Up In Flames(18)
Author: Nicole Williams

“I’ll bring your coffees right over,” I said, heading towards the drink station.

“We won’t hold our breaths,” I heard Cole say after me.

I spun on my heels. Now this was getting to be too much. I didn’t know what I’d done to deserve such disdain, but I was getting tired of it. Especially when it seemed he’d sought me out just so he could pour it on thick.

“You know, just in case you forget about us when you turn your back and walk away.”

Whatever I was about to snap back was drowned in the wake of those words.

Trying to keep from wincing, I trudged over to pour three coffees. The spring in my step was long gone. None of us spoke when I dropped the coffee cups in front of them, other than Liam saying thanks for them all and Matt scoping out my cl**vage when I leaned over to set his in front of him. Cole remained silent. At least verbally he did, but his body and eyes said so many harsh things I couldn’t scurry away quickly enough.

After placing their order with Sid, I rushed through the dining room, trying to catch up. By the time Sid had the guys’ order ready, most of the breakfast diners were gone or on their way out. I missed the distraction a full restaurant provided. Refusing to look anywhere but at the wall behind their table, I carried their crepes across the diner. After settling the plates into position, I asked, “Can I get you anything else?”

“It’s been a few days since I’ve had a blowjob,” Matt piped up, looking at me expectantly.

Another elbow to the ribs from Liam. “No, we’re good. Thanks, Elle.”

Shooting a quick glare at Matt, I turned and walked away. I didn’t want to visit that table again. The bill was on me. Just eat, get out, and stop making me feel like I’d committed the worst crime known to man.

“I think you might have forgotten about me.” Cole’s voice carried through the almost empty diner. “Not the first time, I know, but still . . .”

Spinning back around, I glanced at the empty space on the table in front of him, then shrugged. “Didn’t you just mention that you didn’t want anything from me ever again?” I said, checking the diner to make sure no one was paying us any attention. “Looks like we’re off to a good start then.”

Liam had the decency to hide his smile, but Matt burst into laughter. “Whoa. Carson.” He punched Cole’s arm. “What the hell happened between you two because please, for the love of God, if and when you two get some wild makeup sex on, call me so I can get the video camera rollin’.”

My small smile of vindication fell when Cole looked at me. He was smiling, but it wasn’t the friendly, warm kind. “Nothing,” he said, looking away from me like he never wanted to look at me again. “Nothing at all happened between Elle and me. A whole lot of nothing.”

I rushed to the back room before the first tear fell and I stayed back there until long after the table in the back was empty.

Chapter Eight

Sunday nights in the summer.

It was date night at the bowling alley. Logan and I had gone on our first date there, and over the past couple summers, the group had grown from two to about twenty. Most were Logan’s friends from high school and baseball, but Dani usually tagged along too. If she didn’t have anywhere else to be. Or anyone to do.

After my shift at the diner had ended, I drove as far as my Jeep would take me up some logging road, then I got out and hiked until my mind was empty. It took a while today before I reached that empty feeling, but that wasn’t much of a surprise after everything that had taken place.

I’d managed to miss Dad after returning home to shower and change, and by the time I pulled into the parking lot of the bowling alley, the therapeutic benefits of that three mile hike had vanished. I tried not to dwell on Cole’s looks and words from that morning, but I couldn’t seem to focus on anything else.

My stomach hurt. My heart hurt. My head hurt. I could cure the stomach and head hurt easily enough, but didn’t know of a quick way to fix a heart ache.

Telling myself to put on my big girl panties and suck it up, I went inside the bowling alley. As much as I wanted to curl up in my bed, I couldn’t avoid Logan any longer. After the whole “Elle’s Missing!” fiasco last night, I’d been lucky I could reassure him over the phone when he called after church. He had about a million and one questions for me, but after saying I was fine for the million and one’th time, he calmed down and let me off the phone when I said I had to get back to work. He wanted to get together after my shift, but I told him I had plans. He let it go and said he looked forward to seeing me tonight.

He was getting suspicious. While that irritated me, he was right to be.

I’d let some man who hated me today touch me last night in ways Logan wouldn’t even dream of.

I was almost convinced I never wanted to see Cole Carson’s face again, but then I remembered the way it had looked that first day we met at the swimming hole and I knew I’d die a slow death if I never did see it again.

Logan, Dani, a handful of his teammates, and another handful of girls we’d either graduated or gone to school with were laughing and tying on their shoes, taking up half of the bowling alley.

I rolled my shoulders back and pretended life was great. I’d never been happier or more confident with the direction it was taking.

Yeah. That confidence booster fizzled flat.

Logan noticed me first as I made my way to the crowd. He patted the guy he’d been talking with on the arm and came towards me. His arms were already open before he’d made it halfway.

“Hey,” he said, sounding concerned as he tucked me close. Those familiar arms, the ones I’d felt around me hundreds of times, didn’t disappoint. I melted into him a little and pushed the differences in how Cole held me aside. That was all a moot point anyways. “You don’t look so good,” he whispered, rubbing the middle of my back.

“I don’t feel so good,” I replied, burrowing my head down deeper into his shirt. Inhaling that familiar smell of soap and leather. It didn’t matter how many times Logan showered, he always smelled a bit like the leather of his baseball glove.

“You want to talk about it?”

I did. I didn’t.

But I needed to.

“Yeah,” I said. “How about afterwards?”

Logan nodded. “Okay. Whenever you want.”

Might as well get it out in the open tonight. What I’d done with Cole, the fool I’d been to think there was this deep, earth-shattering thing between us. No matter if I wanted to marry Logan or call it off tomorrow, I needed to tell him. He deserved to know the truth.

I didn’t let myself think about the repercussions of telling him. I would have been paralyzed if I did, so I just focused on one step at a time.

“I was so worried about you last night when your dad called.” His arms tightened around me.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset anyone.” That was true. However, my actions told a different story.

“Where were you?” he asked. “I searched all our normal places. I was just heading towards the old swimming hole on your Grandma M’s land when your dad called and let me know you’d made it back.”

That would have been ideal in the worst possible way. Logan stumbling on a half-naked, sleeping Cole, demanding to know if he’d seen his girlfriend, Elle Montgomery. Cole smirking at him with a sleepy smile and saying something about how he had seen her recently. She’d just been curled around him moaning his name.

“I just needed to . . . get away,” I answered him.

“From what?”

From you was my knee-jerk response, but it wasn’t only from him. I wanted to get away from myself, too. From the person I’d become thanks to letting everyone else make the decisions in my life.

The longer my thoughts went down this path, the closer I got to tears. The heavier the guilt weighed down on my back. The closer I got to telling him where I’d been last night and, more importantly, what I’d been doing.

I was about to open my mouth when a finger poked my shoulder. “I’d tell you two to get a room if I actually thought you’d use it the way it was meant to be used.” Dani’s voice was unmistakable. “And abused.”

I heard the eyebrow pop in her voice, promptly followed by Logan’s long sigh. He tolerated Dani because she was my best friend, but that was the only reason. He wouldn’t have said two words to her if it wasn’t for me because Logan and Dani were about as opposite as two people could get. And no, the irony that my best friend and my boyfriend were polar opposites was not lost on me.

“Mind if I borrow your blushing bride for a minute?” Dani didn’t wait for Logan’s reply before she gave my arm a swift tug.

I went with her because I was too tired to fight. I gave Logan an apologetic shrug, but his attention was already being taken over by one of his teammates. Like that, I was forgotten.

Or at least that’s the way it felt.

“Hey, friend,” Dani said, cordoning us off to the side. “Or should I call you stupid, stupid girl?”

When Dani was on the rampage, it was best just to let her get it out of her system.

“Please, for the love of women everywhere, please tell me you weren’t just about to tell Logan you’ve been playing with the fire hose of one of the new smokejumpers in town?”

My mouth dropped. Somewhere around the fire hose part.

“Please confirm you are not that stupid,” she said, snapping her fingers in front of my face when I remained quiet. “Anytime now.”

“What are you talking—”

“No,” Dani snapped, looking insulted. “Don’t you dare do that to me. Don’t play the innocent card with me. I know what’s been going on and I’m hurt that you’d think by confessing your sins to me I’d tell someone or think any less of you.”

“Liam,” I muttered, not so sure I was such a fan of him anymore. “What did he tell you?”

“The things my best friend should have been the one to tell me,” she said, shoving my arm. “What the hell, Elle? You start having some thing with a guy so damn hot he makes me come just by looking at him and I’m the last to know?” She shoved my arm again. “Not cool.”

I sighed, glancing over at Logan laughing with his teammates. Oblivious. “Not the last to know . . .”

Dani sighed with me. “Damn, Elle. What are you going to do?”

I studied Logan’s face. Really took him in. He was a good man, I knew that, but was he supposed to be my good man?

“I’m going to tell him. Soon.”

“Good, it’s about time you called it quits with zero-sex-appeal boy,” she said, curling her nose. “But I was referring to Cole. What are you going to do about him?”

Hearing his name hurt my heart, too. Thinking about him, remembering him, longing for him, and now, hearing his name. Pain, pain, and more pain.

“After the way he acted this morning?” I almost shivered remembering it. “I’m going to do my best to avoid him. He obviously hates me and wants nothing to do with me.” I bit the side of my cheek to keep from welling up.