Intercepting Love

22. Kate

22

KATE

After what Cooper’s mother said, I literally thought he’d lose it, especially after the week he had with lowering his pill dosage. Instead, he stood up quietly and turned his back before walking out of the gate and up to the front of the house.

“Cooper! Come back,” Joel shouted, getting up from the table. Cooper kept going, so I took that as my cue to leave as well.

“Kate, I am so sorry for this,” he apologized. “I’m the one who thought he should come. I should’ve known better.”

Jackie scoffed, “Please, he’s just sulking. He’ll come back.” She smiled over at me as if she didn’t just put down her own son right in front of me; like it was no big deal. “Do you mind bringing him back, dear? I’m sure he’ll listen to you.”

All manners aside, there was no way I could be civil to that woman after what she just did. Scooting the chair back, I got to my feet and glared at her. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Davis, but I’m not going to do that. Cooper’s a great man and he works hard. I’ve seen some of the struggles he’s gone through, and I’ve been watching him work past them. The last thing I’m going to do is sit here and listen to you belittle him.”

To Joel, I turned and smiled. “Thank you for letting me come, Joel. I’m sorry we couldn’t stay longer.”

Joel nodded, and turned a lethal glare to Jackie. “I understand Kate. Next time, I’ll invite you and my nephew over when we have fewer guests.”

Turning on my heel, I stalked off toward the gate. “Don’t you even want to know what happened to the last doctor my son screwed around with?” his mother yelled.

I almost faltered—my heart thundering in my chest—but my pace didn’t slow and I kept going. “No, I don’t,” I shouted back. “And if did, I wouldn’t want to hear it from you.”

What the hell was she talking about?

As soon as I stormed through the gate, hidden from prying eyes, Cooper pulled me into his arms and crushed his lips to mine. I melted into his embrace and held on tight, but when he let go, his gaze was unsure, guarded.

“I’m so sorry for bringing you here, Kate. Thank you for what you said. I just wanted to make sure I kissed you before I took you home.”

“Why is that?” I asked. “You couldn’t wait that long?”

He held my face in his hands and sighed. “No, it’s because there’s something I need to tell you and I don’t know how you’re going to handle it.”

“Is it about what your mother just said?”

Nodding, he took my hand and led me up the path to his car. “It’s not something I’m proud of, and I had hoped you wouldn’t find out this way.”

The look in his eyes scared me. I knew he had skeletons in his closet, just like everyone, but something in his gaze had me worried. It couldn’t be that bad, could it?

“Okay,” I drawled out slowly, “but let’s get out of here. I really don’t want to see your mother again because if I do I’m liable to lose the southern charm you love so much about me.”

“I think I’d like to see that,” he admitted with a gleam in his eye. “My mother hasn’t had someone put her in her place in a really long time. Not even my father stands up to her. I wanted to tell her to f**k off so bad, but I didn’t.”

Quickly, we both got into his car so we could leave before anyone tried to stop us. “Why not?” I asked. “If my mother talked to me like that just to be a b***h, you better believe I’d put her in her place. There’s such a thing as equal respect. You’re an adult and you need to be treated as such. Just because she’s your mother doesn’t give her the right to treat you as someone of less importance.”

As soon as Cooper backed out of the driveway, we both breathed a sigh of relief, glad to be away from there. Every time I tried to say something, his phone would ring. Obviously annoyed, he shut it off and angrily threw it in the backseat. “Kate, before I tell you anything I want you to do something with me. It’s something that I should’ve done from the beginning.”

“Sure,” I replied nervously. He wouldn’t look at me, which made me even more nervous. “It’s not that bad, is it?”

He nodded and finally glanced over at me. “Kind of. There are a lot of things I’ve done that I shouldn’t have, and I regret every single second of what I did. I just don’t want you to see me differently, and I’m so afraid you will.”

“Cooper,” I whispered, taking his hand that was balled in a tight fist. “It’ll be okay. Nobody is perfect and we all make mistakes. I don’t scare so easily.”

Ten minutes later, Cooper turned down our street. Instead of taking me home, he stopped at his house. He didn’t say a word as he opened his garage and pulled his car inside. His garage had a bunch of boxes piled in the corner, but other than that there wasn’t much else. Since he hadn’t been in town long, I figured he hadn’t had time to unpack.

When I got out of his car, Cooper saw me looking at the boxes and said, “I haven’t really spent much time unpacking. You’ll see what I mean when you come inside. One day I’ll get to it.”

“Yeah, if you stop spending all of your time with me,” I teased. “Do you want me to help you?”

Before he opened the door, he turned to me and placed his hand on my cheek. “I would love for you to, but first you need to decide if it’s something you want to do.”

The door he led me through opened up to his kitchen, which seemed to be fairly unpacked. There were boxes stacked on one side of the counter, but he at least had a basket full of fruit and some of his appliances set out on display. His living room was the same way, with boxes here and there, but he didn’t stop to let me see. Instead, he led me up the stairs on down the hallway until we reached his bedroom.

Inside, he had a king-sized bed with a navy blue comforter and pillows, and the room smelled just like him, all masculine and woodsy. “Okay, what I’m about to show you is going to come as a shock, so please don’t freak out on me.”

Hesitantly, he walked over to a set of dressers and pulled out one of the drawers. Carrying it over to the bed, he flipped it upside down. I couldn’t even begin to describe what I felt in that next moment. I was confused, shocked beyond belief. Bottle after bottle of painkillers toppled out of the drawer and onto his bed; it had to be at least a hundred bottles or so of nothing but little white pills.

“Oh my God,” I choked, putting a hand over my mouth. “How did you get all of this? Or better yet, why do you have all of this?”

I picked up one of the bottles; it was filled to the hilt with hundreds of pills. There had to be thousands among thousands of them in his grasp. Cooper picked up one of the bottles and took it to his bathroom. Breathing heavily, he opened it up and slowly tilted it, letting each and every pill fall into the toilet.

“Before I tell you what happened, I need you to know that I’m not going to make excuses. I was stupid and there was a time when I sunk to a new low. The story was kept out of the papers because I spent a lot of money keeping it secret.”

Bottle after bottle, I watched Cooper take them into the bathroom and flush its contents, his face a stony mask of regret. “Cooper, just tell me,” I begged. “I don’t like seeing you like this.”

Angrily, he grabbed a few more bottles and dumped them. “The doctor my mom referred to was a woman I was f*****g, Kate. She lost her medical license because of what we did.”

“What did you do?” I asked nervously.

Swallowing hard, he flushed another bottle of pills and came to kneel before me, his voice pained and raw. “The deal was that if I slept with her she’d give me a bottle of pills. It was payment for what I did for her.”

Eyes wide, I gasped and glanced at all the bottles, then up to him. “Holy s**t,” I cried.

“Yes, I know, you don’t have to say it,” he said, cutting me off before I could say anything else. “It’s disgusting and I’m sure you’re wondering why the hell I did it?”

Grabbing a few more bottles, he held them in his hand—his chest heaving up and down in anger—and it was like everything within him finally snapped. His arm reared back and he threw them against the wall, hard, scattering pills everywhere. I yelped, jumping back in surprise. Turning his back on me, he faced the window and fisted his hands in his hair.

“All I wanted was the pills, Kate. At that time in my life everything was a f*****g disaster. The girl I thought I’d spend the rest of my life with left me for someone else, and then not long after that I got injured. You saw what my parents are like, so you know they weren’t supportive. All they cared about was when I’d get better to get back on the field. When Oakland didn’t want me anymore, that was the last straw. The pain meds helped me cope with it all.”

“Who was your doctor?” I asked. “How did you even get that set up to exchange pills for s*x?”

Releasing a heavy sigh, Cooper sat on the edge of the bed and kept his back to me. “I’m not going anywhere, Cooper,” I promised. “Just answer the questions.” When he didn’t say anything, I got up and stood in front of him, tilting up his head with a hand to his cheek.

His blue gaze penetrated mine … so sad and distraught. “Are you sure I haven’t scared you off yet?”

“Not yet,” I answered wholeheartedly. “It takes a lot more than that to scare me off.”

He scoffed, “Well, sit tight because I’m not done yet. My doctor had been my regular physician for years. She was a friend of my parents, and I knew a lot about her personal life. I knew she had problems with her husband, so one day when I was getting low on pills I decided to seduce her. I didn’t want to, but I knew she’d give in. Over time I used my advantage with her to ask for the pills. Her husband eventually found out and turned her in, along with filing for a divorce as well. So needless to say, she lost her license and her husband all in one day. When he threatened to go to the press, I paid him off … and her along with him.”

Lowering his gaze, he took my hands and kissed them gently. “That’s what happened, Kate. As of tonight, I’m not taking any more of these pills. I don’t care what kind of withdrawals I go through. I just want this part of my life over.”

“You know what will happen if you do that. It’s not going to be easy, Cooper,” I replied, trying to reason with him. “It’s not a smart thing to do.”

“I don’t care, Kate. It needs to stop … now.”

There were still tons of bottles on his bed, so I took a deep breath and picked one up, taking it to the bathroom. “What are you doing?” he asked.

Dumping the pills into the toilet, I threw away the bottle and grabbed another one. “I’m helping you, Cooper, because that’s what I want to do. I’m not going anywhere. If this is what you really want to do, then you’re going to need as much support as you can. I’m not going to leave you.”

Cooper jumped to his feet and wrapped his strong arms tightly around my body. “You have no idea how much this means to me, Kate. I don’t understand why you’re even doing it. You deserve someone so much better.”

Leaning up on my tiptoes, I closed my eyes and kissed him gently on the lips. “I deserve you, Cooper. I thought it would be quite obvious why I’m helping you. You should already know why.”

“Yes … but one day I want to hear you say it.”