“Nope. Nothing at all. I just can’t sleep sometimes, like... at all, you know? Until it’s fucking daylight and Ella’s awake, and I resent her for not wanting to take her nap, and then I feel like the world’s biggest arsehole.”
Cole wasn’t much of a talker, and the sudden influx of everything I needed to know caught me off guard. I took a second to unravel it and zeroed in on the part that was actually true, because there was no way Cole was convincing me he was an arsehole. “But why can’t you sleep? Are you worried about something?”
“Nothing tangible. It’s just a thing. Has been for a long time now, since before Ella, but it sucks when she’s here when it happens because it makes me an even shittier dad than usual.”
“You’re not a shit dad.”
“Okay.” Cole’s tone was flat.
It annoyed me more than I could ever explain.
“You’renot. My dad— Look, Joe’s dad left a gun in the stable block that got Harry arrested. Harry and Rhys’s dad kicked the shit out of them their whole lives until he went to prison for hurting Rhys. That’s being a shit dad.”
Cole’s gaze sharpened enough to bring his tired face to life. “What were you going to say about your dad?”
“Nothing.”
“Yes, you were.”
“Yeah, well, I changed my mind.”
“Why?”
“Because it wasn’t important.”
“Why do you think it isn’t important?”
I shrugged. “Because it isn’t when I put it next to what other people have gone through with their dads. Mine was... Nevermind, forget it, okay? My point is, you’re not like that, or like Joe’s or Harry and Rhys’s. You’re the best dad. You’re just tired. That’s all.”
Cole stared at me for a moment that stretched out a lifetime. I’d annoyed him, I could tell, but if he was mad at me instead of himself, I could live with that.
I stood, needing some distance between us but not willing to make it happen. “I’m going to put your kettle on. You want tea or something?”
Cole blinked. “What?”
“I’m going to make tea. Do you have sugar?”
“No. Just milk. The mugs are—”
“I know where the mugs are. I put them there.”
I retreated to the kitchen and opened the cupboard where I’d stored the mugs I’d bought from IKEA in Truro. At the time, I couldn’t have given less of a toss who I was buying them for, but it mattered so much now.
The mugs were red.
Cole wasn’t a red person. He was blues and greens and the warm glow of the candles he lit when he wanted me to feel comfortable taking my clothes off with him.
The mugs were all wrong.
I made the tea anyway and took it back to the living room. Ella was still in her playpen, cooing at the sight of her own fist. I half expected to find Cole still glaring at the space I’d vacated, but he wasn’t. He’d slumped down on the couch, and despite everything he’d just said, he was asleep.
12
Cole
I woke with a jump and rolled off the couch onto a cold cup of tea. Cursing, I glanced automatically to Ella’s playpen, expecting to find her wide-eyed gaze fixed on me, but she wasn’t there.
New panic seized me. I scrambled to my feet and hurled myself across the room. The playpen was still empty, save a scribbled note that made no sense the first twelve times I scanned it.