Chapter 155 THE WRONG CONCLUSIONS - 38

Chapter 155 THE WRONG CONCLUSIONS - 38
COLE

It took me a few seconds longer than it probably should have.

Not because she wasn't explaining it properly. She was. She'd been painfully clear, actually, laying the whole thing out in that careful, organised way she has when she's trying very hard not to let emotion get in the way of the facts. Thursday evening. Audit finished. She'd driven over to my building. Sat in the visitor's car park. Saw me leave with a woman. Watched me put her in the passenger seat. Watched us drive away.

I was following every word.

I just hadn't caught up to what the words actually meant yet.

I rubbed a hand over my face, thinking back.

"Hang on..."

She went quiet.

"That was the Thursday after the report went in?"

She nodded.

"I think so."

My brain finally found the memory it'd been looking for.

"Cierra."

"What?"

"Cierra was there."

Vivienne blinked. "I don't know who Cierra is."

"My cousin."

The room went quiet. I looked at her and she looked back at me. Then I looked away again because now that I'd found the right memory, the rest of it arrived all at once.

Cierra's flat had flooded. A pipe under her kitchen sink had burst while she'd been at work, and by the time she'd got home the floor looked like a very unimpressive indoor swimming pool. The repairs were only supposed to take two days.

They'd taken nine and she was supposed to be at Lisbon in a few days so she needed a place to stay before her flight.

She'd announced she was staying with me before I'd even had the chance to offer, turned up with two suitcases, a tote bag that looked capable of surviving a natural disaster, and exactly one houseplant she insisted was "emotionally fragile" and therefore couldn't be left alone.

By the second morning she'd somehow managed to reorganise my kitchen because my mugs apparently lived in the wrong cupboard.

By the third she'd hidden my television remote because she said I watched too much football. And the next day, I drove her to the airport to catch her flight.

I stared at the ceiling for a second.

Then back at Vivienne.

"Oh."

She was watching me carefully now. "Cole?"

I let out one slow breath. "The woman you saw..." I pressed my lips together. "...was Cierra."

She frowned.

"My cousin."

I could practically see her brain refusing to process the sentence.

"The woman..." she repeated slowly.

"...is my cousin."

She kept looking at me. Then she looked away. Then back again.

I waited. Nothing. Finally she said, very quietly, "...Your cousin."

"Yes."

"The one you got in the car with."

"Yes."

"The one laughing outside your building."

"Yes."

"The one whose back you...?” She stopped herself.

"I was steering her around the step outside my building because she was carrying a box the size of a washing machine and she's spectacularly capable of falling over completely stationary."

Vivienne didn't answer.

I watched the last ten days of misunderstanding rearrange themselves across her face in real time. Her mouth opened and closed again.

I waited another second.

"...Oh."

I held it together for approximately three more seconds.

Then I laughed. I honestly tried not to, I really did. I got as far as looking down at the duvet and biting the inside of my cheek before the whole thing hit me all at once.

She'd driven all the way to my building. She'd worked herself up into telling me how she felt. She'd seen Cierra. She'd assumed I'd moved on in what had to be record time. She'd spent weeks believing I'd taken another woman home when I'd actually spent an entire weekend arguing with my cousin about whether houseplants could develop abandonment issues.

The laugh escaped before I could stop it. Just one completely helpless burst.

Vivienne stared at me.

"Cole."

"I'm sorry."

"You are absolutely not sorry."

"I'm trying to be."

"You laughed."

"I know."

"You laughed."

"I know, I know." I rubbed both hands over my face, still smiling despite myself. "I'm not laughing at you."

"You absolutely are."

"I'm laughing because..." I shook my head. "Vivienne, Cierra spent half that weekend hiding my TV remote because she said I needed to reconnect with nature."

She folded her arms. "I don't see how that's helping your case."

"It isn't?"

"No"

I laughed again, quieter this time.

"I'm sorry."

She picked up the spare pillow and it hit me squarely in the shoulder.

"Ow."

"You deserved that."

I caught the pillow before it fell onto the floor and hugged it against my chest, still grinning like an idiot.

"You could've told me you had a cousin."

"You could’ve made your presence known Viv."

She looked down at her hands instead, turning the edge of the duvet between her fingers as if it had suddenly become the most interesting thing in the room, and I knew that look well enough by now to leave it alone. Vivienne wasn't someone you hurried. Every important thing she'd ever told me had arrived a few seconds later than it almost had.

When she finally looked back up, her voice was quieter than before.

"I'd already decided."

"About what?"

"You."

I don't think I breathed. She shook her head.

"I got in my car without really thinking about it. I didn't rehearse some speech. I wasn't planning some grand declaration." She laughed softly at herself. "Honestly, I think I was just hoping you'd open the door so I could stop thinking for five minutes."

I couldn't stop looking at her.

"You drove all the way to my house."

"I did."

"You were actually going to knock."

"Yes."

"And then you saw Cierra."

"I saw a beautiful woman leaving your building laughing, and then I watched you put your hand on her back like you'd done it a thousand times." She let out a breath through her nose. "At the time it felt... incredibly conclusive."

I winced.

"It wasn't," I said gently.

"I know that now."

"No, I mean..." I rubbed a hand over the back of my neck. "God, Vivienne..."

"What?"

"If you'd knocked..." I laughed quietly, mostly at myself. "You'd have met Cierra because she'd probably have answered the door before I did. She treats my place like it's legally hers."

That earned a real laugh.

The room went quiet again.

"I made myself hate you for about forty-eight hours," she admitted eventually. "I couldn't maintain it though. I kept trying to think, well obviously he's allowed to date people, Vivienne. He's a grown man. You literally told him you needed space. So then I'd get angry at myself for being upset."

She looked at me apologetically.

"It was exhausting."

I smiled. "I wasn't exactly thriving either."

"No?"

"No."

She tipped her head.

"I spent the better part of a week convinced you'd met someone."

Her eyebrows lifted.

"What?"

"The coffee shop."

She blinked.

"...The coffee shop?"

"You were..." I searched for the words. "Nice."

"I've always been nice."

"You were carefully nice."

"Oh."

"I left thinking you'd moved on."

She stared at me.

"You thought I met someone?"

"I did."

She looked at me for one long second before covering her face with both hands.

"Oh, that's actually embarrassing."

"For which of us?"

"For everyone involved."

Then somehow we were both laughing at the same time, not because any of it had been funny while we were living through it, but because weeks of misery had apparently been built on one cousin, one coffee shop conversation, and two people who were catastrophically good at making reasonable assumptions.

"I can't believe this," she said, still laughing.

"I can."

"You can?"

"We're both intelligent people."

"We are."

"We're also apparently idiots."

She nodded.

"...That tracks."

The laughter faded naturally after that. I looked at her for a long moment.

"So..."

"So?"

"You came to tell me something that night."

She met my eyes. "I did."

"You never got to say it."

"No."

"I think I'd still like to hear it."

She looked away for the briefest second, smiling to herself in a small, reluctant way.

When she looked back, there was nowhere left for either of us to hide.

"I was going to tell you I loved you."

I don't remember deciding to move. One second I was sitting on my bed looking at her, the next I was crossing the small space between us.

"Good," I said, stopping just in front of her.

She looked up.

"Good?"

"Because I was hoping you'd say that before I told you I love you too."

Her eyes searched my face as though she still wasn't entirely convinced this wasn't another misunderstanding waiting to happen.

"So we're really done being sensible?" she asked.

"I sincerely hope so."

A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

"I've never liked being sensible very much."

"I noticed."

Neither of us moved for another heartbeat.

Then she closed the last few inches between us herself.

And when she kissed me, it wasn't hesitant or uncertain or the sort of kiss people give when they're testing the water.

It felt like finally arriving somewhere we'd both been trying to get to for months.

Everything else could wait until morning.