Live for You by Marquita Valentine Page B

away. “Your Nana
didn’t share?”
    “ No, she’s not big on
gossiping. At all. So…” I drum my fingers on my thigh, right below
the material of my shorts
    His eyes flash to mine. “My
mother is in rehab for the millionth time. As for my dad, he’s off
living his life somewhere.”
    Cole sounds so bitter and
yet so sad. I can’t imagine living like that. How does he do it?
“Oh.”
    “ Yeah,” he nods. “This is
great conversation, Rae. Damn glad you brought it up.”
    “ Ask me anything, anything
you want and I’ll tell you,” I say in a rush, wanting to put us
back on equal footing.
    “ Fine,” he says, his jaw
clenching. “Where did you get that scar?”
    I blanch. I can’t help it
and his jaw eases.
    “ You don’t have to answer
that, sweetheart. Ignore my surly ass.” He strokes my cheek and I
look down at my hands, clenched tightly in my lap.
    “ It’s okay. I got it in a
wreck. Part of the windshield of my car was embedded in my abdomen.
I’m lucky to be alive,” I repeat the words my doctor, my nurse and
my parents have told me countless times.
    “ You have options,
Violet,” Dr. Benson says. “Don’t let what happened hinder future
relationships.”
    My parents hug me,
unabashedly crying for my future. I want to tell them the whole
truth. I want to tell them everything, but I can’t. My biggest fear
is that they won’t be angry with me. Instead they’ll do what
they’re doing now: Supporting and loving me while I don’t deserve a
tenth of it.
    “ The windshield…Holy shit,
Rae,” he says and I glance up at him. A mixture of pity and awe
converge on his face. “Holy shit.”
    “ Yeah, that pretty much
sums it up. But I’m fine now.” I smile at him, trying to convey
that I’m okay now. That it was in the past and I’m a perfectly
normal twenty year old that had her womb shredded to bits in a car
wreck.
    “ Your cheeks are red,”
Cole says, twisting open the thermos of lemonade and I blink. The
sun is even brighter now.
    I raise a shaky hand and
press the side along my forehead to block the sun. “All our shade
is gone.”
    He takes a deep drink, then
holds it out to me, his gaze travelling over my body. I place my
lips on the exact spot his was, watching him over the rim. Since he
hasn’t tried kissing me again, this is probably the closet I’ll
ever get to his mouth.
    And if he ever found out
what I’d really done and the consequences of it, I doubt he’d be so
understanding, so in awe of what I survived. I doubt he’d ever look
at me the same way again. I’d be a freak in his eyes. A heartless,
selfish freak.
    Because, though Jaxon
hadn’t said it when I’d told him, the look in his eyes had said it
all for him. But I thought he’d had a right to know, regardless of
who he was with now. Regardless of the fact that he’d cheated on me
with my best friend.
    “ We could go
skinny-dipping. Promise I won’t look. Much.”
    I choke, unable to catch my
breath as Cole pounds on my back. My eyes water and snot dribbles
out of my nose.
    “ Are you okay?” He hands
me a paper towel.
    “ Fine,” I croak, turning
away to wipe and blow my nose.
    “ Remind me to never tease
you when you’re drinking.”
    “ Remind me to never drink
while you’re talking.” Facing him again, I cough and press my hand
to my chest, trying to calm down.
    “ So you’re saying there
might be chance we’ll be talking but not drinking or drinking but
not teasing in the future?”
    I can’t help but laughing,
which only sends me into another round of coughing. “Maybe,” I
finally manage to get out.
    He produces a towel, one
from the bottom of the basket I’d carried here. “You missed some
places.” Slowly, he eases toward me, then begins to gently wipe the
corners of my eyes. Soon his fingers replace the towel and he’s
exploring my face, coasting the tips of his fingers over my cheeks
and down my neck. “I want to kiss you, but you might have a
different idea of how today