Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 87439 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 437(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87439 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 437(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
I passed Black Horse Inn on the outskirts of Elmwood, continued toward Lake Norman and took the steep incline leading to Wood Hollow, my heart ticking like a time bomb. I scanned the hollowed-out trees and the sweeping views of placid water with wonder, and I didn’t even mind the gigantic truck loaded with timber crawling at a snail’s pace two cars in front of me. I was just happy to be back.
Happy to be someplace that felt like…home.
Cooper wasn’t home yet, so I showered, unpacked, and was considering my dinner options when headlights flashed through the blinds.
I raked my fingers through my damp hair and made a beeline through the trees. His truck was in the driveway, the garage door was down, and the house was dark. I glanced up the pathway between our houses and smiled.
Twilight had set in, shrouding the night in pale shades of indigo, but I would have known him anywhere. Cooper paused, a bag of groceries in one hand, a bottle of wine in the other.
“I was going to surprise you,” he said. “I brought kabobs for the grill, candles, and wine. It’s beautiful out, and I thought we could have dinner on the deck and celebrate your—”
I didn’t wait for the end of that sentence. I hooked my hand around his neck and sealed my mouth over his. It was mashed lips with a hum of desire, a trace of laughter, and more joy than I could contain. I released him, plucked the wine from his hand, and stared for a long moment…just drinking in Cooper’s every detail.
His kind eyes, his sexy beard, and his curious expression. No doubt he wondered why I was tripping out. Play it cool, asshole. Play it cool.
“I missed you,” I blurted.
Oh, fuck. Not cool. Not cool at all.
Cooper grinned. “I missed you too. Welcome home.”
Home.
There was that word again. I liked it.
We barbecued the veggie and shrimp kabobs and sipped wine under the stars by candlelight, catching up as though our four days apart had been more like four months. I told him about my reception in Boston and the press conference.
“It was…nice. Great facility, talented coaching staff. I think they really want me there and not just because of Alli’s circus.”
“She’s supportive?” he asked, tossing me one of the wool blankets we’d found in a basket in the mudroom. Whoever had handled the interior design for Val’s place had thought of everything.
“Yeah, she is. And…I think she feels a little guilty.”
“Why?”
“ ’Cause she was the one who left,” I replied matter-of-factly. “She wanted out. She didn’t want to work on our issues, and I don’t blame her for not wanting to deal with my moody ass. I understood. I was injured and I wasn’t easy to be with. Trust me, I didn’t like being with me then, either.”
Cooper frowned. “You weren’t hurt or angry?”
“Hurt…yes. Angry? No.” I pulled the blanket under my chin and sipped my wine. “You can’t make someone stay if they don’t want to, and you can’t make them love you. Alli and I always got along well. We could joke around, have fun, and the sex was nice, but we weren’t good in tough situations, and we didn’t like tough conversations. For example, I wanted kids, Alli wanted to wait. Wait for what? I didn’t know, and she wouldn’t say. She’s a travel writer…or she used to be—and a good one. She lost an assignment that would have required her to spend a month in Iceland after I landed in the hospital with a concussion. She was so bummed. I was lying on the sofa and recouping with sunglasses on ’cause my vision was so bad that I couldn’t watch TV without them and she wanted to go to Iceland.”
“You didn’t like that.”
I scoffed. “No. It wasn’t like I expected her to wait on me or anything, but I wanted her to want to be there. And it sucked that she didn’t, and she thought it sucked that I didn’t support her career. Those were arguments no one was going to win, and we had them all the time. At the end, I didn’t care if she was home, and she probably felt the same way. And I stopped thinking about being a dad ’cause our house wasn’t a good environment for a kid. Trust me. I knew that story well. But I was still sad when it ended.”
“Yeah.” Cooper didn’t have to say anything more. He’d been there too.
“It felt like failure. A terrible failure. And since she was the one who left, I was on defense, answering questions like, ‘What happened?’ when I didn’t fucking know. But you have to tell people something, right? Everyone is in on your worst moment, judging you, wondering where it went wrong, who did what, and which one of us cheated. It sucked.” I inhaled deeply and continued. “In that way, we were in it together. We bonded over our misery and as much as I didn’t want to talk about it, I was brutally honest. I told her, ‘I miss my friend. I miss the easy stuff. I don’t want you back, I don’t want to try again, but I want to wish you well. It would be nice if we could at least say that much publicly.’ And now…we are friends. Better than we were before, I think. No pressure to perform, no tiptoeing around tricky subjects…just the easy stuff. It’s a relief.”