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His eyes have gone dark and hard. “Don’t mess with monsters, Janey. You never know what’ll happen.”
He’s doing the cold, hard, asshole thing again in an instant, trying to put up a big old brick wall between us, but I’ve already seen behind the curtain, Mr. Oz. Grinning, I reply, “You’re not a monster. You’re a grumpy Muppet at best. Like Oscar, the grouchy one in the trashcan, who always tries to scare everyone away but secretly likes people.” I place another quick peck to the end of his nose and grin wide, proud of myself for being right about Cole from the get-go.
He does a good job at creating a forcefield around himself, and most people don’t make the effort to pass it. But if you do, he’s an entirely different person deep, deep, deep down inside.
“I’m gonna shower, but thank you for breakfast. And thank you for going to the wedding with me. It means more than you could possibly know,” I tell him. I get up, reaching to take my coffee with me, but Cole moves faster.
I don’t know how I get there, but I’m suddenly backed against the cabinets and Cole is pressed against me, a hand gripping the counter on either side of my hips to lock me in the cage of his arms. I gasp, my hands finding their way to his chest.
“I’m not who you think I am,” he growls. And then his lips are on mine.
There’s no gentle touching, no tasting, and definitely no get-to-know-ya testing. Cole takes my mouth and my breath, roughly kissing me like I’ve never been kissed before. Actually, I don’t know that what I’ve done before qualifies as kissing now that I’m experiencing this all-consuming devouring. He tilts his head to the other side like he wants to have me every way he can, and I fight to keep up, wanting him as much as he apparently wants me.
He wants me?
I don’t know what flippy-floppy world I’ve entered, but I like it here and want to stay because believable or not, the proof is pressed between us. He can’t fake the thick, hard evidence that Cole Harrington wants me, Plainy Janey Williams.
But too soon, Cole groans and presses his forehead to mine, stopping the kiss. I can feel the heat of his breath on my lips, which seem puffier than they were a minute ago.
“Don’t see things that aren’t there in me, Janey.”
I think it’s supposed to be a warning, one of his shields going up between us, but I see him, the real him, and it’s not so scary. “Don’t be afraid to let me see everything,” I challenge.
Before he can protest, I duck out of his arms, heading down the hall to the bathroom.
I’m not sure if he’ll follow me to argue that I’m imagining his good-guy, ooey-gooey center. Or follow me to fuck me on the bathroom vanity. Or run from my unflinching view that everyone, including him, is good deep down. I’m kinda excited to see, though.
I hear the front door open and then close and have my answer.
CHAPTER8
COLE
“Breathe.In through your nose, two, three, four. Out through your mouth, two, three, four.” Janey stops talking to herself for a moment to actually do the breathing exercise, but after only one round, she goes back to her pep talk. “It’s gonna be fine. Lovely, even. We’ll walk in, say hello, and hug Mom, Dad, and Jessica. We’ll sit down and enjoy dinner.”
We’re driving into Bridgeport for Paisley’s rehearsal dinner, and Janey’s been freaking out all day. She took two showers, saying she needed to rewash her hair because ‘it wasn’t acting right’, but it looked beautiful to me both times. She has on makeup tonight, making her lashes dark and long, her cheeks extra pink, and her lips shiny. And her dress? Fuck me, her dress.
She walked out of the bathroom in bare feet and a dress that had all my blood running south in a heartbeat. I’m a complete sucker for one thing and one thing only... sundresses, and though it’s a fancy version, that’s what Janey chose to wear tonight.
It’s peach with tiny flowers all over and floppy ties at the shoulders that make me want to undo them and test gravity, and the hem falls to below her knees. She’d done a twirl and it’d flared out, tempting me with a peek of her knees. Her knees, for fuck’s sake. Knees I’ve seen all week in her shorts but that suddenly seemed newly interesting when she hid them away like there was a fresh mystery to find.
Oh, there’s a mystery under that dress I want to explore, but it’s not Janey’s knees. It’s higher, much higher.
Fuck, I sound like Kyle.
Get it together, Harrington!
Janey’s still itemizing things out like bullet points on a to-do list. She’s up to dessert and clapping politely through the toasts now. I do the same thing sometimes because it helps me feel in control when there’s a chance everything might go haywire, and I wonder if she’s doing it for similar reasons.
“Tell me about your parents and sister,” I demand as a way to distract her, another effective coping mechanism.
“Huh?” she utters, opening her eyes where I suspect she was visualizing tonight’s dinner as she talked it through. “Oh, yeah. The more info you have, the better this’ll go.”
Mom, Dad, and Jessica. That’s the sum total of Janey’s immediate family, and I want to know everything. Not because I need it to play the boyfriend role but because I want to know everything about Janey. And morbidly, the people who’ve hurt her. For no reason in particular... none at all.
“They’re the Three Musketeers, which left me on the outside, mostly. I completely understand why, though.” She sounds resigned to that reality, something I can’t agree with in the slightest. I harrumph in response, and she tries to convince me.
“My parents adopted my sister when she was barely two, basically saving her from the rough start at life she’d been born into. I was fourteen and through the worst of it with my family. I’d figured out that staying ‘out of sight, out of mind’ was my best bet, and I was already looking for the silver lining in literally everything by then. So when they brought home an adorable almost-toddler, I had this dream that we’d be sisters and Jessica would be my friend. I mean, I had friends at school and stuff—I wasn’t a total outcast, thank God—but not in my family, you know?”
