Whenever you're sorryHey beautiful. I turn and he is there, black wings folded, paint-spattered jeans and hands to match. Dark brown curls hiding his eyes. But he is smiling, so that's something. Rough week?
You're not in my hands
You're in some other defect hands
I nod slowly. I'm wanting to look for Jake but Jake is nowhere to be found. I don't come out here to talk to Cole, we have nothing left to say. I start back toward the door but suddenly he is blocking it so I stop.
You need to do something for me, okay, paper doll? You need to not make any sudden moves right now. I want you to just hold tight to Ben and don't think about anything else right now. Can you do that?
I nod again, like a child. It's akin to being hypnotized. Cole's directives have weight anyway and the wings now give him all kinds of insight into my past, present and future so he knew I was playing scenarios through my head like reel to reel tapes and he worries (GOOD) that I might do something he wouldn't want me to do.
This is none of your business now, Cole. I tell him softly. I watch his nostrils flare and he shakes his curls back and just for a moment he is my lizard king again, the one who force-fed me a cure for homesickness that turned out to be a sham in of itself. The one who took over, raising me from fourteen to thirty-five. No small feat, especially considering he did so with Lochlan and then Jake, too, breathing down his neck. Cole the Great and Terrible.
No sudden moves, I give in and repeat his instructions. He's so very good at this.
Good girl. That's my girl. You're doing well, munchkin.
I look at the floor.
You can do this. Just keep going. Keep yourself in check.
You're gunning for your brother to win and I don't even know the rules. I'm not the one playing games, Cole.
Doll, who is filling your head with these ideas?
He stabbed you in the back over and over again and you take his side?
He looks up and smiles under a curtain of tousled waves. Blood is thicker than saltwater.
No it isn't. I turn and walk out on him again. It's becoming part of our routine.