Confessions in the Dark (8 page)

“I suspected. When I asked, he all but confirmed it.”

Oh hell. How long had this been going on? What other signs had she missed or written off? And more...“Why would he hide this?”

Cole let a beat pass before he answered. When he did, the edge to his voice was gone. It went softer. Kinder. “Plenty of reasons. None of which make much sense when you're not a ten-year-old boy.”

“How did you know?”

A pained shadow flashed across his eyes. His mouth crumpled before straightening back out. “Children are cruel. In any decade. And on any continent.”

For a second, she boggled. Cole was this tall, self-assured Adonis, a hero who ran down thieves, and he was trying to say...

Anticipating what she was about to ask, he sighed. “I was scrawny when I was his age. Scrawny and mouthy, and I didn't know when to walk away from a fight.” Another cloud darkened his gaze. “I still don't.”

It was too hard to imagine. But there wasn't any reason not to take him at his word. He'd met Max a grand total of three times, and yet he'd seen the signs she'd missed. She chastised herself again, biting down on the inside of her cheek. God, she was a teacher, even. She should've known better. Max deserved better.

Hunching forward, she let her head fall into her hands. “What am I going to do?”

Cole said Max had “all but confirmed” what was going on. If she asked him outright, would he be any more forthcoming? Would it make her feel any less helpless if he did? Being a teacher cut both ways here. She'd seen enough bullies and enough victims over the years. There were things she could do to make her classroom a safer space, words she could say that might or might not help to change the culture of the place.

But life wasn't a classroom. Not every space was safe, no matter how hard she wanted to wrap cotton wool around every single kid who'd been forced to face that terrible truth too soon.

The quiet of her own distressed breaths was broken by the soft thuds and clinks of Cole's steps. She chanced a quick glance up before burying her face again, swabbing at the dampness around her eyes. The couch dipped, and it was too much to process all at once. Guilt roiled through her, but he was so close. His knee grazed hers, and he shifted, a tentativeness to him she never would've expected.

A shuddering breath was pushed out of her body when his hand settled, warm and broad against her shoulder.

And she shouldn't. After her impulsiveness in kissing him, she should stay stoic and strong. She shouldn't move.

But then his thumb stroked at her, the motion jerky, like he'd forgotten how to do something so simple. So basic as offering someone comfort through touch.

She gave in. Leaning into him, she took what he was offering her, clumsy as the offer might be. The solid heat of his chest burned into her side, and he stiffened as she let her head fall to his shoulder. The bobbing of his throat echoed in her temple, and she held her breath.

Slowly, bit by bit, he relaxed. His hand fell away from her shoulder, only for his arm to tug her in close. The side of his face pressed to her hair, and she squeezed her eyes shut tight.

“Be there for him,” he said. “No matter how hard he tries to push you away.”

The words buried themselves inside her heart. Because they were the answer to the question she had asked—the one about what she could do for Max.

But maybe. Just maybe. They were the answer to one she hadn't asked. To another kind of question entirely.

C
ole had been through an untold number of personal hells in his life. Turned out, physical therapy was a whole fresh new one.

Willing the timer on the bike he was pedaling to turn over faster, he mopped at his brow. Couldn't they afford bloody air-conditioning in this place? It was as characteristically brisk outside as springtime in Chicago ever was, but in here it was a sauna, and the combination of heat and effort and the building ache in his leg had him panting.

Grimacing, he focused harder on the bright red numbers ticking by on the display. Unconsciously, his gaze kept flicking toward the waiting area not a dozen feet away. Serena had a stack of papers to grade, but she wasn't making any pretense about not watching him as he made a damn fool of himself. Every sly little smile that passed across those lips had him burning up inside, and for reasons unrelated to the heat.

Fuck, but what a picture he must make. Sweating through his workout clothes despite having hardly done a thing. At top condition, he could run or lift or swim for hours, but he'd been benched for weeks now, and he was pushing his recovery. Everything hurt.

He wasn't ready. Hell if he was prepared to admit that now, though.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.”

Cole couldn't quite suppress his glare. His therapist, Mike, an infant in a polo shirt and ill-fitting khakis, had approached while Cole hadn't been looking. Clucking, he reached his arm right into Cole's space to adjust the resistance on the bike. Cole gripped the handles even harder to keep from flinching. Or decking him.

“Take it easy there, buddy,” Mike admonished as he reduced the difficulty to almost nothing. “This is just a warm-up.”

The man had the gall to pat Cole on the shoulder, and Cole did flinch this time.

Mike took a single step backward, hands up in front of himself. “Sorry.”

“It's fine.” It wasn't.

In his isolation, so few people had touched him. It'd made his skin ache. Made it all the more grating when someone he didn't want to dared to presume.

Made it all the more exquisite when someone like Serena did.

With a weak smile that showed just how much he believed Cole's lie, Mike nodded at the bike. “Come on. I think you're warmed up enough. Let's see what we can do about getting you walking again.”

Finally. With not a small amount of difficulty, he disembarked from the bike, got his crutches under him, and followed Mike to a spot that was even closer to where Serena sat. Of course.

What followed were twenty of the more unpleasant minutes of his life. Stretches and light strength training, and none of it should've been difficult, but it was. He fought to keep from looking over at Serena, to ignore the heat that crept across his face at the idea of her looking at him while he was struggling like this.

And then it got worse.

“Okay.” Mike clapped his hands together. “These last ones would be better if you had a partner.” He glanced to the side, then back to Cole, one eyebrow raised. “Think your lady friend over there would be okay to help?”

Klaxons fired off inside Cole's mind. No. Absolutely not. On so many levels that would never work. It couldn't.

“She's not—” he started, but it came out bumbling, the words twisting themselves on his tongue.

Before he could get the rest of the words to form, Serena's voice rose above the roaring in his ears. “You need me?”

Cole sighed, burying his face in his hand. Because if there was anything on this earth that beautiful, insane, ridiculous woman couldn't possibly resist, it was the chance to help.

“Absolutely,” Mike said, ignoring Cole's barely suppressed groan.

He couldn't bring himself to look up, but every step Serena took toward them was a whisper on the air, a rattling of the bracelets around her wrists. A fluttering of a butterfly's wings, wreaking chaos with the universe he knew.

She was wearing trousers today at least, no bare calf or knee to tempt him as it peeked out from beneath the hem of a skirt as she came to join them on the mat.

“What do you need me to do?” she asked.

“Here.” Mike prompted them into arranging themselves. Cole bit down hard on his tongue as he rolled over onto his stomach, an itchy feeling skittering along the back of his neck at the exposure involved. He crossed his arms in front of himself and closed his eyes as he let his brow rest against his wrist. “Bend your leg, Cole.”

With a grunt, he did just that, and it pushed the air from his lungs. But then the torture truly began.

Addressing Serena, Mike said, “And if you would...”

Warm, soft hands on his calf were a jolt of electricity zipping all the way up his leg to his spine. It was bare skin on skin and the heat of her breath. She was so close, sitting right beside him,
touching
him, and the only ache wasn't in his knee.

His breath went tight, every inch of his flesh coming alive at this faintest hint of contact. The gentleness of her fingers where they curled around him. The sweetness of her scent crowding in on him.

The memory of how she'd felt pressed against him as he'd succumbed to her kiss, tasting her tongue and scraping his teeth across her lips.

And fuck. Motherfucking son of a cocksucking whore, but he was hard. Desperately so, the pressure of the floor against his hips dizzying as he lay there. Sweating and exposed as she placed her hands on him.

As his obnoxious twat of a therapist instructed her exactly how to put her hands on him.

“That's it,” Mike said, “a little tighter,” and Cole's brain fuzzed over. “Cole...Cole?”

“Yes?” Cole gritted out.

“Push back into her hands.”

He was going to go insane. Actually, honestly insane.

A wet noise fell out of his lungs. But he did as he was told, pressure that seared him to his bones.

“Good, good. Not too hard. That's it. Now release.”

He let his breath go as he relaxed the muscles in his leg. His head was spinning, his blood pounding. Then Serena stroked down the curve of his calf, nearly all the way to his knee, the softest brushing sort of touch, and he felt it in his heart.

He twisted his head to the side and opened his eyes.

It was the very worst kind of a mistake. She was right there, kneeling beside his hips, the front of her shirt dipping low as she hunched over, that soft, ripe flesh threatening to spill forth. The warm smile on her lips just for him.

And he wanted her. Wanted her to be touching him for real, to be in his bed and in his life and to be anywhere but here.

He turned his face away, clenching his hands into fists. He'd had his chance. He could've said yes.

But no. Still no.

So few things he wanted were things he ever got to have.

Life was not even remotely close to being fair.

Serena stood there, patiently holding the door as Cole levered himself into the passenger seat of her car. Despite the cool breeze outside, he hadn't bothered to put on his jacket or change from his gym shorts back into sweats. The damp fabric of his T-shirt clung to every dip of muscle on his chest and shoulders, and the tousled mess of his hair was darkened with sweat. His skin faintly gleaming, the firm shapes of his forearms and calves practically beckoned her. Made her pulse go fluttery and her face flash hot. It was all she could do not to reach out and touch.

And it wasn't
fair
. She'd more or less accepted that he wasn't ready for whatever road they'd been heading down in his kitchen the previous week. Since then, she'd kept her hands to herself and her ogling to a minimum.

But that was before she'd basically gotten a doctor's note requiring her to touch him. Before he'd placed himself in her care, lying prone before her and straining against her grip, looking at her with such heat and anguish in the darkness of his gaze.

Before he'd forced himself to look away.

But that was fine. She could do this. She could be his support and his help and his friend without pushing for more than he was willing to give.

Taking a deep breath, she waited until he was settled, seat belt fastened, before passing him his crutches. He tucked them into the side of the seat well, then gave a quick, jerky nod. The whole time, he kept his gaze focused forward, and her heart fired off a little whimper of a pang. Apparently, they were back to not making eye contact again.

Fine.

She closed his door and stalked around to the driver's side. She couldn't help the flush to her cheeks or the frustration boiling its way through her veins, but she could play his same game. Staring straight ahead, she slipped behind the wheel and got the car going, giving it a bare second to warm up before shoving it into gear.

As they pulled out onto the street, she tapped her thumbs against the steering wheel. Chewing on the inside of her lip, she glanced at the time. She did have one more errand she'd been hoping to run today. It was kind of on the late side, but they should still be open.

Of course, accomplishing it would mean an extra twenty minutes in the car with Cole. Usually that would only be a positive, but right now she wasn't sure. Mentally shaking her head at herself, she gripped the wheel tighter. Whatever she felt about him, no matter the tension currently simmering on the air, she wasn't going to let him mess up her plans.

Checking her rearview mirror and her blind spot, she maneuvered over into the turn lane. She could almost hear his brow furrowing.

“What—” he started.

She cut him off as smoothly as she did the jerk who tried to merge in front of her. “I have a stop to make before we head home.”

His hands flexed in his lap. “Oh.”

It was only a mile or so, but traffic this time of day was a mess. Through the stops and starts and the lights that seemed to change just for her, she held her tongue, and he held his.

Right until they turned onto the tree-lined side street.

She'd been to the Upton campus enough times by now that she didn't have to think too much about where she was going. Rumbling past the scattered handful of Beamers and Audis parked in the back of the lot, past the other beaters in the faculty section, she made her way to the administration building and slid into a visitor slot.

In front of her, all the ivy and stone made her breathing speed. Blocking out the man beside her, she took a moment to get her game face on.

Because the simple fact was that this wasn't her world. She was a public-school girl through and through. As a kid, she'd known this kind of place existed, but she'd only considered it in the most passing sort of way. It was where the smart kids and the rich kids went. Penny, maybe, could have gone there.

Then Serena had ended up here for some professional development class a couple of years ago. She'd gotten to see past the ivy on the façade, to meet some of the teachers and tour their facilities.

And it had left an aching feeling deep inside her chest. These people—they weren't kidding when they said they were the best.

Her ribs tightened hard around her lungs. Maybe even then she'd known. She hadn't approached Max about what Cole had told her about the bullying, but she didn't have any doubts that it was true. Some kind of intuition had been telling her he wasn't happy at his neighborhood school for a while now. She'd denied it, had told herself he was a strong kid, that he was fine.

But she'd also spent the past two years hell-bent on getting him here.

“I'll just be a couple of minutes.”

She undid her seat belt and slipped out of the car without a glance Cole's way. But as she popped the trunk and reached inside, the passenger side door swung open.

What the—

She grabbed what she'd gone in there for and closed the trunk. As she stepped around to the side of the car, it was to find Cole struggling to get out of it.

She shook her head. “You can just wait here.”

“Well”—with a heaving breath, he used one crutch and his grip on the headrest to haul himself out of his seat—“perhaps I don't want to wait here.”

“Why—”

He shoved his whole body into the door in an attempt to shut it. It didn't latch, and she risked life, limb, and offended scowl to duck into his space enough to slam it the rest of the way closed.

He came up short. “Did you make those?”

Darn it, this was part of why he was supposed to have waited in the car. It was too late to hide the plate of cookies she'd brought behind her back, or maybe in a nearby bush, so she tossed her shoulders back and raised her chin. “That's none of your business.”

“As your baking instructor, it most certainly is.”

“One lesson doesn't exactly make you my ‘instructor.'”

“It is if one lesson was enough to teach you
that
.”

He was taunting her now. Obviously, these were from the bakery, with their perfect icing and the golden crispness to their edges. He'd been a good teacher, sure, but he wasn't a miracle worker.

She raised one brow. “And if I told you I had made them?”

He met her challenge. “Then I'd ask you for your recipe.”

For a long moment, they stared at each other, neither willing to give in first. Oh, this was ridiculous.

“Fine.” Rolling her eyes, she waved her free hand at him. “I bought them.”

“Shocking.”

“Oh, be quiet.” She gave him a halfhearted shove with her elbow, taking care not to upset his balance. For the first time since the physical therapist's office, she looked up at him. Deep into dark, liquid eyes, and he didn't force his gaze away. Something in her went soft, a lump forming and sticking in her throat. She glanced toward the main building of the school, then back at him. “You really want to come inside?”

He shrugged, but he missed casual by a mile. “If this is what I'm preparing Max for, I might as well see it, hadn't I?”