Cole(79)

“Sia,” I started.

“Yeah?”

Please, don’t hate me. “I’ve been an asshole friend.”

A half laugh came from her. She shook her head. “What are you talking about?”

“I’ve been lying to you.” The words were hard to say. I felt like I’d swallowed bark, and it was coming back up, scraping the insides of my throat.

“Okay.” She cocked her head to the side. “What are you talking about, though?”

I looked to Jake. “Can I talk to her? It might take some time. I have a lot of groveling to do.”

He glanced between us and asked, “Do you want me to wait?”

“No.” She waved toward the door, adjusting her hold on her purse. “You go ahead. This could take a while. Is that okay?”

“You’ll call me?”

“I will. Go and have fun. I’ll let you know if I get a car to come on my own.”

He bent down, giving her a quick kiss. “Okay.” He gave me a confused look. “This will take a while, huh?”

“I’m afraid so.”

And it did.

When we got to my floor, we sat down, and I told her almost everything: The first time I met Cole. The night she stood me up, how I went to the running track to find him again. How I’d been scared, but how I’d wanted to see him for an entire week, and that night, I finally had the courage to try. I told her about seeing him in the back elevator, and that I’d slept with him the first time we had dinner.

“I didn’t care, Sia.” My hands twisted together, pushing down on my lap. The harder I pushed down, the more the words poured out of me. “I was so beyond caring. I wanted to feel something other than grief. He made me feel better. For that night, I was alive. That was the first night I didn’t have a nightmare.”

I kept going. I told her how he’d come late the next night, how his friend had died and he’d flown out the next morning for the funeral preparations and business. That I didn’t see him for another month, and I’d thought it was over until I saw him again at the event with Jake.

Once I was done, she sat, quiet. I waited. A heavy cloud hung between us. I couldn’t say a thing. I could only hope she understood in some small way. I prayed for it.

“I see.”

I winced. Her voice was quiet.

“The night your house was broken into?”

“I was with him.”

“Okay. That’s the only part I wasn’t sure about.”

I heard her wrong. I must’ve. “Huh?”

And she floored me when she shrugged. “Hate to break your illusion that I’m completely oblivious and an idiot, but I knew something was going on long ago. A best friend would have to be daft not to know something’s up. I knew you lied to me. Hello. You told me you were going to be at your house, then I’m the one telling you it got broken into? I was more relieved to know you weren’t hurt than pissed you lied to me at that moment.”

I could only blink at her.

“And all the other stuff?” She snorted. “Like I’m not going to notice that every time we go to Gianni’s, we don’t get a bill if you’re with us. Even Jake stopped talking about it. He knew it was you, but we just hadn’t asked about the connection. Or that suddenly you always order the car when we go out, and it’s always the same car, always the same driver. I have to be observant for my job,” she said with a shrug. “I thought you were seeing the driver, not Cole Mauricio himself. That’s the only part I didn’t pick up right away.”

I sat up in my seat. “You thought I was seeing Carl?”

“There were two guys, right? I knew it was one of them. I didn’t catch their names.”

“Jim’s the other one.”

“Carl’s cuter.” She grinned. “My personal choice for you.”

Carl…

My throat started to swell up. I swallowed, clearing it, and changed the topic. “When did you know it was Cole?”

“I didn’t until the other morning.” Her voice quieted again. She bit her lip. “I was worried about you. I saw a car go around the corner and turn into the lot. I was watching from Jake’s floor, and I thought maybe it was you. Turns out I was right. That’s when I saw the two of you together. You guys looked so beaten down, but there was something to how you moved with each other. You moved as a unit, and then he touched your hip, and I knew he was the guy you were seeing. You guys looked like death warmed over.”

She’d known. She’d known something almost the whole time, and she’d known who Cole was… “That was why you didn’t bat an eye when the house was broken into. I’d told you I was going to check on it the night before.”