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I let the shirts fall from my hands and grabbed his face between my palms. “I chose you, Leland. I will always choose you, no matter what.”
“You’ll resent me,” he whispered, bottom lip quivering.
“Never,” I vowed. “You are the best thing that has ever happened to me. Nothing is worth anything without you.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, his hands and eyes restless on my chest and face.
“I’m positive.” I kissed the corners of his trembling lips before giving in to my need to taste him. I explored his mouth with my tongue, taking my time while taking his breath and giving him mine. I reluctantly pulled away, returning his shy smile with a brazen smile of my own. “Did I pass the final test?”
He chuckled, eyes closing as if in prayer before reopening on a silent Amen. “Yes,” he said. “You passed them all.”
“Now, while you are my greatest reward, I still think I deserve a prize for passing. What have I earned?”
“Whatever you want. Just name it.”
“Trust,” I said easily. “I want you to finally trust me, Leelee Bear.”
“I will. From now until forever, I will,” he promised.
Chapter 40
Leland
The weatherman predicted rain all week, but what we got was a monsoon. It affected business, but I kept The Daisy open because it gave me something to do other than mourn my friendship with Cole. It had been two weeks since Franky had stormed his place. Jasper still hadn’t warmed up to the idea of forgiving him, but he and Cole had been able to reconcile since then. I, on the other hand, still hadn’t heard a peep from my friend.
I got lost in the rain spilling down outside as Franky began bussing the table of a departing party of three. He’d been here helping me as much as possible. Help I didn’t need, but I understood that he was concerned for me, so I let him hover.
“Watching the door won’t make him appear,” Franky said from across the room as he loaded the plates and cutlery into the bus bin.
“I know,” I said, shaking my head as if that small action might shake off the funk I’d been in. I turned to the liquor shelves behind the bar and began the menial task of making sure all labels faced forward. I dragged out the process and was able to distract myself for ten whole minutes.
I’d just made up my mind to close up for the day when the brass bells above the door chimed. I finished with the last bottle and spun around. “Welcome to…Cole,” I said with an exhale. He dumped his umbrella in the metal pail at the door, brushed the droplets of rain from his suit, then wordlessly took up a seat at the bar.
I got to work on his usual. Two fingers of gin and an order of fries with extra mayo. He hadn’t asked for it, but I hoped he’d feel obligated to stay and finish it. I’d have done anything to keep him in that seat.
“Your fries will be out in a minute.” I brandished a nervous smile, but he just squeezed his tumbler between his hands and watched me thoughtfully. In the background, Franky stood still as a statue, probably wondering if this would be a reconciliation or a fight. Cole hadn’t given him a hint on where things stood between us. When Franky had pried, Cole simply said he would find me when he was ready to.
It was one thing for him to find out his father was more imperfect than he’d already known, but another to learn that his best friend had been a complete stranger. I’d helped him through the most challenging time of his life, and he hadn’t even known that I’d played a vital role in the ugliest, hidden part of it. I’d betrayed him, and it had to have cut deep.
“Did you really get that scar on your leg from falling off of a dirt bike?” Cole asked. I couldn’t read him, and I didn’t know if honesty was the fastest way to get through to his heart or if it was the quickest way to send him running for the door. I wrung the bar towel between my hands.
“No,” I said, choosing honesty. “My mother threw me from an apartment window when I was eight.”
Cole averted his gaze, as if he didn’t want me to see the pain there, as if he hadn’t counted on my breaking through his icy exterior so soon.
“Why did you think you had to hide that from me?”
“It wasn’t you, Cole. There are things about me I don’t share with anyone, not even myself,” I said. I’d shared it with Franky, and Noon had known, too, but it was one of the things I’d put back in its box after Franky broke my heart. Telling Cole would’ve meant acknowledging the trauma all over again, and I’d had more than enough trauma to deal with at the time. But I’d more than willingly open that sealed box now if it meant earning his trust again.
“Who are you?” he asked achingly, and I had to grip the edge of the bar to keep from crumbling around the truth of it. “I feel like I could spend years sifting through all the lies and never crack the surface of who you really are.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, which of course would never be enough. He’d thought I was someone he could trust, and now he was likely going over everything I’d ever said to him, questioning fact from fiction. It had to be hard knowing you were the only one keeping it real the whole time, because even when I was forced to give him a deeper piece of me, that piece had always been watered down. “Not everything was a lie—”
“But it wasn’t the whole truth,” he said.
“No. It wasn’t. It couldn’t be.”
“And you were so good at keeping the heat off yourself, at giving me just enough, or barely enough, before turning things back to me, before being there for me. Our friendship has always been built around what you could do for me, Leland. Can’t you see how unfair that is?”
