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Hiya! First chapterrrr! i hope you like it.
I hope you like Cole I do:)
4119 words so at least you have alot to read!
"Wake up." I nudge Cole's sleeping body and laugh quietly when he startles awake. Normally he doesn't sleep over, but as last night was our last night he decided to stay. Which I let him.
Despite my usual protests.
I loved him dearly, but we didn't need to do the whole cuddling thing. That was reserved to bad days or extra affectionate days.
Cole roles over to me and I take in his sleepy face, his black hair a mess against the pillow and his tattoos vibrant against my white sheets. "Today's the day. You're leaving." He sighs dramatically, his voice deep with sleep as his hands find me under the covers, trying to pull me to him.
I forget why I don't let him stay. He is fucking gorgeous in the morning.
"Yeah." I whisper laugh. Pulling away from his wondering hands and he just gives me a lazy smile.
"I'm going to miss your bed more than I am going to miss you." Cole moans into my pillows and smirks at my offended face.
"You hardly got to sleep in it anyway, it's not like you truly know how great this bed is."
Cole smirks and I roll my eyes already predicting his words.
"Who said anything about sleeping?"
"Ok that's it. I need to get up." I say and make a move to roll away from him but he reaches towards me again and I let him pull me close.
"What time are you leaving anyway?" He asks suggestively and I scrunch my nose up at him.
"I can literally hear my parents getting things packed down stairs." I laugh and his eyes dart towards the door almost panicked. He was deathly afraid of my mother and it was hilarious.
Yawning, I tell him "We are leaving by eleven I think"
A line forms between his eyebrows and I just look at his face. He was honestly one of the most good-looking boys I had ever met, and he knew it as well. His face was so sharply defined by his strong draw line and his dark brown eyes were surrounded by a light scattering of freckles.
"Cole, babe, get dressed." I laugh, thinking about the possibility of my mum coming up and finding a very unclothed Cole in my bed. Before I reach for my own pyjamas I lean over to check my phone. There is a message from Lucy, one I hadn't read last night.
Lucy: HIYA! You're coming back today! Or well in exactly 12 minutes it will be today! Sorry if you were asleep or well busy, but I just thought I'd tell you how excited we all are to see you again!
Smiling at her text, and blushing slightly because yeah, I was busy last night, I quickly text her a thankyou message back.
Looking at the time my eyes widen when I realise it's almost 9AM. We were supposed to be packed up and on the road by 11.
Most of the stuff had already been sent to the house back home, but all of my everyday belongings were still happily thrown around my room.
Placing my phone down I try to send Cole a stern look but his eyes are focused on other things than my eyes.
"I'm going to miss you." He says his eyes trained on my breasts and laughter bursts through me. I'm sure he will. "When do I have to leave?"
"Don't worry about it today. They won't mention it."
He lifts his eyebrows and I just shrug. "What are they going to do? Ban you from seeing me. Take me far away?" I laugh gently and lean down to place a quick kiss on his lips, but quickly pulling away and sitting up so I could reach my clothes on the floor.
My parents weren't a fan of Cole and I couldn't blame them.
He looked like trouble on legs. And for me, that was half the fun.
I lean over the side of the bed to reach for my nightgown that was urgently discarded last night and pull it over my head. With myself covered I shake my head in amusement at Cole's disappointed noise.
He preferred us both undressed.
Getting up from my side of the bed I walk over to Cole's and take this moment to pull away the covers from his body. Letting his bare body be seen and touched by the morning sunlight.
"Get dressed." I laugh and chuck him his clothes from the night before. His eyes were still wide with the panic of the duvet being ripped away from him and I laugh as his dark eyes meet mine with distaste.
"Clothes." He mutters and looks at me, an idea forming in his head.
Cole reaches for my hand, smirking when he catches my eyes on his body. I mean can you blame me?
He was really fucking attractive.
I dodge his hands and playfully wink when he gives me an unentertained look. As move towards my bathroom, he grins and calls my name.
"Ives, you wanna shower?"
I shake my head at him, knowing exactly what he was suggesting.
"Cole, showers with you take a lot longer than the time I have. I need to be quick I've got a lot to pack still." I smile at him and it falls slightly when he just nods a sad ok.
This boy.
"It'll be our last shower though. I can be quick."
I look back at him and he wiggles his eyebrows at me.
"Oh, for god sake, come on then."
Cole grins and jumps up from my bed, abandoning the clothes I gave him and grabbing my hand, pulling me into the bathroom.
He knows his way around my ensuite perfectly and I just tap my foot impatiently as he grabs a few things we will be needing.
I wasn't the only girl, so we always wore protection, despite me being back on the pill.
"You're awfully clingy this morning." I say and Cole meets my eyes a little shocked. Cole is the ultimate player of the school of my dad's school, the one I've been volunteering in. He's the same age as me and as soon as he found this out, he pursued me so unaware of who he was trying to get close to.
He was always being sent out of class, always turning up at my office. Obviously, my dad was less than pleased.
But Cole never ran away. Never batted an eyelid when I explained it all to him.
He also had probably never been called clingy before.
"Clingy...So what? What are you going to do? Leave?" He says his back to me but I can hear the smirk in his voice. His teasing does nothing but make me pout in defiance.
I was going home today.
If it's still home, who knows.
Keeping eye contact with Cole I slowly take the dress off my body and jump in the shower cubicle, leaving him alone in the bathroom. The water sprays against my body and I love how he is just stood watching me, waiting and just seeing what I am going to do.
"Are you coming?" I ask and I feel myself smirking at the suggestiveness of my statement.
"Oh, definitely." He chuckles and steps inside with me, lifting my face so he lips are pressed against mine.
Probably about an hour later, Cole is sat freshly dressed, highly satisfied, on my bed. I just got back from talking to my mum downstairs and she said that I should say my goodbyes to Cole and let him leave before my Dad realised he was here.
They know about him, so I really didn't understand their protectiveness.
My hair is wet still from the shower but I have almost everything put together. My room becoming increasingly bare as I move through it.
As I chuck everything into my big dance bag I roll my eyes at how Cole is just watching me and not even helping, my eyes dancing with amusement as they met his.
He was lazy, this guy.
"You promised last night you'd help me pack. It's now an hour until I go and you're still not helping." I complain
"Well I'm sorry. I was just giving saying goodbye to you my full attention."
His voice is deep and I know he's thinking about last night.
"Don't I know it." I say and he wickedly grins.
"Are you going to miss me?" He asks suddenly and I just roll my eyes at him.
"Yes Cole."
"How much?"
"To the moon and back? I don't know what you want me to say." I laugh and take a seat next to him, I was pretty much finished with my room and decided I could take a second to see where he was going with this.
"How are you feeling about going back there?" He asks and I scrunch my noise up a little.
"I am excited. Obviously. I really do love my town. But it's kinda scary... I'm doing so good here, I don't want that to change when I get back into that environment."
Cole knew everything that happened last year, he knew about all the drama, all the trauma, the trial. He knew about all of it before we even started seeing each other. Over the weeks when he was trying to pursue me we had actually become really good friends and I never hid anything. He would ask me how I was and I would casually slip in that I had a nightmare or a flashback and so he gradually learned all of my truths.
There was no reason to hide things from people, especially not here. I wasn't ashamed that i was attacked. Shame didn't even come into it anymore.
When Cole learned the truth about everything back home, he didn't recoil like I thought he would. I mean he was Mr popular senior, he was a trouble maker and honestly, we both knew that he was just after my body when he first started talking to me.
But he never left.
He wanted to help.
And as I had a lot of experience getting people to open up to me, we quickly became close friends.
And close friends morphed into... close friends.
We weren't exclusive or anything. But we were really close and well one thing led to another. Sue me. I'm a teenage girl and he's a teenage boy. I'm not afraid of my needs anymore.
I say teenage, after hitting 18, studying at home and working in a school I felt fucking old. I honestly felt as if I had matured so much in the past year.
And well it turns out finding a boy who will let you do anything to him, who lets you have total control (the first time) is actually really helpful when trying to edge yourself back into that side of life.
Cole was pretty great. But we weren't compatible, not romantically. We knew each other inside out by the end, he knew I was way too smart for him now. After everything with Layton, I had aged about twenty years and he wasn't ready for anything serious.
I think that's why it worked so well these months, we were using each other, but we were both open to that fact. And our friendship always came first before the other stuff.
Cole's phone goes off and I toss it his way after glancing at the screen.
"It's Stacey." I say and scrunch my nose up at her name.
Cole's lattest conquest. I specifically didn't like this one because she reminded me too much of the old, old me.
"Ooo, what did she say?" He asks.
It's really funny being the best friend of a fuck boy, honestly, you wouldn't understand unless you get to know one.
"Read it Cole" I snap a little but laugh at his unapologetic look.
He rolls his eyes at my tone. "What? She's hot."
"I don't like her." I say and he just shrugs.
"Good job you're not the one messing around with her then."
"Cole." I laugh and slap him on the arm, getting to my feet and carrying on collecting my room together.
"What?" He laughs. "I actually almost like this one. Why don't you?"
"Well to start, her name is Stacey." I say and he laughs out loud. "Secondly, I know girls like her, I was a girl like her."
"You're not too bad." He smirks and I roll my eyes.
"You're just going to break the poor girl's heart or you're going to get your heart broken."
"Aren't you sweet? You almost sound as if you care about me." He says and coaxes me back towards him with his hand. Walking in between his legs I wrap my hands around his neck.
"I do care about you." I sigh and he just chuckles at me, probably remembering our many, no strings attached talks.
Cole was my closest friend here but we both knew that's all he was.
In terms of emotion. Physically, on the other hand...
He reaches for his phone and sends a quick text to Stacey and I raise an eyebrow at him. He almost looks guilty.
"Oh my goodness, you're going to meet her after I'm gone aren't you?" I laugh and pull out of his arms.
"What? I have to use your leaving to my advantage somehow. Do you know how upset I am? I am going to be so sad, I just need a friend to comfort me." He innocently widens his eyes, but he tattooed neck, his pierced tongue and the smirk that was placed on his lips reminded me he was anything but innocent.
Amused I shake my head slightly, "I hate you." I whisper and he smirks.
"I hate me too."
Cole had a few self-deprecation issues.
My smile falls. "Cole..."
"What? I was joking!" He convinces me through the way he grins at my unamused face.
"You're unbelievable." I sigh.
"Unbelievably charming?"
"No." I laugh and move over to my bag that is placed by my bedroom door. Quickly scanning the room, I frown when I realise I have grown so much in the room.
It's sorta sad to be leaving.
"Anyway, I won't see her if it actually bothers you." Cole states and starts to pack away his things too.
"It doesn't bother me, I'm just messing with you babe." I say.
We had started calling each other Babe and stuff as a joke but you know when you start to say something as a joke and then it suddenly becomes a part of your everyday vocabulary?
Yeah that happened.
It never bothered me that Cole saw other people at the same time he was seeing me. I think I sort of liked it, for one, it was less pressure, and secondly, I knew I was his number one anyway.
The other girls helped him to not getting attached.
"Oh, good. Because honestly this Stacy is the love of my life. I can just feel it." Cole says dramatically and I remember the three other girls he has said this about.
Let's just say that Cole was definitely not in love with their riveting conversation.
"Babe you don't love anyone other than yourself." I laugh and he gasps.
"Excuse me, I love you, don't I?" He says and I just shake my head at him.
"I meant romantically."
"Well, I would love you romantically if you let me." He smirks at me and I feel my lips tug upwards.
He wanted to date at first. But was happy enough with what happened between us. He always said I was too good for him, that he was lucky just to be close to me.
"I think I let you do enough." I smile cheekily and his eyes lighten in amusement.
"This is also true." He says a look of smugness falling onto his face and I just turn away from it.
"Oh and not to change the subject or anything but you're doing so much better than the last time you were there. It's going to be triggering Ives, but you will literally have all your friends there, I'm on the other end of a call and aren't you going back to see your original therapist? Baby you've got this."
"I have this." I repeat and nod, smiling at his encouragement.
"Who are you most looking forward to seeing when you get home?" Cole says and my head goes to the one person that it shouldn't.
He is more like the one person I'm not looking forward to.
I had stopped thinking about him.
But as soon as I found out we were coming home I couldn't help but find myself thinking about Jackson and everything that happened a year ago.
I honestly still cringe a little at how much of a state I was, but I also knew that he helped me survive and I am so thankful for him. Even if we did hurt each other in the end.
I wasn't ashamed that I wasn't ok, it's more just, I hate being reminded that I was so...poorly.
It was easy to convince myself when I was hundreds of miles away from him, that I had just done exactly what Dr Halpin had told me not to do.
I had buried myself in Jackson to hide away from the trauma, that everything I felt for him was because I was fragile, my heart was so shattered by the assault that it latched onto his for comfort.
I thought I loved the boy but the way I was feeling for him was more to do with a symptom of my PTSD.
That's what I had convinced myself at least.
That it wasn't real.
"Ivy?" Cole's voice makes me jump slightly and I rub my eyes.
"Oh, sorry. Um, definitely Lucy and Nora."
I hadn't spoken to Jess or Faye half as much than I had to the other two girls. And although Jayden and I had stayed in touch, Nora and Lucy were the two I was most excited about.
"Not that lad?"
Urgh, sometimes I hate that Cole knows me so well. That he knows everything.
"Nope."
"Are you sure?"
"Cole drop it." I laugh. "It's been over a year. I'm over it." I say and explain to him. "It's not as if you still want Lauren is it?"
"Urgh why did you have to bring her up." Cole groans and I laugh at his offended look.
"I'm just proving my point. You wouldn't care if you saw her again, and that's how I feel."
"Do you think he will care though? You going back there?"
Would Jackson care that I was coming back?
I shake my head firmly, with certainty. "He won't, I mean if anything he might still be angry with me. But he won't care."
"Angry with you? You did nothing through. He was the one that didn't come and-"
I didn't know what Cole was going to say. Come to say goodbye? Come to the trial? It honestly didn't matter anymore.
I admit he has been in my head lately but It's only because I know I will be in the town I love, with the memories I love, very soon.
He will quickly fade away like he did before. It will be fine.
"Cole babe, let's not talk about others when I'm leaving in..." I look down at my phone "Approximately 38 minutes."
"I'm just saying, hit me up if he gives you trouble." His eyes are flared, he was protective. Not in a possessive way, we sorta had a lot of fun flirting with others in front of each other. We never got jealous, it was all so light hearted. But if someone hurt me, or if someone hurt him then we'd get serious.
I groan at his protectiveness but I can't blame him. I don't like Stacey for the same reason, I don't want her to hurt him.
"Still, I can't wait to put faces to these names." He grins.
"Oh god, you're going to hit on my friends aren't you."
"God no. When I come and visit you'll be the only one I'm hitting on."
"Cole." I say and look at him seriously. We agreed that we weren't going to sleep with each other past last night. That when he visits he will be visiting as a friend. Well, ok, we may have already failed that by this morning... But I meant once I left.
Whoops.
"What?" He smirks and I know he was mostly joking. He always respected my wishes when it came to this stuff.
"You know what."
"I do, I just think it'll be hilarious when I turn up and meet everyone. They know nothing about me but I know everything about them."
"Lucy knows about you." I sigh and he quirks an eyebrow.
"Just Lucy?"
"Yep."
"And why not Jayden? Or Nora or..."
"I just haven't told them. I will when I get back"
Cole nods and grins "I'll tell my friends too then."
"I'm not your secret, everyone knows you're fucking me." I say bluntly and he groans.
His weakness is my words, it's fun.
"More like you're fucking me." He mutters and walks over to where I'm stood adjusting my top.
"Not anymore." I chirp and he chuckles deeply.
"Shall we start getting these bags down stairs then Nena?" Cole speaks quietly and his eyes tell me he has other plans.
He continues to head towards me and once he reaches my body, he spreads his hands out over my hips, cementing me to the floor.
"If you wanna."
"I don't wanna." He says copying me.
"What do you want to do?" I ask and he suddenly looks sad.
I have to go, so soon.
"Don't get upset tough guy. You're still my person, no?"
"Ok. One more kiss, then it's platonic friends forever." Cole's sighs but as his eyes find my lips they brighten in anticipation and I just reach up on my tiptoes and give him what he wants.
A kiss that he will remember.
We knew what each other liked and I played on that, pulling his lips between my teeth slightly as he gripped my chin. But this was a goodbye kiss and almost as soon as it began, I was forcing him to slow down. Bringing it to a close.
"Goodbye Babe." I whisper and Cole smiles at me and moves to grabs one of the heavy bags for me, opening my bedroom door and pausing.
"I'll see you in a month."
"That you will." I laugh and follow him down the stairs, picking up his bag for him.
I was going to miss him, a lot.
I mean I'm not going to pretend I didn't enjoy what we had going on here. It was fun, and easy, there was no complicated emotions.
But I mean just having him with me, he didn't exactly have a dark past, not like me. But he gave the best advice when he knew I needed it, he listened when he knew there was nothing that he could say to make it better and he distracted when I wanted to forget about everything.
I was so much better but obviously, bad days come.
I just hope to god, as I say goodbye to Cole and strap myself into the back of my parent's car, that moving back home is the right decision, that I was healed enough to handle it.
Because I felt it, I felt like my soul was patched together again. That I knew exactly who I was and exactly how to deal with things when they weren't ok.
But I was also scared that this was a step backwards.
I hoped this wasn't.
I was good. And although I know no recovery is linear, I just really want to keep getting better.
I was Ivy James, and I'm going back to the town I once ruled with no desire to take back my throne, instead I wanted to show everybody how much I've changed.
My heart wasn't broken anymore, it wasn't even fragile. I took pride in knowing that.
I wanted to show my friends how much I cared, I wanted to have light hearted fun with them, I wanted to live my life to the fullest because that it what I learnt here.
That there's no reason to hold back.
A/N i feel like theres been such a change in Ivy already, and this is only 1 chapter.
Have a good day my loves
Ty for reading.
Hope you enjoyed.