* * *
That evening, as Cooper was pulling down the driveway of their new house, the first thing he noticed was a waist-high, rectangular box on their front porch.
And here, to kick off the third act, he thought, getting out of the car. On top of the day he was already having, Cooper really should have expected this to be the day it arrived. The emblem of his and Park’s interior decorating conflict. The keystone of their very healthy adult relationship compromise.
A floor vase.
“For umbrellas?” Cooper guessed when Park had pointed it out to him at a market.
“No. For decoration. In the foyer. You don’t like it?”
Over three feet tall, handmade, ceramic and glazed in a wash of deep blues and greens, it was...pretty. And pricey.
“What if you lose something in there?” Cooper had complained. “How the hell do you get it out? It’s too long and narrow. Too heavy to turn upside down easily.”
Park had shaken his head, bewildered. “What the hell are you talking about? What are you losing?”
“Boogie? My sense of self? My core values?”
Eventually, Cooper had convinced Park to leave the vase behind. But the squabbling over house decor had gotten so bad that they’d established a rule that each person was allowed one non-arguable purchase every two months. To Cooper’s dismay, Park had immediately—and smugly—doubled back for the vase, which was clearly his plan all along.
“That’s cheating,” Cooper had protested.
“Or is it the brilliant stroke of strategy that wins the war,” Park had said, bowing with a flourish before running his hand suggestively up his thigh, frisky with victory. “Check and mate.”
“You’ll be checking if you still have a mate if you keep that up,” Cooper had snapped. Things had escalated pleasantly from there and, shame of shames, he had in fact agreed to the vase when he was feeling significantly more amenable for, ah, some reason or another.
The package weighed a ton and he nearly dropped it wrestling it into the foyer. And then did drop it when Boogie snuck up and tried to help.
“If it’s broken, you’re taking the blame,” Cooper said to his cat.
Boogie’s expression said fat chance, and sadly she was right.
He left the vase in the box and settled down in the living room with wine and his laptop to check some emails, Boogie prowling for a prime position on the couch with him. It was just after eight but he was exhausted and, though he’d never admit it, a tiny bit lonely, too. After the excitement of the day it felt anticlimactic and strange to come back to the house alone and sit in silence with Boogie.
An absurd and embarrassing thought. Park had only been gone for six days, and here was Cooper, as restless and horny and lamentful as a Tennessee Williams woman. Cooper enjoyed being alone. Even if Park was in the house, Cooper might choose to spend time by himself. But knowing Park was there, that Cooper could debrief the day, hear his opinions, intersect his orbit at whim, was, well, something he’d come to depend on.
What stage of love was it when another person became a habit? How quickly had the mere background hum of another person’s life become such an essential fixture of the house that its absence felt like a robbery? Like their home had been gutted and he was left drifting around the remains with the non-valuables like giant, ostentatious floor vases?
“Except for you. You’re priceless,” Cooper murmured, turning to scratch Boogie, who purred briefly and then immediately regretted it, jerking away from him sulkily. She definitely blamed him for her favorite roommate’s unusual absence.
“He’ll be back tomorrow,” Cooper said ostensibly to Boogie, but hell, he needed to hear it himself. Park was coming home tomorrow after a week of successful negotiations that helped secure their future, and Cooper couldn’t even settle on a season to get married in.
He opened his laptop, determined to get something done. Start with who you want to be there, Dean had said. Well, okay, he could do that.
Twenty minutes later, Cooper had listed his family; his old boss, Santiago; his current boss, Cola; his preteen cat sitter, Ava...and had drawn a blank. If that wasn’t the bleakest dance card, he didn’t know what was.
A loner to his core, Cooper had always been bad at maintaining friendships. But starting work for a top-secret agency dedicated to an entire world he couldn’t talk about directly after experiencing a violent attack he wouldn’t talk about had pretty effectively withered any lingering relationships. What he now understood to be PTSD-related drops into depression hadn’t exactly helped either.
Seems like a lot of people spend a lot of time bending over backward to make you happy.
Dean’s words had immediately rubbed Cooper the wrong way, because of how long he’d been on his own, looking after himself. But things were different now. Park was determined to make him happy. Perhaps even too much so. Cooper wanted to get married, so they were getting married. Cooper suggested a compromise on the house décor, so they were compromising on the house decor. It’s not that he was hoping for drama, but in moments like this, he wondered if they were supposed to be this compatible. If perhaps things were a little too easy...
Cooper glanced uneasily at the cupboard across the room where he’d shoved the research he’d stolen from Maudit Falls. Did it count as stealing if the research was performed on him and Park without their knowledge? Or was it just taking back something that they’d never agreed to give?
Regardless, after everything that happened three months ago—their engagement, Park getting shot, Freeman popping up out of the woodwork to groan, “Beware,” like a specter of the night—Cooper had never bothered to get his Alpha Quotient retested and still didn’t know what his actual score was. The last two times he’d taken it he’d completely screwed up, getting “impossible” test results. Not exactly surprising considering the hijinks the bastard administering the test had been getting up to at the time. Cooper’s new therapist, a stone-faced wolf with an almost painfully gentle voice named Dr. Ripodi, had offered to retest him when he felt ready, but so far Cooper had rejected the idea. Frankly, he was fine never knowing. It was only times like this that, well, he worried. His go-to emotion, really.
Park insisted it was fine. He was a big boy who could stand up for himself and say no, even if he did see Cooper as his alpha. He swore he was getting something out of this, too. Cooper just had no idea what.
He wanted to be able to do something for Park. Something tangible. Something to make him as happy as he made Cooper. He wanted Park’s family to murmur amongst themselves, That Cooper sure does bend over backward to make you happy. Because he would for Park. He’d bend his body backward around the entire world if it made Park smile.
He just didn’t know how.