Make Me Yours (Bellamy Creek #2) - Melanie Harlow Page 0,84
looked down at him. “You really think she was acting?”
“I don’t know.” He thought for a moment. “I was prepared for resistance, you know? Tears. A meltdown or something. I had notes in my pocket that I never even had to consult.”
“Cole, this is a good thing.”
“I know,” he said. “But I feel like I was prepared to slay a dragon for you, and the dragon didn’t even show.”
I laughed. “You were going to fight for me and you didn’t get to, huh? Is that where all tonight’s aggression came from?”
“Maybe.” He tugged me down again. “And I don’t mean to say that I’m not happy about her reaction. It is a good thing. It’s just . . . good things can be deceiving, you know?”
Something in his voice set off the faintest alarm bell in my head. “How so?”
“Well, it’s important never to take for granted that everything is fine. You can’t be too complacent.”
I was completely still, letting his words sink in, trying to make sense of them. “Or else what?”
“Or else life will bite you in the ass when you’re least expecting it.” Then he said, quieter, “I suppose, now that I’m really happy for the first time in years, I’m just . . . a little bit afraid.”
“Of what?”
He hesitated. “Of something I can’t see coming.”
I curled up tighter against him, throwing my leg over his thighs and wrapping my arm around his torso, as if I could protect him from whatever it was he was scared of. I spoke fiercely. “Nothing bad is coming, Cole.”
He chuckled. “You sound so sure of that.”
“I am sure.”
“How?”
I picked up my head and looked at him. “Because I have been waiting for this moment my entire life, and the universe knows it.”
His lips curved into a smile. “This moment right here?”
“Mmhm.”
“What’s so special about it?”
“You’re here next to me.”
“That’s it? No, no, no. Let’s make it more special than that.” He rolled over so that I lay beneath him and looked down at me. “I love you, Cheyenne. And I’m so happy you never gave up on me. I hope you know that.”
My heart threatened to explode. “I love you too.”
He pressed his lips to mine. “Say it again.”
“I love you, Cole,” I whispered. “And everything is going to be okay. The best is yet to come.”
Twenty-One
Cole
That night, I couldn’t sleep.
I lay awake in the dark, anxious and sweaty, aware of every creak of the house, every click and whoosh of the furnace, every gust of wind whistling against my bedroom window.
There was a fucking dragon. I was sure of it. I could sense it. I could hear it creeping up on me. I just couldn’t see it.
It was waiting for me to drop my guard, that was all. It was waiting for the exact moment I was alone and unprotected. The moment I thought I had it all. Then it was going to attack. I felt it in every blood cell, every nerve ending, every bone in my body.
The next morning, I called Jessalyn. I knew she had Saturday morning office hours, and even though I was technically on shift, I felt like I had to talk to her.
“I need to see you,” I said. “It’s an emergency.”
“Cole, is everything okay?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m fully booked this morning, but I could see you on my lunch hour.”
“Fine.”
“Be here at noon,” she said.
At eleven-forty-five, I told the dispatcher I was going out of service and headed to Jessalyn’s office, which was on the second floor of a small office building downtown.
Too restless to sit—probably due to the six cups of coffee I’d had this morning—I paced the floor in the waiting room, ignoring the stares of a kid about Mariah’s age and his mother, as well as the receptionist.
“What’s wrong with that policeman?” I heard the kid ask, pushing his glasses up his nose.
“Nothing. And don’t stare,” she whispered back, although she peered over the top of her magazine at me suspiciously before taking her own advice.
A few minutes before noon, they were called into the office of another therapist in the practice, and I was left alone. Too agitated to sit still and tired of pacing, I started stacking all the magazines into a pile on the coffee table.
A minute later, Jessalyn’s door opened, and a teenage girl with a nose ring and pink hair came out. She gave me an odd look before hurrying into the hallway.
“Cole?” Jessalyn said, appearing in the doorway to her office. “Come on