Page 15 of About Yesterday (Foothills #5)

It had been a tick since the last time they’d had movie night upstairs like this, and it had usually been Trace in the middle of the couch between Cole and Finn.

Occasionally, Cole would bring a date, but rarely the same one twice.

In and out, she forced her mind, her breath, her pulse to slow as she opened the door.

Cole didn’t need to witness a midlife crisis moment.

Normally reserved for the middle of life, apparently Trace needed one now. She had always been precocious.

Cole came hobbling up the stairs, a six-pack hooked in his fingers that gripped the crutch, and a cloth bag filled with goodies hung from his neck like a pack mule.

Trace snorted a laugh and dashed over to rescue him.

As she lifted the bag from his neck, he released a self-effacing chuckle and shook his head.

“I went down for water, and Ellen started hooking stuff from me like a coatrack. Jeremy is picking up the pizza, about thirty minutes out. I can’t believe Foothills still hasn’t figured out delivery service. ”

“Right?” The bag was heavy, filled with a picnic care package from the bakery. “I thought my mom was picking the pizza up on her way home. Why is my dad going to get the pizza when he’s not even going to be home to enjoy it? I could have gone.”

Relieved of his load, Cole breathed in extra oxygen as he continued his trek toward the couch. “No idea. Ellen was already almost home, so Jeremy said he’d get it. I offered, promising I was perfectly capable of driving, but he said something about a gift-horse and a mouth.”

“My father is an odd man,” Trace said, taking the beers from his finger, then grabbed the crutch for him.

Cole lowered himself to the sofa and set his foot on the coffee table, cringing at the sudden adjustment. “You said it, not me.” He puffed his cheeks as he exhaled, tipping his head back and pushing his hair off his forehead.

“You must be ready to pass out, so busy today.” Trace lowered to sit next to the goodie bag on the coffee table.

“Got that right,” he said, shaking off the exhaustion. “Pick out a movie for us?”

“I haven’t chilled out with a movie in ages. I don’t even know what’s out.”

He laughed under his breath as he moved the crutch behind the couch.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“You can’t say nothing after that devious laugh. What?”

“I was just picturing what your parents had in mind, sending us up here with junk food and beer for a movie night upstairs, while the grownups are out of the house. Jeremy practically ran out the door to get the pizza, Ellen loading me up with sweets and more beer than the two of us should drink in an evening.”

If the impromptu and overly festive movie night was anything like the “go upstairs and take a shower” moment, she had her suspicions. “Sometimes I think they started taking in foster kids so I wouldn’t get so lonely. Or learn how to share, or something.”

Voice still gripped tight as he adjusted, he growled, “I fucking hope you never saw me as a brother.”

Tilting a look, she watched him as the words pinged in her brain.

He glanced over and bit down on the edge of his tongue before leaning forward to slide the six-pack closer.

Waiting, she watched as his pasty cheeks took on a rosy hue, and he kept his mouth firmly shut. Adjusting it at a funny angle, he snapped a beer out of the pack.

Finally, he mumbled, “What?”

She straightened her posture and accepted the second beer he plucked from the pack. “Nothing,” she said, then cracked open the can and drained a long, snappy gulp. “I… I’m really sorry about last weekend.”

Cole did the same, stealing glances over the can, not even coming up for air.

Worry flooded her vision as she watched him over the can. What all had she said?

Breathless as he finished his prolonged swig, he said, “I wasn’t sure you remembered.”

“What? I woke up on the sofa with a sore neck. Hard to forget.” Shit. He was probably freaking out still, at her offer to blow him, for her own practice. “I can’t believe I talked your ear off like that. After talking nonstop with Haley all night, I guess I was warmed up.”

Poker face engaging, Cole nodded vaguely and faded to polite.

“Cookie?” Trace asked, needing a rapid shift in focus.

“Yeah,” he said, watching as she pulled out a bakery box, the scent of fresh-from-the-oven cookies filled the room. “Thanks.”

“Oh hell yes,” she murmured under her breath as the fresh-baked scent of gooey chocolate chip, peanut butter chocolate chip, and walnut oatmeal coconut chocolate chip wafted over her.

“I love my mother,” she whispered with her eyes closed, inhaling the scent deeply before it dissipated into the air.

Cole reached into the box, releasing a vibrating groan as he took one of whatever was on top.

“Fuck I missed this,” he said before sinking his teeth into Ellen’s famous peanut butter cookies with chocolate chips and sea salt, a magical hybrid that found the perfect balance of sweet and savory, delicately crispy and gooey.

Blowjobs. Fuck. She shoved in another bite of cookie. If she hadn’t actually said what she was pretty sure she said, to bring it up now would be icing on the awkward cake. “So why didn’t you come back and visit more often?”

Great. That was much safer.

She broke off a hunk of the chocolatiest cookie in the box.

Sometimes, she suspected her mom doubled the chocolate chips for the Friday take-home box, because she knew melty chocolate was a spiritual sort of thing for Trace.

“I mean, that wasn’t a weird manipulative question or anything. Just curious.”

He lifted a one-armed shrug and sank his teeth in for another bite. “Why did you never come visit me?” he asked lightly, lifting a pursed-lip question mark dare of a smile at her.

She fired it right back with a snooty air on top. “Because you never invited me.”

He shook his head and seemed to release her. “In some ways, I didn’t feel like I deserved any of this,” he said, looking around the room, at what she still considered the coziest place on the planet.

“Bullshit,” she said, sinking into another bite and wiping the crumb from the side of her mouth with her thumb.

He shrugged again. “You asked. Not saying it was accurate and absolutely not healthy, but that’s how I felt. Like I needed to prove something before I could come… home.”

“Prove what? You never had anything to prove .”

“I don’t know. That I could pull my own weight. Atone for the shit I put your parents through.”

“They don’t regret a day of it.”

“I do,” he said flatly, studying the last of the cookie in his hand and inhaling slowly. “Of course, I fucked it up, because nothing ever goes according to plan, and I came home, well, like this.” He glanced down at his broken body and sighed.

Grief throbbed in her gut as she imagined how he didn’t have any idea how much this was his home as much as hers. “But you’re here now. And things feel… I don’t know, right when you’re here. You always were supposed to be with us.”

“Thanks,” he said lightly, but she could see he didn’t believe it.

She scooted the beer and cookies out of the way, and slid her butt across the coffee table to reach him. Framing her knees outside his, she plucked the cookie from his hands and shoved it in her mouth.

He irritated-laughed, looking at her with comical distrust as she groaned over the goodness of the cookie.

She licked away the crumbs on her lips and wiped the back of her thumb over the corner of her mouth.

Watching, he seemed to be grasping, guessing at what she was doing.

Taking his jaw, she smoothed the tip of her thumb over the thickening growth of beard and silently demanded he look her in the eye.

“What?” he asked, frozen in her hands, one side of his mouth lifted higher than the other as he relented to a smile and met her look.

“Don’t make me get all serious on you. I’m not going to blow smoke up your ass.

You are a son to my parents. If they could have adopted you, they would have.

Hands down, they claimed you the second you walked in this door, and it doesn’t matter how many things you do right or mistakes you make, they’re not letting you go. ”

Gray-green-blue eyes searching hers, more blue thanks to his shirt, she could see the doubt that wouldn’t relent, but there was a niggling hope, that he wanted her words to be true and was so close to believing them.

She tilted her head and twitched a smile.

“But, you are one hundred percent not a brother to me. I don’t know what to call you, because nothing quite describes it.

You are one of the best friends I’ve ever had, and I don’t have many people I feel like my complete self around. We all missed you like crazy.”

Jaw clenching down tight, he exhaled sharply into a helpless laugh. “Why?” He shook his head lightly, as if to mock himself for even asking, and she framed his face in her palms, holding gently, an ache stirring, rising. Different, louder and ravenous, the ache filled her veins.

Unconsciously, needing to satisfy the stirring in her belly, she traced her thumb over his bottom lip. Only a moment. A nothing. Yet so much more intimate than his penis in her face.

He stilled, his eyes fluttering closed.

Breath caught in her throat, she let her gaze fall to the plump of his bottom lip under her thumb. How his mouth parted, wistfully.

Oh. Shit.

This was one of those moments. More enticing than kissable lip gloss. Quiet and connected and like a crack to the skull, she realized exactly why she couldn’t describe him.