Bitter End (25 page)

I grinned. “Really?”

“Yeah. I figure if you like him, he can’t be all that bad. And if I’m going to be with you forever—and I am—then I better
get used to hanging with him. And Bethany, too. Your friends are my friends, baby.” He leaned down and gently, gently kissed
my cheekbone.

I let out a deep sigh and wrapped my arms around his waist, leaning my head against his chest. It felt so good to touch him
again. To feel like this—whatever it was—was over and we were back to who we were before. “Thank you,” I breathed. “I love
you so much.”

He rested his chin on top of my head. “Anything for you. I told you I’d make it up to you, and I meant it. Noth
ing but good from here on out. Here. I have something for you. Early Christmas present.”

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out something silvery and shining. He lifted his hand and let it unravel, a silver
chain with a delicate silver dream catcher dangling from it. It was tiny, with little red stones dotting a silver-colored
web. The feathers hanging from the bottom were made of silver, too, the whole thing gleaming under the fluorescent classroom
lights.

I gasped and held my hand to my mouth, looking from the dream catcher, swiveling in the air, to Cole’s face, which was shiny
and happy.

“Oh my God,” I breathed. “Cole, you shouldn’t…”

“I had to,” he said. “Because I love you. And I hurt you. I hurt the person I love most in this world, and I’ll never forgive
myself.”

I took the necklace from him and studied it in my outstretched palm. “I love you, too,” I said. “And it’s beautiful. Thank
you.”

I unclasped the necklace and held it out to him, then turned around, holding my hair up in the back so he could put it on
me. When he was finished, the dream catcher lay cold against my chest, about two inches higher than my mom’s, which stayed
safe under my shirt.

Looking down at it, I dropped my hair and laid my palm over the new necklace and turned back to him.

“I love it,” I said. “It’s perfect.”

He moved my hand and inspected the necklace, then bent and kissed my palm. “I thought you could use a new one. Now you don’t
have to wear that old one all the time anymore.”

I might have argued. Might have reminded him that I hadn’t taken off the old one since I was eight years old and I wasn’t
about to start now. Might have let him know that I had every intention of wearing both of them every day. That I even thought
it was cool to wear them together—one to protect me from old nightmares, the other to protect me from new ones.

But at the moment all I could think was,
Thank God
. Thank God I never told anyone what had happened. Thank God I hadn’t lost my faith in him. Thank God he came back, the old
Cole. And thank God I was right about him in the first place.

Instead, I wrapped my arms around his waist and leaned into him. He hung his arms over my shoulders and rested his chin on
top of my head.

We stayed like that for a long time—wrapped up around each other, swaying, our heads stacked, like we were one person split
in two and trying to get back together again. Then, finally, he pulled away.

“Hey,” he said. “Let’s ditch tutoring today. Let’s go back to my house. I’ll play that song I’ve been writing for you. Brenda’s
with her book club, and Dad’s working. We’ll have the whole place to ourselves.”

“Yes,” I breathed. “I have had enough of school for one
day.” I touched my cheek. “I’m not on the schedule at The Bread Bowl tonight, either.” Thank God. That would give my cheek
one more day to heal before Georgia’s searching eyes would most definitely seek it out.

I zipped my backpack and tossed it over my shoulders. “Ready,” I said. Cole turned, beaming at me.

“Let’s go out tonight, then,” he said. “Your choice.”

“Okay,” I said, thinking how great it would feel to get out of the house and be just a face in a crowd, where nobody would
ask me what was wrong with my eye. “Sounds great!”

He reached over and pulled me in again, kissing me on top of the head. “A whole day and night with the girl I love most in
this world,” he said, picking up his bag and leading me to the door, our hips bumping as we walked. Just like before there
was anything dark and private between us.

Or maybe not quite like before. I’d never seen him look this happy before. This was new. An all-new Cole. An all-new relationship.

He really was trying. He was trying for me. And that’s all that mattered, right? Not that a person makes a mistake, but that
he learns from it and tries to be better.

I didn’t even notice my cheek for the rest of the night.

“Alex! Door!” Celia yelled from downstairs. I’d just gotten home from work and was changing out of my uniform.

I figured it was Zack, wanting to practice his part. I’d heard Celia complaining to Dad about how she’d been helping Zack
all week and there was a cemetery scene he was just never going to get memorized. Opening night was just a month away, and
he was really stressing about it. She’d probably finally told him to bug me about it for a change.

I sighed, wiggling into a T-shirt. “Minute!” I yelled back. I pulled a pair of jeans on, wishing Zack had at least given me
time to text Cole that I was home.

I hadn’t seen Cole all day, even though he should’ve been done with practice by now. I hadn’t heard from him, and that worried
me because I knew he was stressing out about the upcoming Friday night’s tournament. His dad
was talking of little else, just like he’d been doing pretty much since games started.

But usually Cole would come over to The Bread Bowl after Saturday practice and hang out, waiting for me to get off. But he
hadn’t shown up today, and with Dave hanging around all the time, Georgia had adopted a strict no-cell-phone policy, so I
had no way of finding out what was going on with him.

Who knew where he was? Probably doing something at home. Usually when he went missing, it had something to do with home. He
never gave details about what was going on at his house, but once he told me his mom had slit her wrists more times than he
could count.
She never does it seriously, though
, he’d said.
She just wants the attention.
And then he ended, as he always did when he was talking about his family, with
Fucking Brenda.

I’d just have to get rid of Zack quickly. Tell him I was too tired to practice. Tomorrow. I’d promise to help him tomorrow.

I glanced in the mirror, pulling out my ponytail holder and raking my hand through my hair, then bounded down the steps.

“You still don’t have that cemetery scene memorized?” I said, but stopped as I rounded the corner.

It wasn’t Zack sitting on the edge of Dad’s recliner. It was Cole, looking dark and sparkle-eyed. Energized.

He got up when he saw me. “Hey, baby,” he said.

“You didn’t tell me it was Cole,” I said, but Celia was ignoring us, watching TV, her thumb working her cell phone keypad.

But before I could say any more, he was wrapped around me, hugging me around the waist and picking me up, my toes dangling
above the carpet.

“I missed you today,” he said.

“Where were you? Practice ended hours ago, didn’t it?”

He put me down, kissed me again, and waved the question away. “Missed practice,” he said. “Family stuff. Had to meet with
my dad’s lawyer in Pine Gate. Some old stupid lawsuit. Not important. Just really boring. I saw you leaving The Bread Bowl
and followed you home.”

Again, he hugged me. It felt so good after a long day of work to be wrapped up in his arms.

Things had been so good between us lately. Christmas break had been great for Cole. Without school and practice, he seemed
to really relax, and except for the occasional blowup, we were like we’d been before he punched me. Last week we celebrated
our four-month anniversary. It had finally snowed for the first time this year, which was kind of unusual for February, and
we cuddled up on the couch together, watching the snow fall and drinking hot chocolate. Romantic bliss, like something you’d
see in the movies.

I wanted this to be how life would feel every day, coming home from work and feeling Cole surrounding me. Looking forward
to a whole night with him. Just the two of us, everything good.

We kissed, and I heard Celia click her tongue from over on the couch.

“Get a room,” she murmured.

“Got one. This one,” I said, giggling and kissing Cole again, this time harder and louder just to annoy her.

After we kissed, Cole pulled back. “Get your shoes on,” he said.

“Thank God,” Celia mumbled. “I’m about to throw up.”

“Okay,” I said, ignoring her completely. “Where are we going?”

He grinned. “It’s a surprise.”

I raced upstairs and pulled on a pair of sneakers, then touched up my makeup and ran a brush through my hair. When I came
back downstairs, Cole was standing at the front door, his hand already on the doorknob.

“Come on, slowpoke,” he said, and we headed out.

In the car, Cole turned up the music and drove fast, pounding his palms on the steering wheel to the beat. Every so often
he’d look over at me and smile, then reach across the seat and stroke the back of my neck with his hand.

We got on the highway, and he turned down the radio.

“You coming to the tournament Friday?” he asked.

“Of course. You’re playing, aren’t you?” I said sarcastically, giving him a big smile and fluttering my eyelashes dramatically.

He grinned, turned up the music again, and leaned his head against the headrest. “That’s my girl,” he said, then turned the
music up another notch.

The car was practically vibrating. Cole was practically vibrating. Definitely intense. But intense in a good way. I felt it
radiating off him, but this time I didn’t feel dread.

We turned into the mall parking lot, and Cole parked. When he turned off the car, the sudden silence made my ears ring. I
looked at him quizzically. We’d been to the mall dozens of times together. Why was this time special?

“Come on,” he said. “I have something I want to buy you.”

We got out and met at the back of the car, where he intertwined his fingers with mine. We walked into the mall that way—happily
holding hands.

When we got into the mall, he started to walk faster, pulling me along behind him. He took me straight past the food court
and to the other side, where he finally stopped in front of Book ’Em, Danno.

He held up his arms like one of those game show models.

“The bookstore?” I asked, staring up at the sign. “You want to buy me a book?”

He dropped his arms, rolled his eyes, and came around behind me, ushering me into the store. “Not just any book,” he said.

Once we were inside, he grabbed my hand again and started pulling. He pulled me past the fiction and past the cookbooks and
past the self-help, all the way to the back of the store, where he finally stopped.

“Travel,” he said. He ran his finger along the shelves.
“Kansas, Nebraska, aha! Here.” He pulled a book off the shelf and held it out to me.

I read the title out loud. “
Frommer’s Colorado
,” I said.

He nodded. “And I found this one, too.” He pulled out another book and held it up:
Soul of the Rockies.

This time I didn’t read the title aloud. I couldn’t. I was too touched to say anything. Instead, I took it out of his hands
and opened it, leafed through it.

The images nearly knocked the wind out of me. The mountains looked so beautiful, so magical. I could almost feel Mom in the
grain of the paper beneath my fingers. I sat down on the floor in front of the bookshelf, unable to take my eyes off of the
photos.

I’d seen photos of Colorado before. But it was different looking at little thumbnails on Bethany’s laptop. These photos were
so vivid and crisp, so colorful, that I almost felt as if I was there already. I could understand why someone would want to
go there just to see the mountains. Why maybe the beauty would be reason enough.

Cole sat down next to me. “When I found it, I hid it so nobody would buy it before I could get you up here. I knew as soon
as I saw those pictures that you would fall in love with it.” He brushed his finger across a photo of an ice-capped mountain,
the sky behind it so blue that it made me want to breathe more deeply. “You’re going to find your answers out there, baby.
I can feel it.”

“Cole,” I said, but I didn’t know how to finish. He’d always told me he understood, but so had Bethany and
Zack. And I never quite knew, with all their talk of ski bunnies and hot boy bands and new clothes, if Bethany and Zack actually
did understand what the mountains meant to me—that it wasn’t just some silly obsession and it wasn’t only about taking a vacation.

But now I knew. I knew that at least one person out there got it. Cole understood. He understood everything.

“Oh, and I want to get you these, too,” he said. He stood up and walked around to the other side of the bookshelf while I
paged through the photographs some more, backing up and looking again at the ones I’d already seen. He came back and dropped
two maps in my lap: Colorado and Kansas. “I don’t think you guys’ll get lost, but just in case. These are the good ones, the
waterproof kind.”

I held the maps in one hand and closed the book with the other, then scooped the
Frommer’s
book into my lap.

“I love it,” I said.

“Oh, and one more.” He reached behind some Walt Disney World guides and pulled out a paperback: Emily Dickinson. “In case,
you know, the mountains inspire you to write some more poetry,” he said.

I took the book and held it against my chest, unsure of what to say.

We headed up to the cash register. As Cole pulled out his wallet and handed the cashier a handful of twenties, I knew this
was why I’d stayed with him when things were bad. This was why a couple of bruises didn’t matter. Because
he understood me as nobody ever had before. Because we were perfect together.