Page 3 of Bargaining

“It’s not pity. You’ll be doing me a favor. I don’t want to get eaten by a pack of dogs, either. Poor bastards might choke on my huge fucking nose.”

“There is nothing wrong with your nose. Don’t get a complex. I highly doubt you’ll be short of options.”

He moved across the bed and sat next to me. “I highly doubt you’ll be short of options, either, but we should make a pact just in case. Don’t leave me on the shelf. You’re not that cruel. If neither of us is married by the time we’re thirty, we marry each other. Deal?”

Chuckling, I shooed him away. “You’ll survive on the shelf. Go back to your spot. I’m not done.”

He offered me his hand. “We need to shake on it. I’m trying to ease your worry. You can travel the world and paint, and I’ll be at home with all the dogs, making sure they don’t turn against you and eat us.”

“Whatever. This is a lackluster proposal from you, Cole. No ring. You think I’m wearing that dress like a walking marshmallow for someone who can’t be bothered to get on one knee?”

He slipped off the bed and kneeled in front of me. His eyes shone with an unusual earnestness. “I mean it. I’ll be your backup. That way, you never need to settle for less than you deserve. You’ve got a husband in the bag. You just travel and enjoy your life, knowing you’ll never end up alone if you don’t want to be.”

Butterflies fluttered in my stomach. Tough to decide whether to whack him with my pillow and start the pillow fight to end all pillow fights or drag him to me and kiss him until I couldn’t breathe. This whole thing with Cole had become so confusing. Once, we’d been kids, riding bikes together and playing video games, and now my body responded to him in all these intense and unfamiliar ways I couldn’t control.

Cole kneeling so close was making my palms clammy. It was such a stupid conversation. Cole would leave Yorkshire as soon as he graduated and meet some upper-crust aristocrat at Oxford. Someone unfathomably posh and wealthy like him, who he could take home to his family without embarrassment. People like me and Cole didn’t end up together.

I shook his hand. How else would we ever get this portrait finished? “OK. Fine. We’ll both have each other in the bag.”

His skin was warm and smooth against mine. My body tingled with a curious mixture of nerves and excitement. His delicious Gucci Guilty cologne invaded my nose—spice and cedarwood. Heat spread through me. My eyes had become so accustomed to free rein, I had to force my gaze away.

Eventually I flipped my sketch pad closed on the bed next to me. “I’d better let you get back to Dad before he moans at me again for hogging his one-man dead poets’ society.”

“Are you going to let me see the masterpiece?”

Whenever I showed people my art, it was like letting them see under my skin. “Do I have to? Honestly, I was hoping I could just make art and never have to show anyone.”

“You have too much talent to keep it to yourself. Come on. You can be brave. It’s only me.”

I’d have to get used to it if I was going to pursue this seriously. At least Cole was a safe person. He wouldn’t judge me. I found the page in the sketch pad and turned it in my lap to present to him. “Don’t laugh and please be kind. Constructive criticism only.”

He took the pad and examined it with an inscrutable expression.

My stomach dropped. “You don’t like it?”

He raked a hand through his dark hair. “No. It’s ... You made me look ... I don’t know ... nice.”

Nice? Oh God. That is bad.Art was supposed to be beautiful or shocking or thought-provoking. It was supposed to make you feel something. Nice was a million times worse thanI hate it. I took a sharp breath. “What’s wrong with it?”

He rubbed a hand over his neck and dropped next to me on the bed, so close his thigh brushed mine. He was difficult to read at the best of times, but the look in his eyes and his closeness made my heart thunder.

He spoke as though he was choosing his words carefully. “Whenever we hang out, I feel like ... I’m this version of myself that is the best me. The way I am with you, the way you see me, is the way I want to be.” He frowned and scrubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t know if I’m explaining this right, but that’s what I see when I look at this. I wish I could be the person in this drawing all the time.”

I opened my mouth and closed it, lost for words. Cole rarely opened up or shared anything about his feelings. He moved closer, his face inches from mine.

His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “I don’t have any friends up here apart from you and your family.”

“I don’t have many friends either,” I said too quickly.

His gaze kept drifting from my eyes to my lips. Gently, he brushed my hair back from my face. My whole body buzzed withanticipation. His knee bumped mine. I held perfectly still, despite my sudden breathlessness. The heat of his body and his scent made my mind spin. He leaned in, his breath warm against my cheek.

His voice dropped to a whisper. “Charlotte. I ...”

I’d known this boy forever, but he was looking at me in a way I’d never seen before. My pulse pounded in my ears, and I was alive to the moment in a completely new way, raw and sparking, like an exposed wire. My heart hammered so hard, he could probably hear it. A knock sounded on the bedroom door. Cole leaped off the bed as if his backside was on fire and stood. Dad burst into the room, looking crumpled in the way he did when he’d been poring over his journals for too long.

“I found it.” Dad flapped a book in his hand. “TheAnglo-Saxon Chronicles. You can borrow it, but I absolutely need it back. This has my margin notes.”

Cole’s voice was calm and clipped. “Thank you. I can’t wait to get stuck in.” Cole put his arm around my dad’s shoulder and guided him to the door. “I want to talk more about the château restoration project in Burgundy you were telling me about. I’ve been wondering about what stone they used. It wasn’t a royal castle, so they couldn’t have afforded ashlar blocks in the thirteenth century?”