Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 73817 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 369(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73817 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 369(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
To look at him and still see the lost eighteen-year-old in his youthful eyes. To still see the wild boy I danced with at the club. The boy who raced me from one end of the beach to the other before we crashed into the water with laughter. The boy I taught to surf. The boy who first made me see what it was like to commit to someone for longer than a weekend, who put an end to my partying days, who helped me explore the possibility of love. I was twenty-eight and lost. He was the boy who found me.
Then threw me away.
“I debated coming in several times,” he admits, taking a few more steps toward the counter. “I kept talking myself out of it. Telling myself to stay away … saying, ‘Haven’t I done enough to Cooper?’ I’m surprised you can even look me in the face without wanting to punch it.”
I drop my gaze to the half-empty bowl of nuts, lost.
“Of course. You would never punch me.” Drake sighs. “You aren’t the one who harms people. I am.”
Am I supposed to feel sorry for him?
“It’s the truth.” He drops onto the bar stool across from me. “Look, I don’t have to stay long. I just wanted to come and say hi. Well, no, that’s a lie. I wanted to make sure you were happy. But every time I passed by, you were busy.” He shrugs. “I guess keeping busy is a form of being happy. You were always such a hard worker, even back then.”
Back then.
Those two tiny words carry a world within them—back then. So much pain and joy twisted around each other, it’s impossible to untangle and tell them apart.
“I thought maybe we could talk.” He’s still looking at me, perhaps hoping I’ll look back. “A lot has happened. I went to college and got that degree. Y’know, just like you said I should. Even graduated with honors.”
Is this when I congratulate him? I stare at the counter, entirely unable to meet his eyes. My heart is pounding, but it’s unclear whether with anger, hurt, or something else.
“Okay, I lied again,” he says suddenly. “I’m not here with friends. I’m alone. Just myself. I bought a single ticket to the Pride thing at the fair, and I went this past weekend. Now my purpose here in Dreamwood Isle is over. You are my purpose now. Seeing you and … and talking to you, I guess. I was supposed to go home last night. I booked my room for two more nights. I leave tomorrow morning.”
“What do you want?” I ask.
“I don’t know. I don’t know, Cooper. Can you look at me, please?”
“Closure? Is that it? Is that what you came here for?”
“Talking is easier when you look at each other.”
I pull my stony gaze off the counter and aim it at him.
Drake retracts, fear in his eyes.
“Does it feel easier now?” I ask coldly.
He lets out a shaky sigh. “Not really.”
“What part of this is supposed to be easy, exactly? You want to know how I am? I’m alone. I’m bitter and broken. I pour myself into this bar because it’s all I really have. This bar, and the people who care about me. You want closure? Too bad. You’re going to have to live with what you did to me. Your actions have consequences, and when you carve out another man’s heart for sport—”
“Cooper, that’s not what—”
“—you have to know it won’t be easy to look that man in the eye. You can’t slither back into his hometown, into his bar, into his life and expect him to look you in the eye and give you the gift of closure. Who in their right mind welcomes back the demon who sucked out his soul?”
Drake’s face twists irritably, for a second making him look exactly like the defiant, cocky eighteen-year-old who fled Dreamwood Isle.
“Bit dramatic, are we?” says Drake. “A demon? That’s what I am?”
“You’d be dramatic too if you lived even a second of the hell I experienced after you left.”
“I never said I was here for closure.”
“What, then? A second chance? Not gonna happen.”
He looks away. “This was a mistake.”
“At least we agree there.” I fold my arms. “Not exactly sure what you expected from me.”
He shuts his eyes and goes quiet.
The fight flees my system, looking at him like that. His face reminds me of how he’d look when he fell asleep, but now he’s got stubble and his face is fuller. I feel ten years younger. I feel less achy, less tired, less stressed. I really did live up to the name of this bar back then: easy breezy, not a worry on my mind, adrift on the raft of life.
The past can be the most seductive thing.
That’s all Drake is: a walking, talking advertisement for my past.