Cole barked a laugh. “As if. Imagine what people would say.”
Lacey shook her head in disappointment.
He didn’t have the heart to burst her bubble.
“You’re a snob.”
He wasn’t. He just pretended to be for the sake of family reputation. One day—one day he’d say to hell with that and go after what he wanted.
“Hey, kid,” Dean said from the doorway.
Both he and Lacey turned, but Cole knew his brother was talking to him. “Hey. Thought you weren’t coming in till next week.”
“I’ll catch you two later.” Lacey gave Dean a quick hug.
Dean closed the door. Cole raised his brows in question. He crossed his arms and leaned against the windowsill.
“Mother wants me to have a chat with you.”
Cole tipped his head back, thunking it against the window. “What now?”
Dean laughed. “She comin’ down hard on you, is she?”
Cole straightened. “Just lay it on me.”
Dean sat on the edge of the bed. “Where to start? Your grades? She thinks you’re distracted.” Dean cleared his throat. “By the maid’s daughter.”
“Jesus, Dean. Not you, too.”
Dean lifted his hand, his face saying this wasn’t coming from him. “Look, Mia’s a great girl.”
“But?”
Dean shrugged. “No but. She’s a great girl. My advice to you is to make sure you know what you want before she realizes you’ve been watching.”
Unsure how to interpret this, Cole stared at his brother. “You don’t care if I chase the help’s daughter? Mother does.”
Dean sighed. “Here’s the thing with Mother. She’s an unhappy woman, which means she’s only happy making everyone else around her miserable, too.” Dean stood. “You know why she’s so hard on you, more than Lace and me?”
Cole shrugged in nonchalance, but inside he was dying to hear Dean’s thought.
“Because you stand up to her. You don’t fit her perfect mold. Lacey and I do what we can to keep her off our backs.” Dean’s eyes lost their spark, leaving an almost dejected absence in its place. “Don’t lose that edge, Cole. It’s what makes you so passionate, so unique.”
Cole didn’t know whether to hug him or laugh at him. The perfect son, in a roundabout way, had just told the black sheep he envied him.
Cole turned and looked out the window again, but Mia wasn’t sitting in the grove anymore. She and Lacey were walking toward the beach, laughing at some joke. Damn, she was beautiful when she laughed. Made his chest ache in a sweet, painful way.
He sighed. Better to watch from a distance.
When Cole looked back to ask Dean if he wanted a swim, too, Dean was gone.
Present
“Rose!” Another crash hit the floor. “Rose!”
Two days and Cole still hadn’t come down. Two days of yelling for Rose. Two days with no human contact, no food.
Mia waited him out downstairs, hoping to hear his door crash open. Hoping this plan of hers wouldn’t make her fall flat on her face. She’d moved her things into the bedroom next door to his. She didn’t think he noticed. One of the nights was a loud one, but she didn’t step one foot inside his room.
She was waiting for him to come out, to acknowledge he needed help. Then she’d do what she could if he let her.
After a few more crashes, Cole quieted down again. She closed her eyes and sighed. He needed to eat. Hopefully that basic human need would be enough to drive him out.
She finished the last of her sweet tea and rose to rinse out the glass. She stared out the window at the darkening sky and tried to remember when she last saw the sunset over the ocean. The answer came immediately. Ten years ago, since she hadn’t had the heart to return to the coast after what happened.
She glanced up at the ceiling. He was quiet now. She could slip out for ten minutes. Sliding into her flip-flops, she closed the kitchen door behind her.
The smell hit her first. The distinct scent of salt water and seaweed. The cry of gulls above could barely be heard over the crash of the tide. She closed her eyes as a breeze hit her face, humid and soothing. She’d forgotten how peaceful this place could be. How healing.
Opening her eyes, she stepped off the porch and onto the sand. As she edged toward the water, the red and purple sky melted into the green blue of the water until a thin black line separated the heavens from earth. Their last day together had been like this.
Warm. Beautiful.
Her cell buzzed. She pulled it out and answered, hoping everything was okay with Ginny.
“It’s Lacey. I just . . . wanted to see how things were going.”
Mia kicked off her flip-flops and sat on the beach. Cole’s house was in a private area of Wilmington Beach. Not a soul was around to hear her.
“It’s going. He’s on a hunger strike currently.” Mia elaborated for Lacey’s benefit.
“That’s brilliant. He hasn’t kicked you out yet?”
“Oh, he has. Several times, in fact.”
Lacey laughed, a sound from deep in her belly, one that Mia hadn’t heard in too many years. They’d been friends once. Mia didn’t realize how much she missed that, having been too ravaged by the hurt to see past it. Cole wasn’t the only thing taken away from her back then.
Mia didn’t have any friends. She’d never really had friends. There were a few women from college she talked to once in a while, but over the past couple years that had dwindled down to Christmas cards. She had no one. The truth hurt. There was only Ginny.
“How are you holding up?” Lacey asked at length.
“Oh, you know. Slumming it like this is hard.”
Lacey didn’t laugh this time, but Mia heard the smile through her words. “It is beautiful there, isn’t it? I miss it so much sometimes.” She paused. “Oh, Mia. You deserved so much more than you got in life.”
Mia wasn’t expecting that, nor the swift wave of tears clogging her throat. Lacey didn’t say what she did out of pity, and Mia knew that. Lacey, Dean, and Cole weren’t like the other Covingtons. She pressed her lips together until she could speak. “That’s nice of you to say, Lace.”
At hearing her long-ago nickname, Lacey must’ve been feeling sentimental also. Lacey sniffed. “I have to go. I’ll check back in with you soon.”
* * *
He was freaking starving and she was strolling on the damn beach. She made quite the vision, though, standing there against the sunset. He’d pictured that in his head about a thousand times, too.
He still couldn’t believe she was here. Like a crazy hallucination. Part of him was so damn relieved he wanted to weep. Maybe he’d get to say all the things he didn’t before. Amend the past and let her know how very sorry he was that he couldn’t be stronger for her. The other part of him just wanted her gone. Back in his memory, where he couldn’t hurt her again. Either way, he wasn’t so numb anymore. Bits of emotion seeped their way through the cracks.
Seeing her out there made his chest splinter wide open.
He kept waiting for her to disappear. Dissolve into nothing, making him realize this was all a cosmic joke at his expense. He blinked his eyes, looked again. She was still there.
And the nimble little minx wasn’t going to feed him. He’d have to go downstairs. He hadn’t tried stairs in months. He needed to go down now while she was out, so she couldn’t see how weak he’d become.
He rose and stood in place for several seconds to get his bearings. Once he felt ready, he bore weight on the left leg and quickly transferred to the right. This concentrated form of walking was how he got to and from the bathroom. Stairs were an entirely different matter. He made it out of the bedroom and stared down the curving staircase, which was too wide to grasp each railing with both hands.