“Annalise Avalon, you’re an incredibly talented, giving person, and Cole sees that. He told you that he’d support your relationship no matter what. Maybe you should just accept that and move forward.”
“That’s just it. I can’t. I thought I could, but it turns out that pretending everything I went through never happened isn’t easy. I want to go back and deal with it. I feel like I’ve left an open jar of snakes and they’re creeping out all over the place, just waiting for the right moment to strike. I need to close that jar once and for all.”
“If you want to go back, why do you look so sad?” Tegan reached for her hand.
“Because.” Her eyes dampened despite her best efforts to keep her emotions in check. “I know I have to do this. For my own sanity and for any future I hope to have with Cole or anyone else. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. I’m throwing myself to the wolves, and I don’t know what to expect, or how long I’ll be gone, or...” She swiped at her tears.
“Aw, Annalise,” Tegan said as she hugged her. “I really think you should reconsider staying here, or let me or Cole go with you so you’re not alone. Or just stay here,” she repeated. “My vote is definitely stay here. No one is making you go.”
Leesa wiped her tears and drew her shoulders back, gathering her courage yet again. “No one has to make me go, Teg. I could no sooner turn my back on Andy than I could look the other way for any of my students.”
“That’s really selfless of you, considering the kid slaughtered your life.”
“No, it’s actually very selfish of me. I’m doing this for me. I need to make sure he’s okay because I have a feeling that’s the only way I can be okay.”
Later that evening, Leesa packed up her car and drove over to Cole’s house. It was humid and the air felt heavy—or maybe that was just her heart.
She followed the sounds of his guitar down to the beach and found him sitting by the water, strumming a melancholy tune.
“Hey,” she said as she sank to the cool sand beside him.
He set the guitar down and pulled her in for a kiss. “Hi, angel. You know, before you came into my life, it had been ages since I’d played the guitar.”
The comment was so far from what she’d expected to talk about that it took her a second to process it.
“Oh, well, you play so nicely. I’m glad you’re playing again.”
“I had forgotten how much emotion playing stirs up. I was inside the house, and even though you’ve only spent a few nights here, it felt empty without you around. Playing the guitar made me feel closer to you.”
They sat in comfortable silence, as the waves rolled gently in, swishing loudly against the shore, then rolling gracefully back out. Cole laced their fingers together and brought hers to his lips, kissing the back of her hand as he’d done so many times before that she’d memorized the feel of his soft lips pressed to them and the minute scratching of his upper lip against her skin.
“I wish you’d let me go with you. I hate the thought of you going back alone.”
His eyes were so serious and his voice was so tender that she felt herself wavering about leaving him at all. She wanted to get past whatever her mind was having trouble letting go of, even if she couldn’t quite grasp what that was. She needed to try.
“I don’t want you tangled up in my mess.” She leaned her head on his shoulder. “Wouldn’t it be easier for you to get involved with a normal girl who doesn’t have eight hundred pounds of baggage on her back?”
He tipped her chin toward him and kissed her softly. “Angel, you’re better than normal, whatever normal means. You’re spectacular. And there’s no creature, real or imagined, that could scare me away.” He kissed her again, and she felt herself melting into their closeness. “Open your eyes,” he whispered. “Look at me so I know you hear me.”
She did.
“I don’t want someone else. I feel like I’ve waited my whole life to meet you. When you’re ready, I’ll be here, whether it takes a day, a week, or a year.”
She touched her forehead to his and closed her eyes again before asking, “You’re not upset with me for wanting to go back?”
“I support whatever you need to feel safe. And if you think you’ll find the answers there, then I support the trip.”
He gathered her in close, and she wondered what she’d done to get lucky enough to have found such a supportive man. Listening to the steady beat of his heart, breathing in his now familiar scent, her throat thickened. Was she really going to leave him behind? Did she have the strength to get up and go? To drive the few hours to Towson and face what she’d run from? She knew she had to. Staying here and pretending everything was okay had seemed like an option, when really, it was only a bandage on a wound too deep to ignore.
“I’ll miss you,” she finally managed.
“I’ll miss you, too.” He kissed her again and held her gaze as he cupped her cheeks in his warm hands. “Whatever happens, know that I’m here, and my family is here. Tegan’s here. We’re all here for you, and…” He paused, searching her eyes as his brows drew together. The warmth in his eyes grew stormy. “Damn it, Leesa. I wish you’d let me be there with you. For you. It doesn’t make you any less determined if you let me be there to support you, and saying ‘I’m here for you’ doesn’t give you arms to walk into at the end of the day. It doesn’t allow me to stand up for you if you need me to, or to give an icy stare to someone who looks at you the wrong way.”
She nearly lost her resolve right then. She’d never been with a man who was willing to fight for her, and she didn’t want to lose him. But she knew, even though her heart was swelling and aching in alternating beats, that she had to do this alone. The only way to keep a sob from breaking free was to try to tease herself out of the emotion.
“Aw, my alpha boyfriend wants to get all tough and protective.”
“I’m serious, Leese. How am I supposed to get through each day knowing you’re facing everything you fear most?” He caressed her cheek and slid his fingers into her hair, holding tight. “I don’t want to suffocate you. Okay, maybe I do.” He smiled.
“Your patients need you, and your partner doesn’t need your extra caseload.”
“Let me worry about that,” he insisted.
She shook her head. “You think you can handle it, but you weren’t there. You have no idea what it’s like to face the types of looks I faced. As bad as it was that Chris left me, I can’t really blame him. That’s not something I want you to see, Cole. You know me as Leesa Avalon, a waitress with a past. Let me remain that person in your mind until I can be Annalise Avalon, a woman without any labels. Let me clear my name and then you can decide if this is what you want.” As she said it, she realized that was exactly what she needed.
“Annalise. Leesa. You can be anyone you want to be. I just wish being here with me was enough.”
“It is enough.” She clutched his hand, but she knew her claim wasn’t true. Now that her need had clarified itself in her mind, she needed that, too. Maybe even more, so that she was starting from a place of stability rather than a place of escape.
Cole must have sensed her lack of faith in her words, too, because he rose to his feet and reached for her hand. He gathered her in close, to the place she fit so well. The place that had somehow felt like home, and as they walked toward her car, he said the words that nearly brought her to her knees.
“Angel, when being here with me is enough, you won’t need to leave.”
Chapter Eighteen
LEESA STOOD ON the sleepy street where she’d grown up, looking at the small, bungalow-style home she and her father had shared. It was a funky little house with a roofline more typical of the Dutch style than of bungalows. A wide peak rose above the front door and the bay window to the right of it. The left side of the house was shrouded by bushes and a pine tree that shadowed her second-floor bedroom window. The other bedroom window sat high in the peak, not quite centered. She took in the neatly trimmed yard—maintained by a lawn service while she was away.
Away. Boy did that sound strange in her head. She hadn’t even gone away to college, having attended Towson State. She’d never strayed far from her hometown until she’d felt pushed out. She opened the trunk of her car, retrieved her suitcases, and lugged them up the front walk, the familiar cracks in the sidewalk bringing with them a hint of familiarity.
She inhaled the scent of pine, mulch, and home and crinkled her nose. The scents smelled funny. Had she already gotten used to smelling the sea in every breath? Was the air here thicker, more polluted? Or was that just her heart tugging her back toward Cole?
She tried to brush off the thought as she pushed open the front door and stepped onto the worn and scuffed hardwood floors. The same floors she’d used as dance floors for her Barbies. The floors she used to curl up on in front of the fireplace while her father read to her. The floors she’d crossed in her first pair of high heels. The floors her father had taught her to dance on. Her heart squeezed at the memory. She had too many father-daughter memories to count. Half the time, while her friends were out testing their newfound hormones in high school, she’d been home playing games and watching old movies with her father. How could she leave this all behind?