’d let her guard down too much. It was time to build the gates around her heart again.
Ending it between them once and for all was for the best. She waited for him to walk away, like he always did, but before he could turn to go, Eddy’s cry came from overhead.
“I’ll get him,” Cole said. “I want to spend time with him while I can.”
He was up the stairs before she could respond, but she didn’t miss the jab. It felt like a punch to the gut. She wanted to double over with the pain that pounded inside her. Her heart was heavy with worry for her father and regrets about her relationship with Cole. She wanted to sink down on the couch, drop her face in her hands and cry, but she needed to be alone first. She dashed upstairs to the room she’d claimed as her own when they arrived at the safe house, closed and locked the door.
Tears began to flow down her cheeks, so she threw herself on the bed and buried her face in the pillow, trying to stifle the sound of her sobs since Cole was with Eddy in the next room.
Finally, when she couldn’t cry anymore, she rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. She gave a shuddery sigh and closed her eyes, searching for some sense of peace. She slowed her breathing and tried some meditation techniques she’d learned during pregnancy when she was trying to manage the symptoms of morning sickness. As she took air in and slowly let it out, her heart rate calmed, and her body stilled. This was…better.
She should have been focusing on the inside, but she could hear Cole’s voice through the baby monitor on her nightstand. He was talking to Eddy. His voice was soothing, and she got caught in the cadence of it for a minute. Then she realized what he was saying to their child.
“Time for a guy talk, little man. I know you’re young, but here it is. Confession time. Things aren’t working out for me and your mom. I’ll admit, some of that is my fault—especially the fact that I wasn’t here for you earlier. You see, I didn’t know what it would be like to be your daddy. I didn’t know how much I wanted that until I met you. I’m sorry about that, Eddy, but I can’t go back and change it. And because of that, I’ve got to accept that she’s not going to trust me again. Just like I’ve never really been able to trust in commitment since I got my heart broken years ago.”
Eddy gurgled. It was a happy sound, incongruous with the moment, but the baby was just excited to be with his father. Kelsey squeezed her eyes shut, but she couldn’t stop listening—especially since this was new information to her. Cole had never told her anything about his past relationships.
“She was a girl I met while I was at the Naval Academy. I thought I’d found the real thing—that we were in love and would be together forever, like my parents. But when I came back from my deployment and found her with another guy, I realized what a fool I’d been. She told me she’d been cheating on me all along, right from the start, and I’d had no idea. I’d wanted to believe in our love so much that I closed my eyes to what was really happening around me. And if I could be that blind once, what was to keep it from happening again?”
Eddy blew raspberries and Cole responded as if the baby had said something very wise. “Good point, kiddo. I never should have thrown myself into a relationship like that. That’s why I decided it would be smarter to avoid commitment altogether. But that also meant I walked away from you, which might have been the biggest mistake of my life,” Cole continued. “I’ve got to be part of your life somehow. I know it’s not going to be perfect, and I’m going to come and go. I’ll give you whatever time I can. I’m so sorry it took me this long to figure all this out.” There was a hesitation. “And I wish I’d have remembered that when I was fighting with your mother just now. I care about both of you so much. I don’t know how I’m going to be away from either of you.”
Kelsey cared about Cole, too. She couldn’t deny that, but was it enough to get past this roadblock? She didn’t see how.
Cole started humming then, a sound that had put Eddy to sleep other days. Kelsey let herself relax at the sound of it, too. All the fight was out of her, the emotions still stirred, but she was wrung out, exhausted from it. Maybe if she slept for just a few minutes, things would look better when she woke. Her father would still be gone, and she and Cole would still be…never mind. She couldn’t go there. Sleep was what she needed. She drifted off.
