Path of Destruction (29 page)

She didn’t care who Cooper had sex with.

She didn’t care.

She didn’t.

But her heart did. It pounded hard, beating the hell out of her chest in complaint, thrumming so loud she could hear and feel it in her skull. It had not wanted to see that. It wasn’t taking it well at all. Over the thunderous beat, she could hear Cooper calling her name. She swiped the tears from beneath her eyes.

I’m upset for Kyle. Because that was Kyle’s girl and his best friend slept with her. This is not about me.

So that wasn’t entirely true. She knew this, and yet, she had to at least try and believe them to stay focused on getting out of there.

“Ellie May. Dammit. Wait.”

She turned, almost entirely out of curiosity to see if Cooper was chasing after her in his birthday suit.

He wasn’t. He had jeans on. But apparently that was all he’d had time to throw on.

“I should’ve called first,” she said on a shaky breath. She waved her hand toward the barn. “Let’s just forget this ever happened.”

“Fine. It’s forgotten.” Cooper eyed her skeptically. “What brings you here so early in the morning? You must’ve wanted something.”

Her eyes fell involuntarily to his bare chest. She blushed and looked away.

“I, um, needed to ask you something. But it can wait. It will wait.”

“Something about…”

“Nothing.” EJ shook her head. “It’s nothing.”

“Sure as hell didn’t look like nothing. Let me see your hand.”

Please stop pushing.

Adrenaline pumped hard through her veins as he took a step closer.

“So, you and Cameron Nickelson,” she said softly as he inspected her injured palm with careful hands. “I didn’t know…for sure, I mean, that it was like that with the two of you.”

“Now you do,” he said quietly, releasing her hand from his. “And I haven’t forgotten how it felt seeing you and Prescott connected at the face on the Fourth of July. So I’m sorry if that was uncomfortable for you.”

“You saw us on the Fourth of July?”

This was news. She took a step toward him.

Cooper nodded. “I did. I was coming up there to tell you how I felt, that I wanted…I don’t know…more, I guess. I wanted to tell you before I told…him.”

Ella Jane swallowed hard. Nothing made sense.

“But you didn’t.”

He huffed out a pained laugh. “No. I didn’t want to interrupt your make-out session. Looked like you were enjoying it.”

Ella Jane’s reactions were beginning to frighten her. She was mad, sad, and freaking furious. Why hadn’t he just told her sooner? Then she could’ve been with him all summer. She wouldn’t have been stuck on that ridge, Kyle wouldn’t have had to come rescue her, and he’d still be alive.

Without thinking about it, she used both hands to shove Cooper out of her space. Hard.

“What the fu—”

“No. No, you do not get to do this to me. I loved you, Brantley Cooper. Damn you. For years. For fucking
years
! Do you get that? I planned our future together in my head day after day. A future that included my brother. And it would have been a reality if you hadn’t been such a goddamned coward.”

He blurred before her, either because of moisture pooling in her eyes or because she was about to pass out from rage. She shoved him again. He stood solid, unyielding. He didn’t even make a move to stop her assault. She threw her entire body weight into the next shove.

“It should’ve been different. Everything should’ve been different! Why did you wait so long? Why didn’t you tell me?” Her voice cracked. “Why did you stop?”

“Stop what, Ellie?”

He wrapped his arms around her and she collapsed against him. “Wanting more. Loving me. Why did you stop loving me?”

“Hey.” Cooper held her firmly by the shoulders, forcing her to face him, tears, snot, and all. “I never stopped loving you. I will never stop.”

Ella Jane aimed a pointed glare toward the barn. “You have a fantastic way of showing it.”

Cooper tilted her chin up, returning her gaze to his. “Love isn’t something I fully understand. I don’t think you do either. But I do know that sometimes it grows and changes. Sometime it takes a step back or morphs into a different kind because it has to. But I will always love you. One way or another.”

Ella Jane jerked out of his grasp. She couldn’t hear this. Not now. Not after what she’d seen.

“Like a brother. You mean you will always love me like a brother.”

Cooper’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t fucking know, okay? Why do you have to make everything so hard all the time? I can’t give you all the answers. I don’t know why I waited. I don’t know why I was such a fucking coward! And I don’t know why he’s dead!”

He was shouting now. Ella Jane forced herself not to flinch back as he continued.

“What do you want from me? You want me to take the blame? Fine. It’s my fucking fault then, okay? If I had done things differently, he’d still be here. Is this what you want to hear?”

Ella Jane could feel the anguish rolling off of him onto her.

“I-I don’t know what I want, what I want to hear.” She could feel her entire body trembling. “I should go. I’m sorry I came. Goodbye, Coop.”

I
t had happened again. Once again, she’d let herself believe that Cooper really wanted more from her, really did see her as more than a fling—she’d met his parents after all—and somehow Ella Jane Mason had shown up and reminded her that she would always come second.

The really screwed-up part was she felt guilty for being angry—after all, he’d warned her and he was simply keeping a promise he’d made to Kyle. The same Kyle she’d loved and made love to and still hadn’t told Cooper about.

“So you two were really close, huh?” She’d gathered up her courage and pointed to a picture tucked into the corner of Cooper’s mirror above the dresser in his loft. He was wearing riding gear and he and Kyle were holding a trophy high above their heads.

Cooper had just come up to the loft after she’d had dinner with his family for the first time. He’d stayed in the house to do the dishes and she’d used her alone time in there to snoop around. What she found was heart-wrenching. He and Kyle Mason had been friends for a very long time. Since they were adorable little boys playing in the mud in diapers. And judging from most of the pictures, wherever they went, Ella Jane followed. Maybe that was why she seemed so lost now.

“Me and Mase? Yeah. He was my brother from another mother.”

Despite the twisty sensations making her insides uncomfortable, she smiled. “That’s sweet. I’m sorry…for your loss.”

It was my loss, too,
she wanted to tell him.
I loved him, too.
She wanted to scream these words at him and Ella Jane both sometimes. But she kept them to herself, unsure as to what would happen if she let them go and afraid of losing what little bit of stability she had in her life.

“Thanks. It’s…it’s not something you get over, you know?” Cooper glanced at the picture she was referring to. “I’ve just tried to learn to live with the fact that he’s gone. In a way, I’m glad I don’t race anymore. I don’t know if I could do it without him there.”

“I get it. Though I have to admit, you look pretty hot in this gear. I wouldn’t have minded seeing it on you live and in person.”

“Oh yeah?” Cooper lowered himself on the couch next to her and sat the picture she held aside on an old end table. “Well maybe I’ll put some of my old stuff on for old time’s sake one of these days.”

Cami sighed and leaned against him. “I’m kind of jealous. I’ve never actually had a best friend—not one I could actually trust or count on. Maybe Hayden, but I don’t know.”

The energy between them switched from playful to intense. Cooper angled himself toward her and palmed the side of her face, tracing her lower lip with his thumb before letting his eyes meet hers. “You can trust me, Cameron. I may not be perfect, that’s a fight I gave up long ago, but I will do my best to be there for you, to be someone you can count on.”

Emotion clogged her throat. His words were so powerful and most of all, he meant them. Truly. That was Brantley Cooper. He wasn’t a man of many words, but the ones he said, he meant.

“I think I’d like that.”

His brows lowered for a moment. “Can I trust you, Prom Queen? Or are you going to wreck me?”

Cameron kissed the thumb that still lingered on her lips and closed her eyes. “I’d like to try to be someone like that, someone good and honest and trustworthy. I don’t have a whole lot of experience with being that kind of person, Cooper.”

“I have faith in you,” he’d said.

And that was all it had taken. Cameron had launched herself full force into his arms, handing her body and her whole heart over to him for safekeeping.

The memory of Kyle still existed, as she knew it always would. That summer was still a part of her and always would be. It had changed her. Kyle Mason had made her see her entire life in a different light. But she felt closer to him when she was with Cooper, as if somehow being with his best friend was okay because she loved Brantley Cooper for entirely different reasons and Kyle had obviously loved him too.

They finally had something in common.

She spent the night showing Cooper how much he meant to her.

“You sure?” he’d said, moments before they’d crossed a line that couldn’t be uncrossed.

“More sure than I have ever been about anything in my entire life,” she’d whispered against his lips. “I love you, Brantley Cooper.”

He hadn’t repeated the sentiment with words, but his actions were confirmation enough for the night.

She woke up alone the next morning hearing him and Ella Jane Mason screaming at each other down below. Wrapping his bed sheet over her bare body, she crept to the window of the loft and peeked out.

There they stood, face to face, noses practically touching. Cooper took the girl’s hand and Cameron forced herself to look away. She couldn’t make out what they were yelling exactly, but the truth was undeniable. Maybe he didn’t feel the same way about EJ that he did her—he’d told her repeatedly that the nature of their relationship was completely different—but Cameron felt lightheaded nonetheless.

What if what he felt for her was just physical attraction? He’d never lost his mind on her or over her the way he was right now with Ella Jane. Whatever the nature of their relationship, there was passion in the argument that was taking place several feet below her.

Quietly, Cameron had dressed and then climbed down the ladder of the loft. Walking toward where Cooper stood watching Ella Jane tear out of his driveway in a cloud of dust, she wrapped her arms around herself.

“I should go. I’ll see you around,” she told Cooper softly.

When he turned to face her, he looked…torn. Cameron knew better than to ask him to choose, she knew she’d be on the losing end of that choice.

“Cameron,” he pleaded, his eyes radiating frustration. “Wait. Please. Let me explain.”

She didn’t wait to see what he planned to say. What could he say?

She left him standing there looking pitiful and went home. He texted several times that he was sorry and that it wasn’t what she thought. He even left a voicemail that she played several times. But she just couldn’t hash it out over the phone. So she didn’t respond.

When a knock came at her door around dinnertime, she was expecting to see him standing there with an apologetic grin and maybe some flowers or chocolate or something. But a blonde with a box greeted her with a glare instead.

“Found these in his closet. Pretty sure they were for you.”

Cameron looked at the brown box with
Belle
scrawled on the top of the lid. “I have no idea what—”

“Open it,” Ella Jane commanded.

Cameron’s hands shook as she slid the lid off. A small square of paper sat on top of a pair of brown leather cowgirl boots.

Every Oklahoma girl should have a pair of boots, Belle. Love, Kyle.

Her composure faltered and a cry escaped her throat.

She didn’t know if something in the box was vibrating or if she was just trembling that hard.

“They had a pact,” Ella Jane said evenly while witnessing her breakdown. “About girls. Neither of them so much as looked at one the other had any type of feelings for. Maybe that doesn’t matter to you since my brother is dead. But you should let Cooper decide for himself it if matters to him.”