Page 95 of Trick-or-Treated

“Why did she marry you if she didn’t love you?”

“You’d have to ask her.”

“That’s not an answer.”

He sets his jaw. “Maybe she thought she did. Maybe I was… someone different.”

“What do you mean, different?”

Cole does pull away then, even as I try to stop him. He turns his back to me, shoulders stiff.

“I’m not… I can’t be on all the time. At least I couldn’t back then. I’d thought when I met Belle that finally, finally someone would see the real me.”

My heart aches for him. “Cole⁠—”

He whirls around to face me.

“Everyone puts on a mask, right?” he asks, voice strained and almost desperate. “But my father… he taught me to do it so well. So well that sometimes I don’t know where I end and it begins. But I thought… I thought she’d know.”

“Because you loved her.”

Cole freezes. Then nods, looking away.

“Cole, I⁠—”

I’m not sure what I’m going to say but it doesn’t matter because Cole interrupts me, pointing out the glass doors.

“Marcus is back.”

I breathe out a sigh of relief, taking a few steps back. Marcus comes in with the box and a bag on top of the box.

He drips on the floor as he walks by us, setting it down by the counter.

Marcus shakes off like a wet dog and it makes me laugh out loud.

He looks up at me, hair falling into his eyes, smiling slightly, and my heart skips a beat.

Oh, these men. My men.

“Thank God. I was starting to get worried,” I admit.

“Got a little hairy,” he admits.

Cole disappears from the room, down the hall, maybe to the restroom. Maybe just to get some air.

I watch him go with my lip caught between my teeth.

Marcus glances at the door and then back at me.

“Something wrong?”

I look at him. “Maybe. I asked him about Belle.”

Marcus whistles. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.”

Gabe walks back in from the hallway.