The Captain's Forbidden Mate

Episode 14: THE PROMISE BREAKS

COLE

I watched him whisper in her ear from two tables away, and something inside me quieted, all the violent dangerous parts that used to scare my father when I was sixteen and hadn't yet learned to rein them in

"Noah," I muttered, not looking at him. "Whatever it is, don't."

"I'm not doing anything," he said flatly, not looking at me either. He was staring at the menu. "You're the one deciding you aren't doing anything a second before you always do." He finally met my eyes, and I could see something like concern in them, as well as the usual exasperation. "She told you to let her do this, Cole. Let her handle it."

It took me four more goddamn minutes to get across the restaurant, counting them out in my head the way she'd counted the minutes in my truck before I watched Damien slide a folded paper across the table to her, saw the horrified expression on her face as she unfolded it, and all the promises I'd made to her suddenly ring hollow and meaningless.

I was across the restaurant before Noah's hand touched my sleeve.

"Cole-"

"We're leaving," I said quietly, so that only the people at our table could hear. I don't think I conveyed the quiet civility I was trying to sound like, because the look on her face as she turned to me was not one of surprise, but something colder. Betrayal, maybe.

"I said I needed to do this myself," she said sharply, standing up

"And I said fine, and I meant it for about ten minutes."

I sounded just like every alpha's son cliché she'd ever warned me about, and I could barely stop myself from continuing as I knew I would if she looked at me like that. "Whatever he's telling you, it's not the whole truth. It's never the whole f*****g truth with him."

Damien had the audacity to be amused. He leaned back in his chair, clearly enjoying the show that was the alpha's son getting his leash reattached. "There he is. Right on schedule. You know, right about the time you start to get used to the taste of freedom, he shows up to remind you you're still on a leash."

"That's not even-" I started, but stopped myself. Because the truth was, she probably did see it that way.

"Cole," Noah said more sharply this time, giving me a look meant to quiet me that I ignored completely, his hand coming to rest on my shoulder. I shrugged it off, though I think he didn't really register it. Some part of me, some primal part, had already tuned him out along with the stupid lies coming out of Damien Holt's mouth the second I saw him put that stupid folded note in front of my girl.

"You don't get to decide when I'm done listening to him, Cole. And that's the whole damn point, isn't it?" She looked angry, but her voice was quiet, controlled. A lot like the look she was giving me right then, actually. "You promised me ten minutes wasn't a countdown to you deciding I'd had enough."

"I know what I f*****g said." My jaw was clenched tight enough to hurt. "I also know what he is, and I know what I just saw, and I couldn't just sit there and do nothing while he told you something that made you go white all over." God, I wished I could say it wasn't the first time I'd seen that look on her face, because it f*****g hurt to admit it was. "I know it's not like it's the first time, or that he's the first person in this world to make that look appear, but I don't know why the hell it matters that much to me when it does, and I can't stand it so I'm just going to do this stupid goddamn thing and say it doesn't matter one damn bit."

She didn't yell at me, and almost worse, she didn't look surprised. She just looked at me for a long moment, some carefully constructed mask of detachment sliding over her features, and that was worse than the anger would've been, because I knew I'd put that there too. I knew what it looked like, this exact same look, because it was always the same one when the person across from her decided it was just too much effort to pretend they still liked who they were, and the idea of giving them any more of their time suddenly seemed like a waste.

"I'll find my own way home," she said quietly, turning to leave without looking back at me at all. Damien laughed at me the entire walk to the door.

Noah didn't say much on the drive back. He didn't have to. I could taste the I-told-you-so all over the silence, and in a way, I'm sorry I didn't just hear it. I would've liked the opportunity to argue, if only because the alternative was sitting in this house staring at the ceiling until morning, wondering how the hell I was supposed to convince my girlfriend that I wanted to continue being her boyfriend after I'd just done everything in my power to prevent her from having this conversation with that man

I dropped him off and sat in my truck for a long time outside our building before dragging myself up to go inside. The whole ride here the engine was running, and I was just staring at the road, my thoughts churning back over the night in a way that made me physically uncomfortable in this too-big truck. I couldn't really even see the road, with the strange sort of haze that came over my eyes when I was trying not to think about things and failing spectacularly. The whole conversation, the look she gave me, the way the inside of the restaurant felt all lit up and warm, the way she'd said she'd find her own way home. Whatever little progress I was making with her over the last month, it all unraveled in those few minutes, and I knew without a doubt that trust didn't work the way I wanted it to. She was the only one who could decide when she was ready to give me any second chance I deserved, and in the mean time, I was just going to have to sit here and wait for her to come around, which was probably going to be a much longer process than I'd liked at any point in this conversation. I sat here for a long time, the street lamps flicking off one after another at the edge of the parking lot, the sky slowly lightening to the pale grey-blue thing that was almost dawn, and eventually I dragged myself back to the building, my muscles screaming in protest the entire way, my brain still spinning over this particular disaster in my life that I was sure was going to take me ages to figure out how to fix.