It wouldn’t have been such a bad night actually, if I hadn’t had to suffer through the sounds of Gracie enjoying herself with Lambert’s roommate Nathan, on the other side of our all too thin walls.

I had woken up in the afternoon the next day to the incessant dinging of my cellphone. I had been shocked as hell to see the number of texts and missed calls I had from Cole.

It was like he knew or something. I was beginning to think he had hookup ESP. He was able to psychically know when I was trying to have a good time without him.

For a brief moment I thought something had happened to Maysie. That she had been hurt. So I had called him back immediately. When he had asked where I had been in that sexy, husky way of his, I realized that his manic calling had to do with something else entirely.

If I hadn’t known any better, I would have thought Cole had been missing me. And when I asked him as much, he had blown it off just as I had expected him to. But there was a note to his voice that was confusing. He seemed almost sad. And a lot vulnerable.

We ended up talking for over an hour. Up until he had to leave for his radio interview. And then he called me again after his show and we ended up staying on the phone until the early hours of the morning.

And there hadn’t been any women in his hotel room. I could tell by the silence in the background that he had been completely alone. That alone was a reason to believe in miracles. Cole Brandt without a girl in his room had me almost believing in unicorns and fairies.

Then I started to wonder what he wanted. It was like when a husband buys his wife flowers out of the blue. The first thought the woman has is, “What did he do wrong?” Or “What is he up to, the bastard?”

And if it involved handcuffs and dressing like a nun again so I could smack him with a ruler for a being a “naughty boy” I’d tell him where to shove it.

Several months ago I had spent four hours, in a nun habit, handcuffed to a hotel bed because Cole couldn’t remember where he had left the keys. In the end he had to call a locksmith to pick the lock.

Imagine my total mortification when a complete stranger took in my odd get up, bound to a bed. And Cole hadn’t even bothered to put away the obscenely large, neon blue vibrator that sat proudly on the bedside table, announcing to the world that we liked it kinky.

The locksmith didn’t say anything, thank god, but I think he was enjoying himself a little too much as he took an inordinately long time to free me.

After Cole had paid him, he thought we could launch back into his quirky sex game. I had let him know, in no uncertain terms, that the only sex game he would be indulging in would involve his hand and his balls.

He had tried to butter me up with his patented version of sweet-talking. Though being told my tits made him want to bust a load in his pants didn’t make my heart skip a beat.

This was definitely different. He was different. This strange, tender man who called me every night and spoke about things other than his band or wanting me to rub his Long Dong Silver was disconcerting.

Something was changing between Cole and me and I wasn’t sure how to handle it. I wasn’t sure I was ready to accept a side of him that wasn’t cocky and arrogant. I could admit that throughout the duration of our less than conventional acquaintance, I got off on the crazy, insanity inducing tirades he incited as much as he did. There was something predictably unpredictable about wanting to rip his pit hair out and making him eat it. Even though I hated with a fiery passion finding him with other women, it’s what I expected from him.

It made it easier to not dream of more with him. Cole wasn’t boyfriend material. I couldn’t be delusional about that if he was screwing around the second I wasn’t in sight. My heart couldn’t engage and in turn be broken into a million tiny pieces.

But perhaps I was deluded. Because whether I wanted to or not, I did care about him. My stomach flipped and turned over when I saw him. I was at times reduced to a squealy teenage girl around her crush.

Because when the ass**le touched me, my entire body ignited. For the last two years, Cole had been slowly ruining me for any guy that would ever come after him.

Poor, pitiful Lambert learned that lesson the hard way.

And now Cole was playing Mr. I’m-So-Sensitive-Don’t-You-Want-To-Hug-Me. The man I had always been able to count on for delicious, sometimes boundary pushing, toe-curling sex, was appealing to my emotional side.

Damn him!

So, no I wasn’t jumping at the chance to see him. He was terrifying me. He was making me question everything about the way things between us operated.

He was making keeping my distance increasingly difficult. And I was more than a little worried that once I saw him I’d launch myself at him and confess my undying love.

And that was a humiliation I was not signing up for, thank you very much.

“Well, I’m going. It’s Mitch’s birthday that weekend and I’d like to see him.” I raised my eyebrows at my friend. Gracie stared blandly back, not giving me anything.

I almost snorted. It was on the tip of my tongue to start singing “Mitch and Gracie sittin’ in a tree.” But given my friend’s carefully neutral expression, I figured that taunting her about her tip toeing the line between friends and f**king his brains out relationship with Mitch Delany would not be greeted with laughter.

I wanted to smack Gracie. I thought she was being deliberately obtuse and more than a little cruel when it came to the Rejects’ bassist. He was a nice guy. Probably one of the straight up sweetest people I had ever met.