Page 20 of Cueball & Double-Z (Alpha’s Rejects #5)

That little fantasy intruded into my mind again. As hard as I tried, it wouldn’t leave me now that we were openly talking about this. “And… what about…” I didn’t want to say it, like if I said it out loud, it’d come true or some shit.

“You want to know how I feel about him?”

I paused before nodding reluctantly.

“I don’t date anyone.”

That didn’t exactly answer my question, but I was slightly appeased.

Once I had three washers running and nothing else to do but wait, I lifted myself onto the table and sat next to Cueball, my legs dangling and swaying back and forth.

“Why not?” I asked.

“It’s not something I talk about.”

I scoffed and watched him stare at the machines in front of us. “And you expect me to open up to you? That don’t exactly build trust, Cueball.”

He pinned his soulful amber eyes on me with nothing else on his face but his intelligence. “I just did.”

“What? That you don’t date anyone?”

“Yes, it’s a sensitive issue for me.”

I had no idea why a choice would be so sensitive, but I let it go.

“I also don’t talk about myself because it hurts too much,” he admitted .

“Oh…” My shoulders unknotted themselves. “You won’t tell me why, I suppose.”

“No.”

My fingers curled over the edge of the table, watching my dangling feet swinging back and forth. With a loud sigh, I said, “Cole blames himself. That’s why he can’t talk.”

I didn’t know what possessed me to tell him about us finally, but it was like he pulled that shit out of me without even trying.

“Blames himself for what?”

“For the death of our parents.”

Cueball’s eyes popped wide for a moment, and he blanched before frowning and shaking his head. “Jesus… fuck…”

His words were raspy, and they trembled. The emotions were enough to get me to face him. He was gripping the table like me, except his knuckles had turned white. I watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed thickly. That clearly triggered him. Why?

“You okay, man?”

Cueball shook his head as if he were trying to shake something out of it. “Nothing. It’s fine,” he mumbled, but even I could tell he wasn’t okay. “Why would he believe he’s at fault?”

My heart raced a little as the grief tried to punch its way through, but I beat it back like everything else. Life was a fucking nightmare as it was without adding my grief into the mix. I had to stay strong for Cole.

“It’s okay if you can’t talk about it,” Cueball said, seeing right through me again.

Fuck, it was like, impossible to keep secrets from him as I blurted, “Car accident. A drunk driver hit them.”

“God… I have a friend who was hit by a drunk driver. Nearly lost his life last year. He lost his leg in the process. Terrifying. Cole was in the car with them?”

I nodded.

“Where were you?”

“Workin’.”

“How could Cole possibly blame himself for someone else’ s fault?”

I looked up again at Cueball, his face flickering with pain, the most emotion I’d ever seen on him before.

Why now? Maybe he was intentionally showing me after I accused him of not opening up.

I wouldn’t have been surprised. I could see him choosing which emotions to show someone.

That took some serious fucking control. Control I’d never had.

“He said he was being really loud. Cole… he used to be a talker. Like a lot.” I huffed a laugh and shook my head, recalling how chatty he would get.

I missed his voice so much. “Loved to be the center of attention and shit. He’d always get in trouble at school for it.

Cole said my dad tried to get him to settle down as he drove, but he didn’t.

He was talkin’, singin’… then bam ! The car hits them.

Maybe Dad was distracted by it all. Who knows?

I wasn’t there. Still, Cole had to watch our parents die a slow death before help arrived.

It fuckin’ traumatized him.” I rubbed my aching heart at the loss.

I’d been pretty close to my dad. Cole’s mom had been pretty cool, too.

“He was so traumatized he quit talkin’ for good. ”

My eyes stung as they tried to cry, but with a few deep breaths, I was able to stop them.

It wasn’t just the loss of our parents, but in a way, Cole died that day, too—the old Cole.

A strong hand gently gripped my shoulder.

I couldn’t look at him with him touching me.

That would finally send me over the edge. A place I wasn’t ready to go to yet.

“How do you feel about all this? Do you blame him, too?”

I shook my head. “Nah. At first… yeah. I wanted to blame someone, and Cole was right there, but he was in the hospital, all hurt and suffering, not just from his body, but his mind. He needed me. And…”

“You needed him. He was all you had left?” Cueball made it a question rather than a statement.

“Yeah,” I sighed. “I don’t think it was his fault.

As I said, I wasn’t there. But that person chose to drive while drinking.

Whether Cole had been silent or not, that driver was headed straight toward their car.

It was their fucking fault. That asshole who couldn’t have been bothered to call a fucking Uber that night.

Why couldn’t he…” My gut twisted, and the pain kept trying to sucker punch me.

Cueball’s fingers dug into my shoulder a bit, the electric tingling of his touch pulling me out of my spiraling, as if he just knew how I was feeling without saying shit.

And my fucking stupid body leaned into it.

I craved it. “You didn’t just lose your parents, but you lost a bit of Cole, too,” he said. Fucking mind reader, that guy.

There was no hiding it when a tear slipped.

I angrily swiped it away, coughed, and jumped off the table, needing to get away from his nearness because I wanted to fucking lean into him more.

I wanted him to hold me and tell me that everything from here on out would get better.

If I did that, it would be game fucking over.

I’d lose it, and there would be no coming back from that shame. And the last thing I needed was hope.

“Yeah, I did.”

Again, he could read me like a book, or he was that intuitive because he changed the subject back to Cole’s trauma instead of focusing on me. “He seems okay now. I haven’t sensed a lot of anxiety from him, except that he still doesn’t talk. I feel like sign language has become more of a habit.”

I shoved my shaking hands into my jeans and stared at my feet.

I didn’t like looking at Cueball being able to see through to my soul.

At the same time, I had to admit it was nice to be seen and heard.

“Yeah, it’s like he’s come to terms with it, I guess.

Accepted it. Accepted that he can’t talk no more.

Once he came to terms and shit, Cole just lives as a mute now.

Not really even tryin’ to talk. That’s when I noticed his anxiety lessening.

Like giving up the idea of using his voice has helped him in a weird way. ”

“I see. Sometimes, selective mutes use their words, especially around those they’re comfortable with. Has he tried to talk to you?” Cueball asked.

“Yeah, he can say a word here or there, but only to me. He got mad at me the other night and yelled ‘ no ’ at me.” I smiled at that. He needed me enough that he was willing to vocalize it.

“Does that make you feel special? That he says words only to you?”

It really did. I huffed a humorless laugh. “Does it make me look like an asshole if I say yes?”

For the first time, Cueball chuckled, his smile broad, exposing expensively straight, white teeth, which felt odd considering his living conditions. “You’re definitely an asshole, but not for that.”

I smiled back and breathed another laugh, the heat spreading over my face. “Yeah, I kinda deserve that. ”

“Admitting it is the first step.” He was still grinning, but it’d turned crooked, so I knew he was teasing.

“Now who’s being an asshole?” I retorted.

Cueball jumped down from the table, ambled my way, and reached his hand out to me. “Let’s start over, yeah? You can call me Marco. Let’s work on building our trust.”

I looked at his hand, but hadn’t yet taken it to shake. “Not to be an asshole… again, but why? What’s the point if we’re leaving in a few days anyway?”

“Because no matter how much I fight it, life has a way of saying, ‘ fuck you .’ It does what it wants sometimes, so who knows what will become of us after a few days?”

I took his warm and calloused hand in mine, shaking it, trying to ignore the tingling in my hand and a weird fluttering in my stomach. With a deep breath to shove it aside, I said, “Amen to fucking that. Life loves to kick you in the nuts a lot.”

Cueball… Marco gave a curt nod in agreement. “It sure as hell does.”