Confessions in the Dark Page 13

  Jesus. The man didn’t have to just be powerful, at least to Serena’s gaze. He had to be attractive, too. Educated. She was hanging on his every word, and Cole’s grip on her kept incrementally tightening.

  He cursed himself bitterly. Jealous, ridiculous fool. How many times had he pushed her away? And now he physically couldn’t seem to stop holding her hand, and why? Because another man was paying attention to her? Offering her his jacket, even?

  Cole’s stomach shuddered and sank. He should’ve thought to do that. All that creamy skin left exposed by that dress—of course she had to be freezing. Had he been thinking, he could’ve had her wrapped up in his coat and in his scent, but that was the effect she had on him. His brain went to toffee, sticky and slow.

  He forgot to think of all the reasons he needed to let go.

  Finally, he was saved by servers coming around. As a salad plate was placed in front of him, his fingers unlocked. He pulled back and straightened his spine, unable to look at her for the shame of it. Every time, the loss of her touch was a near-physical pain, and he kept forcing himself to experience it. Dancing far too close to her flame. Sooner or later, he was going to burn.

  By the time the entrees arrived, he’d more or less recovered his composure, though he still gripped his silverware hard enough to bend the metal. Grayson presided over the table, coaxing people’s entire life stories from them as if it were his job. Maybe it was.

  Cole’s knife skidded across his plate with an indecorous screech as the man turned to Serena.

  “And what about you, my dear?” He darted a glance at Cole. “Your companion here said you were a teacher?”

  “Yes.” She set her utensils down and brushed a lock of golden hair behind her ear, trailing her fingertips down the column of her throat to fiddle with her necklace. “Seventh grade. Public school, though.” She said it half apologetically, as though that were something to be ashamed about.

  Cole frowned. If anything, she should be proud of what she did. He opened his mouth, about to say as much.

  But Grayson spoke first, neatly sidestepping the issue altogether. “And is that something you’ve always wanted to do?”

  “Since I was in middle school myself.” She glanced away, eyes taking on that particular gleam they got when she was getting worked up about her profession. “I had an amazing teacher. One of those who really inspires you, you know?”

  Heads around the table nodded, and Cole leaned forward. This wasn’t a story he’d heard before. Probably because he’d never asked.

  “My sister, Penny.” Her voice cracked by half a fraction, but she hid it well. “She was an honors student. Always the best at everything. She had her flaws, sure, but at school at least...” A ruefulness colored her smile. “Let’s say she wasn’t an easy act to follow. Teachers expected me to pick things up as quickly as she did, and when I didn’t, they always seemed so disappointed. But not this teacher. She made me realize—” She cut herself off, throat bobbing. “Teaching isn’t about the kids who could’ve done it on their own. It’s about the ones who need you. Who need to be noticed or encouraged.” She shrugged. “I want to be that person, and teaching where I do, working with the kids I do, I get to change people’s lives.”

  The room was loud, practically rattling with all the clinking and chatter. But the silence that descended over their table seemed to wash it away. Cole swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry.

  This woman. He wanted to take her hand all over again, consequences and temptations be damned. He wanted to worship her.

  He wanted to give to her what she was apparently so prepared to give to everyone else.

  Self-consciousness seemed to steal over her, and she dropped her gaze, picking up her fork and poking at her potatoes with the tines.

  Grayson recovered first. “Noble,” he said, though there was something strained to his voice.

  Cole shook his head. His throat was still parched, and he grasped for words. The only ones he could find were “You’re amazing.”

  Whirling around, she turned the full power of her vivid green eyes on him, making him feel pinned. He curled his fingers hard into a fist. It had come out too reverent, too awed by half, and yet it didn’t begin to encapsulate a fraction of what she did to him.

  She inspired him. She drew him out of himself—made him want to teach and love and be part of the world again. Part of her world.

  For a moment, the room around them receded, their gazes locked. And he could do it. He could touch her. He could let himself.

  But before his hands could begin to uncurl, Grayson cleared his throat. “And, Cole, you said you were a doctor?”

  Cole’s mind was a haze, all his thoughts turned to this slip of a woman who brought him to his knees, who threatened to change his life. The moment, crystalline and perfect, shattered around him.

  He tore his gaze away. “I...” He tucked his hand beneath the table, jabbing into the meat of his thigh as if that could clear his thoughts. He shook his head. “No. A professor. I was a professor.”

  In another life.

  “Oh? And now?”

  Nothing. The same, stale anger of the last few years nipped at his heels. He did nothing.

  But then it came to him.

  Strangled, his very lungs threatening to close, he said, “I do some tutoring.”

  And it was the most satisfying thing he’d done in years.

  Grayson’s brow furrowed, and Serena laughed, a high, clear sound that soothed something inside of Cole.

  After that, the rest of the dinner hour passed in a blur. Small talk about careers gave way to theater and the new show at the Art Institute and the mayor’s latest scandal. Finally, someone stepped up to a podium at the front of the room. With gratitude, Cole tuned the parade of speakers and presenters out, the meaningless self-congratulation washing over him until—

  “And now,” a voice boomed over the microphone, “we invite you to relax and enjoy the musical stylings of the Tony Stephens Band.”

  Out of nowhere, the room erupted in music. Cole started, dessert fork clattering to his plate as he whipped around.

  In his distraction, an entire band had set up. He recognized the tune, an old jazz standard Helen would have loved, would have forced him to dance to, and he would have gone. For her he would have.

  She wasn’t the only one.

  He turned back to Serena, and his heart was an impassable terrain of barbed wire and mud, littered with tire tracks and blood. But her eyes were beautiful. They were hopeful.

  Right until the moment they fell.

  Her mouth struggled to keep from curling down into a frown. Looking just to the side of him, she said, “You probably need a few more therapy appointments before you can dance, huh?”

  Bollocks. He’d been so enraptured, so consumed, he’d nearly forgotten. His hand went instinctively for the crutches resting against the corner of his chair, the throbbing ache in his knee resurging.

  Whatever had been rising in him fell, too.

  “Probably.” He nodded, his voice strangled.

  But he hadn’t known how strained it could become.

  “If I may,” Grayson said. “I know a step or two.”

  Something complicated happened around Serena’s mouth. She twisted around in her seat to face the man, the pretty pink of her flush sliding down her neck toward her chest. She glanced to Cole, a question to the tilt of her chin.

  It was like watching their moment fall away all over again.

  “Please,” he said, the words acid, “don’t let me hold you back.”

  There was reluctance in Serena’s posture as she stood. As she took the hand of another man. She glanced one last time at Cole. “You’re sure?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Tethered in place in so many ways, bound to where he sat, he watched them walk away.

  And something inside him snapped.

  Well, at least Serena knew what it was like to turn into a pillar of salt now.

  Th
e whole way out to the impromptu dance floor set up in front of the band, she kept taking backward glances. It was futile. She knew that. But the look on Cole’s face had been so miserable as he’d urged her to go. He understood how much securing Max’s place at Upton meant to her, and he hadn’t tried to hold her back. He clearly hadn’t been happy about it, though.

  Her heart tugged hard at her chest as Grayson held out his arms. She stepped into them, leaving more than enough room for the Holy Spirit, her hand stiff where it rested on his shoulder. It was so wrong to be gazing past him, staring back at their table, at the twin points of those dark, brooding eyes that she could practically feel boring into her.

  To go even more rigid in this mockery of a dance when she watched that figure rise and start a slow, aching walk toward the door.

  Warm fingers tightened around her palm, and she sucked in a breath as she refocused.

  “Let him stew,” Grayson said.

  She felt like something you’d find stuck to the bottom of your shoe.

  “I’m sorry, I—” She didn’t even know what kind of excuse she could hope to make.

  Fortunately, she didn’t have to make one at all. “It’s fine.” Grayson’s smile was kind, his eyes clear. “You clearly have a...complicated relationship.”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  “I wasn’t trying to show him up or steal you away.”

  The thought had scarcely entered her mind. It said more than she cared to admit that it hadn’t—Grayson was handsome and well spoken, effortlessly charming in a way Cole had to work so hard to be. He’d been courteous and quietly flirtatious, and a couple of weeks ago, she would’ve been doodling his name in the margins of her notebooks. But not now.

  He squeezed her hand. “You looked like you wanted to dance, and your date couldn’t. That’s all this is.”

  Her brows ascended toward her hairline. “I’m not sure if I should be offended by that or not.”

  “Not at all. Under different circumstances, we would be having a very different conversation right now.” His tone flashed dark for a fraction of a moment, suffusing with a low heat, and wow. Under different circumstances, she’d be having that same conversation with him in a heartbeat. “But,” he said, voice lightening as he led her into a slow circle in time to the beat, “you have an applicant in the family, and even if you didn’t...” He glanced behind her, and she couldn’t resist now any more than she’d been able to before.

  Cole had made it to the door, but not the one she’d feared—the one that would take him out. Maybe to the street and maybe to a cab. Maybe someplace she couldn’t follow. Instead, he’d headed toward a set of open French doors leading out onto a balcony.

  And he stood there, silhouetted in moonlight, so alone and so beautiful she ached.

  “Oh.” With a wet, shaky noise, she swallowed against the pull in her throat.

  The corner of Grayson’s mouth flickered upward, drawing her gaze back to him. “That’s exactly why I’m not trying to steal you away.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  She appreciated his saying it, too. After all the times Cole had touched her only to pull away—after the kiss that ended before it had hardly begun—she’d started to worry this was all in her head. Cole was a lightning burst of intensity, jagged brilliance that blinded her every time it struck. He was seared into her vision now, and she wasn’t the only one who could see it.

  This line they’d been toeing at the edges of for weeks now—they had to either step across it or back away for real. She knew which she’d prefer, but it was time for him to decide.

  And she was going to confront him about it. Tonight.

  “I should—” She lifted her hand from Grayson’s shoulder.

  Only for a strong grasp to surround her wrist, returning it to where it was.

  “Like I said.” His grin flickered. “You should let him stew. Come on.” The music shifted tempo, drifting into another song. “Dance with me.”

  “I thought I just did.”

  “That barely counted, and you know it.”

  She did. She also knew that if Cole’s expression had been miserable when she’d first walked off with this man, he’d be seething by now.

  Maybe Grayson was right. Maybe she should let him see her enjoying herself with someone else for a little longer.

  “All right,” she said, tilting her chin up.

  His smile this time was unfettered, his eyes twinkling. He flexed his fingers at her waist, taking a firmer hand in leading her around the floor. “You’re a beautiful, intelligent woman, Serena. Any man would be lucky to have you on his arm.”

  They would.

  She kept telling herself that as they danced—two more songs and then three. But when he cocked a brow and offered her a fourth, she shook her head. He let her go this time, and with a little bow of thanks, she took her leave.

  Then with her shoulders straight, her head held high, she floated her way across the room. And toward a man whose eyes looked like the very darkest kind of storm.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Fuck.

  Cole’s stomach was a writhing mass of knots as he stood there, not quite in the room and not beyond it. The heat from within beat at his front while the cool night air buffeted him from behind, the music swirling with a looming sort of silence and leaving a cacophony inside his mind. A precipice, then, and he had but to take a single step to either side.

  Or to wait.

  Pale skin glowing in the dim light, hair golden, Serena approached him, and there was a new sort of stillness to her that only served to set the waiting pieces in him further on edge. The resolve to her gait made him quake.

  The things this woman set into motion in him—the things he felt whenever she was near. They were foreign and familiar, a possessiveness he never thought he’d ever feel again. A hunger and a need, and not just for her body. He needed her.

  And it was that that made him grip his crutches tighter. Take a single, torturous step back.

  The fierce pang squeezing like a vise around his heart—the sick jealousy when she’d so much as looked at another man. His laughter hurt like a sob. The very signs of how he hungered were themselves the reasons he couldn’t have her. He ruined everything he touched, and he wouldn’t do that to her. Even if it meant never coming close to her again.

  But with that same assuredness smoothing her gait, she pursued him, a relentless march that ate up the space and drove him farther back onto the balcony. A gust of wind blew through his hair, and the notes of yet another old jazz standard went muffled and low.

  Then she was standing just where he had been, on that very same dividing line. She surged across it like it wasn’t even there, inserting herself into his space and into his life.

  His resistance crumpled. But whatever words she’d been about to say seemed to die on her lips.

  He turned away.

  With his heart echoing through his ribs, he made his way to the railing and looked over. They weren’t particularly high off the ground—just a couple of stories. The city below pulsed, though, teeming with life, while up here, for just a moment, all was still.

  Until Serena came to stand at his side. She was a silent presence in a clear and brilliant night. As he turned his head, she stole his breath from his lungs. God, she was beautiful.

  And she was shaking.

  It was nothing this time to shift his weight to one side, to lean his crutches against the railing. He shrugged off his jacket and held it out for her.

  For what felt like eons, she stared at him. At long last, she turned to give him her back. His throat bobbed as she slipped her arms into the sleeves. He settled the fabric on her shoulders, her body swimming beneath those tailored lines, and his blood flashed hot.

  “Serena.” Her name felt punched out of him, a breath pulled from his very lungs. He slid his hands down her arms. Just the tips of her fingers poked out from beneath his sleeves, but when he reached them, they were nimble and
strong, grasping at his palms. She drew his arms around her until he was holding her, and it was all wrong. He was barely standing, off balance even without the heat of her spine pressed to her chest, even before the scent of her hair was in his lungs. He closed his eyes. “Serena.”

  “Dance with me?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know if I can.”

  “There’s only one way to find out.”

  She spun inside his arms, a slow half-circle that gave him every opportunity to pull back or push her away, but he didn’t. Damn him—damn his soul and his heart and this whisper of life she’d breathed into him.

  The music was faint, but the pulse of it hummed through the floor of the balcony, steady enough to sway to. He winced, putting too much weight on his bad leg, and what had he been thinking? But all she did was reach to the side. She handed him a single crutch. It was a near-physical pain to unwrap his arm from around her waist. But he could stand like this. He could hold her with what fraction of himself there was to give. He could hold himself up against the force of gravity and memory.

  She lifted her face to his.

  They were alone on this little balcony, in this tiny pocket of time and space, and she fit so perfectly against him. He dipped in closer, and her eyes fluttered, long lashes dark against the porcelain of her skin.

  The music changed.

  He pulled away like he’d been burned.

  His knee screamed at him as loudly as his heart did, his skin that had been aching for contact for years.

  But the last time he’d danced, it had been to this song. He couldn’t breathe.

  “Cole?”

  He shook his head, throwing his free hand out in a warning. She couldn’t touch him—he couldn’t stand to have her near. He couldn’t do this.

  “Cole?” She said his name again, and it felt like bones snapping, like blood seeping out onto snow.

  “No,” he breathed. The floor spun beneath his feet, and he listed wildly. She put a hand on his arm, and red washed across his vision. He flailed out, striking at nothing. He needed air, needed time, needed years. His hand connected with the metal strut of his other crutch and he got it under him, not seeing, barely hearing. His leg was a dense ache, but he surged across the floor. The door was right there. He just had to get through it, and everything would be fine; he’d be alone and fine and safe and miserable and—