CHAPTER ELEVEN

Fuck.

Cole’s stomach was a writhing mass of knots as he stood there, not quite in the room and not beyond it. The heat from within beat at his front while the cool night air buffeted him from behind, the music swirling with a looming sort of silence and leaving a cacophony inside his mind. A precipice, then, and he had but to take a single step to either side.

Or to wait.

Pale skin glowing in the dim light, hair golden, Serena approached him, and there was a new sort of stillness to her that only served to set the waiting pieces in him further on edge. The resolve to her gait made him quake.

The things this woman set into motion in him—the things he felt whenever she was near. They were foreign and familiar, a possessiveness he never thought he’d ever feel again. A hunger and a need, and not just for her body. He needed her.

And it was that that made him grip his crutches tighter. Take a single, torturous step back.

The fierce pang squeezing like a vise around his heart—the sick jealousy when she’d so much as looked at another man. His laughter hurt like a sob. The very signs of how he hungered were themselves the reasons he couldn’t have her. He ruined everything he touched, and he wouldn’t do that to her. Even if it meant never coming close to her again.

But with that same assuredness smoothing her gait, she pursued him, a relentless march that ate up the space and drove him farther back onto the balcony. A gust of wind blew through his hair, and the notes of yet another old jazz standard went muffled and low.

Then she was standing just where he had been, on that very same dividing line. She surged across it like it wasn’t even there, inserting herself into his space and into his life.

His resistance crumpled. But whatever words she’d been about to say seemed to die on her lips.

He turned away.

With his heart echoing through his ribs, he made his way to the railing and looked over. They weren’t particularly high off the ground—just a couple of stories. The city below pulsed, though, teeming with life, while up here, for just a moment, all was still.

Until Serena came to stand at his side. She was a silent presence in a clear and brilliant night. As he turned his head, she stole his breath from his lungs. God, she was beautiful.

And she was shaking.

It was nothing this time to shift his weight to one side, to lean his crutches against the railing. He shrugged off his jacket and held it out for her.

For what felt like eons, she stared at him. At long last, she turned to give him her back. His throat bobbed as she slipped her arms into the sleeves. He settled the fabric on her shoulders, her body swimming beneath those tailored lines, and his blood flashed hot.

“Serena.” Her name felt punched out of him, a breath pulled from his very lungs. He slid his hands down her arms. Just the tips of her fingers poked out from beneath his sleeves, but when he reached them, they were nimble and strong, grasping at his palms. She drew his arms around her until he was holding her, and it was all wrong. He was barely standing, off balance even without the heat of her spine pressed to her chest, even before the scent of her hair was in his lungs. He closed his eyes. “Serena.”

“Dance with me?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know if I can.”

“There’s only one way to find out.”

She spun inside his arms, a slow half-circle that gave him every opportunity to pull back or push her away, but he didn’t. Damn him—damn his soul and his heart and this whisper of life she’d breathed into him.

The music was faint, but the pulse of it hummed through the floor of the balcony, steady enough to sway to. He winced, putting too much weight on his bad leg, and what had he been thinking? But all she did was reach to the side. She handed him a single crutch. It was a near-physical pain to unwrap his arm from around her waist. But he could stand like this. He could hold her with what fraction of himself there was to give. He could hold himself up against the force of gravity and memory.

She lifted her face to his.

They were alone on this little balcony, in this tiny pocket of time and space, and she fit so perfectly against him. He dipped in closer, and her eyes fluttered, long lashes dark against the porcelain of her skin.

The music changed.

He pulled away like he’d been burned.

His knee screamed at him as loudly as his heart did, his skin that had been aching for contact for years.

But the last time he’d danced, it had been to this song. He couldn’t breathe.

“Cole?”

He shook his head, throwing his free hand out in a warning. She couldn’t touch him—he couldn’t stand to have her near. He couldn’t do this.

“Cole?” She said his name again, and it felt like bones snapping, like blood seeping out onto snow.

“No,” he breathed. The floor spun beneath his feet, and he listed wildly. She put a hand on his arm, and red washed across his vision. He flailed out, striking at nothing. He needed air, needed time, needed years. His hand connected with the metal strut of his other crutch and he got it under him, not seeing, barely hearing. His leg was a dense ache, but he surged across the floor. The door was right there. He just had to get through it, and everything would be fine; he’d be alone and fine and safe and miserable and—

And her voice rang out across the distance and the space. “Don’t you dare walk away from me again.”

He lurched to a stop, everything going suddenly, shatteringly still. He’d heard those words before.

Frozen, he stood at the boundary between two worlds, seeing double, two women’s voices echoing back and forth across the line.

That last night—he’d tried so hard not to let the anger that lived inside him take him over. He knew all the tricks. Disengage and walk away, but Helen had been hysterical. She’d stopped him, and he’d let her, damn it all.

It wasn’t anger fueling him now, but it didn’t matter.

“I can’t,” he gritted out.

“You can’t what? Jesus, Cole. You touch me and you walk away, and you act like you’re dying when I dance with another guy, and then when I try—” Her throat made a wet, aching sound. “You can’t. Maybe I can’t, either. I can’t keep doing this with you.”

“Then don’t.”

If she walked away from him, then he wouldn’t have to be the one to turn away from her. It would hurt him like only one thing in his life ever had before, but he’d let her go.

It’d be for the best.

But then she was so close. Her heat seeped through the thin fabric of his shirt, the searing brand of her palm at the base of his spine.

“I’ve been trying,” she said, and it came out small but fierce. “To get to know you. And you let me in in these little dribs and drabs. I think you want to give me the rest of it, too. I don’t think you want me to go.”

It was the last thing he wanted in the world. Denial sat on his lips, but the lie was too much for him to bear. He kept his silence, biting down on his tongue until he tasted blood.

“So let me in.” She trailed her fingers up his spine, melting him another fraction with every inch she climbed.

“I don’t know how.”

“I’ll show you.”

She would, wouldn’t she? With tender hands and gentle care, she’d open him up. She’d carve out room for herself in the frozen wasteland of his heart.

But the music was still playing, the hurt still too large and too impossible of a thing inside his chest.

He shook his head. With a hitching breath, she tore her hand away, but that only made it worse. Gripping his crutches tighter, he turned around. He met eyes that were shuttering, his chance evaporating.

So many times now, he had tried to push her away. It hadn’t worked and hadn’t worked. If anything, she’d only managed to work her way closer, and he didn’t know how to let her go. But for her sake, he had to try. One last time. Only...

“Not here,” he said.

She lifted her gaze, and the hope there flayed him open.

“But when we get home...”

His breathing stuttered. “When we get home, I’ll tell you everything.”

And if she was smart, she’d walk away from him for good.

  

Serena let out a heavy sigh. Exhausted, she stared out the window of the taxi, watching the city blocks go by. Just as it had on the way there, Cole’s leg brushed hers, but the kind of tension it inspired in her now wasn’t the same at all.

The push-pull and the back and forth, the hundreds of mixed signals he kept sending her had worn her down. She hadn’t been lying when she’d told him she couldn’t do this anymore. Forget the havoc he was wreaking on her heart. It was his fault they’d left the benefit early. Instead of focusing on Max, she’d let herself get distracted.

For so long, her missions in life had been clear. Take care of her family. Take care of her students and her friends. Taking care of a broken, beautiful man hadn’t been part of the equation. She’d worked him in seamlessly enough until now, but if he was going to keep her from doing the things she needed to—if she was going to give and give and give and receive nothing from him in return...

She bit down on the inside of her cheek. That wasn’t fair. Cole had gotten Max caught up on a full semester’s worth of math in a handful of weeks. He was the reason she’d been able to go to that benefit in the first place and make what inroads she had. He’d given her these pieces of his story.

It never felt like enough, though.

So many times in her life, she’d tried to tell herself that the nods of appreciation and the words of thanks were all she needed. But they weren’t. And this was even worse somehow.

Every time Cole pulled away, it was another stinging slap of rejection, but each one seemed to hurt him as much as they did her. She didn’t understand it.

But she wanted to. She was going to. He’d promised to talk, and by God she was going to hold him to it.

When they pulled up outside their building, Cole insisted on paying the fare, and she let him. She frowned as she did, though. What a waste. Stone-cold sober, she slipped out of the cab and went around to Cole’s side, wordlessly taking his crutches as he passed them over to her. Handing them back once he’d gotten to his feet.

The silence held as they made their way inside, all the way to the first-floor landing, where she paused. Maybe she should follow him to his apartment, but if this went badly...She didn’t know if she could stand to hear him telling her to go again. Watching him leave her place wouldn’t be much easier, but at least it seemed like something she could bear.

Taking a deep breath, she got her keys out and headed for her door. “I guess you’d better come in.” She made her tone firm, not brooking any argument. By some miracle, she didn’t receive any. He followed her inside, letting her sweep through the space ahead of him, hanging up her keys and flicking on lights.

And then there wasn’t anything else to do. Her fingers twitched, restless and empty. Maybe she should make some tea—offer him something to eat or to drink or—

Or she could quit it with the stalling already.

She turned to face him. He was standing in the middle of her living room, larger than life and so tall. So proud.

She swallowed hard. Clearly she was going to have to start this. “Have a seat.” She motioned toward the chair he’d all but fallen into that first day they’d met. When she’d found him sitting at the top of the stairs, his crutches strewn around him, pain etched into every line of his face. She glanced down at the reminder. “Your leg must be killing you.”

A low, awful laugh escaped his throat. “You have no idea.”

She didn’t.

He made no move to take a seat, and her patience—something she’d always prided herself on having so much of—threatened to fail her.

God. What was it about this man? He made her crazy and delirious in turns, and she just wanted to wrap herself around him. She wanted him to want her to.

She crossed her arms in front of herself. The sleeves of his jacket bunched at her elbows and around her shoulders, making her feel even smaller and more helpless, and she didn’t know what to do about it.

Except take it off.

The cool air on the bare skin of her arms was a shock after the warmth of his coat. The haze of his scent faded away, leaving her thoughts clearer. Her spine straighter.

“Here.” She offered the jacket to him, but he shook his head, and she draped it over the back of the chair instead. Crossing her arms again, she shivered. She was too cold and too exposed in this slip of a dress.

She’d made herself too exposed for him. Time and time again, and what did she expect but more silence? More charged glances and fiery touches that led to nowhere and nothing.

And he had promised her an explanation.

The thin, remaining thread of her patience snapped. “You said when we got home you’d tell me everything.” Looking him square in the eye, she lifted her chin in challenge. “So talk.”

  

Cole wanted to laugh. All the years he’d spent not talking, all the endless nights and wasted days trapped within the same four walls. He’d locked himself inside, and he’d locked his history in there with him. At some point he’d lost the key. He didn’t know how to get it out.

And now this woman stood before him, this slip of a girl who was stronger than just about anyone he’d met in his life. Selfless and sweet and so damn forgiving when he disappointed her again and again. She was finally demanding answers, and she deserved them, too.

But Jesus Christ. Where the hell did he even start?

A hundred moments flashed across his vision as he weathered her stare. The tide of them threatened to sweep him away. He was a boy, palms skinned and glasses shattered against the pavement in a London alleyway. A young man trying so desperately to be normal for the woman who would come to bear his name.

An older man, still numb with horror as he traced those letters across the granite that marked her grave.

He was here. Now. Steadily creeping on toward middle age with nothing to show for himself but debts and years and promises he was terrified to break. Serena made him want to, though, and that might be what scared him most of all.

Maybe that was the answer, then. He didn’t have to go back decades. He could start with the beginning of their story.

His knee gave a twinge as he took the handful of labored steps toward her window. He looked down through the glass at the pavement a half-story below. And then he turned back to look at her.

“It’s funny, you know.” He heard the words before he felt them pass his lips, the weight of so much silence making his voice sound twisted and strange. “The first time we met, you asked me how this”—he gently tapped his crutch against his leg—“had happened to me.”

Confusion marred her brow, her shoulders dropping by a fraction. “What—”

“I told you, and you said I was a hero.”

“Because you are.”

The laugh he’d nearly let out before escaped him now. “I’m really not.” His fingers flexed, grip tightening until the padding on the handles of his crutches creaked against the strain. “I just get so angry sometimes.”

“You saw someone getting mugged—”

“And I lost it. You don’t...You can’t know.” Even now, the boiling in his blood was set alight by just the memory. “The boy whose bag was stolen, he looked like such a target.”

And Cole knew how that felt. That’s how he had been—younger and smaller. Mouthy and smart and too perfect of a temptation to resist.

He gritted his teeth. “I used to be that target.” He met her gaze, staring into the ocean of her eyes and wishing he could float away along the calmness of her sea. But he couldn’t. Not here. Not now. “I told you how I knew what was happening to Max.”

“So you were bullied. So were a lot of people.”

“I was bullied until I snapped.” He had to look away. “Day after day after day.” The scar on his lip seared and burned. “They never stop, and I had to...I couldn’t...”

And he was there. In that alley halfway between his parents’ flat and school, caught and pushed—they always pushed. Glass sliced into his lip, and his hands were bloody, gravel ground into his knees and palms. He remembered the silent seething, the resentment, the bruises that never healed.

How it felt to let it all go. To fight back. Impact and fists, and they were his blows this time, every hurt returned, and he’d been lost. A fucking savage.

“I put one boy in the hospital.” His throat went raw, the bitter taste of bile rising at the image. “I nearly ended up there myself.”

He’d nearly been expelled. The classroom had been his only refuge, and he’d come so close to losing that, too. Meetings and suspensions, and through it all he’d remembered every shove. Every time they’d driven him closer to the edge, but he had been the one to throw himself over.

In the end, it was only his fault.

“They never bothered me again,” he said. “But it didn’t matter.”

The genie had been let out. He’d crammed the anger and the bitterness beneath his skin, but it had become this living thing. It never left him.

It never stopped.

“I never had many friends.” Even in the neighborhood where they lived, full of families just like theirs, he’d been the outsider. “It used to be because I was strange, but after that it was because I was mental, too.”

“You’re not—”

“I am. I was.” Normal people didn’t have this crimson current running through their veins. They didn’t have to clench their fists to try to keep it all at bay.

They weren’t too terrified to have children or to touch a woman for fear of what they’d do.

“Everyone knew it,” he said. “Even when I went to university...”

Oxford had been a breath of fresh air, a chance for a new start. No one had known, and yet it had felt like everyone had. The scar on his lip may have been the only visible one, but there were others carved deep beneath his flesh. They’d shaped him. Isolation and whispers and stares—he hadn’t known how to talk to people. How to be any more than he had ever been.

So he’d thrown himself into his studies and into tearing his own body apart. He’d shot up a foot in that final year of secondary. Had started to fill out, and newly arrived at university, he’d put the new mass to good use. He’d run and lifted and done anything he could to quiet the thread of his own thoughts in his brain. He’d gotten his first tattoo.

And he’d listened. He’d learned.

He shook his head. “It wasn’t until I got to graduate school that anything changed.”

When he’d arrived in Princeton, it had been as a whole new man, with a new attitude and a new resolve. Maybe it had been the accent and maybe it had been his looks. Maybe the careful study into how to speak and act and be.

No one had seen. No one had suspected. Least of all...

“Helen.” He choked, throat squeezing, but somehow he managed to get her name out. To force those aching syllables onto the air, where they hadn’t lived or breathed in years. Because he hadn’t been able to utter them. Not until now. “That’s where I met Helen.”

And he had to look away for this part. Tucking his crutch beneath his arm, he lifted one hand to his heart and pressed his palm to the ink there. To the symbol of her he’d carved into his ribs.

A shaky exhalation sounded from behind him. “Was that your wife’s name?”

“Yes. She was...”

Brilliant. Smarter than he had been, and it had been so effortless, the way she’d drawn him into the circle of their peers. They’d met at some sort of a graduate mixer, and he still didn’t know how the awkward mathematics student had fallen in with the beautiful historian, but he had. Lonely nights in his own apartment had given way to drinks at the pub with one or both of their departments, and through all of it, Helen had been by his side.

And when she’d touched him...when he’d kissed her...

“She changed my life.” He closed his eyes, wanting to live in that memory forever. “I thought she’d changed me.”

But she hadn’t. Beneath it all, the same fire had still burned, and it left the same ashes in its wake.

She’d started to grasp it, too, eventually. He’d kept the embers of his anger tucked safely away, but they’d found their way out more than once. Some arsehole spouting racist bullshit in a bar and Cole losing time until he was standing there, spitting and fighting against restraining arms, knuckles bruised and spattered with blood. A pickpocket trying to make off with someone’s purse.

Helen, trying to tell him he could have a normal life.

He looked out the window again. Into blackness. Into nothing.

“We didn’t fight all the time.” They’d hardly fought at all until they’d married. But the day in and the day out—he hadn’t always been able to keep it restrained. “She gave back as good as she got.” God, but she’d been a firecracker. Her spirit had soothed him and it had riled him up, and it had left him turned around in every possible way. “And we always managed to work it out.”

They always had. Always.

“Until...”

And it was there that his words failed him. His knees shook beneath him, the bad one screaming, and his palms went suddenly wet.

For the longest time, he stood there, scarcely certain how he managed to keep his feet, his vision blurring and his head a mess, the memory spinning out. Consuming him.

Finally, Serena’s voice broke through. “Until...?”

All at once it was like the dam inside him burst.