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Chapter Nineteen: Witness to A Bond

It was a couple of hours later when John woke up again and this time slowly extracted himself from Marty's arms. As he climbed out of bed, he immediately noticed the chill he felt in doing so. It was the same chill he always felt when she would leave or he would leave her along with that constant nagging feeling of being empty.

Shaking his head he couldn't help but mumble, "You've got it bad McBain."

Walking over to the drawer she had designated him a while back he pulled out a pair of jeans and slipped them on. As he left her bedroom he left the door open a crack just in case she needed anything. Walking out into the living room he found Cole sitting at the coffee table his preferred place for doing his homework. He was about to walk into the kitchen when he heard the sound of a pen hitting a nearby while followed by a frustrated groan alerted him. Turning back around John walked over to Cole and sat next to him on the floor.

"Look I don't do this a lot so take the offer while the getting's good. You wanna talk about whatever's bothering you?"

Cole looked over his shoulder at the man who in two and a half years had become like a father to him and weighed his options. He and John talked about everything from football to homework to girls. He should be able to talk to him about this, it was about a girl anyway.

"I'm not sure if I do." Cole admitted looking down at his feet.

"Well when you're sure I'm around. Marty decided that I was going to stay tonight."

John was about to get up when Cole stopped him saying, "I'm not sure exactly if I want to talk about it. However I think I should talk to someone about this and you're as good a person as any."

"All right go ahead, kid shoot."

"Okay so today was the first day back at school after Christmas break right? So I walk into my English class and there's Starr . . . " Cole stopped abruptly and scratched his head not sure how to articulate his thoughts.

"You're still running around in circles over her aren't you?" John guessed.

"See that's the thing I'm not. When I saw her sitting there, I didn't feel anything. You know like the urge to corner her and tell her not to give up on us. I just said hi and sat down. It was weird but what's even weirder is that I haven't thought about her once during Christmas break."

"Really? Are you sick?"

Cole chuckled as he playfully shoved John, "No, John I'm not sick."

His mood then turned serious and somber as he mused plainly, "I guess I'm finally over Starr after all this time but I don't how or when it happened. I'm so confused it's like one minute she was everything to me, I couldn't imagine life without her and the next minute she's not on my radar. How does something like that happen?"

A knowing smile crept over the detective's handsome features as he patted Cole on the back, "There's only one explanation for that and that is you've got your eye on someone else. Someone else has got you all tied up in knots and gotten your mind off of Starr."

Meanwhile Marty was finally waking up from her nap. Rubbing the final bits of slumber from her eyes she looked to her left but John was no where to be found. Confused she sat up and realized he must have left her in her room to continue sleeping peacefully. Pushing the covers away she got out of bed and padded out into the hallway as she got to the entrance of the living room she stopped.

Cole and John were on the floor sitting side by side talking about something. She wasn't sure what they were talking about since she couldn't lip read but she wasn't interested anyway she was more interested in their interaction. They were laughing and playfully shoving each other back and forth and every once in a while an elbow would be thrown in for good measure.

Not making her presence known she continued watching them until their conversation was over. Smiling she watched as it ended with John ruffling Cole's hair affectionately before they pounded fists.

Smiling even more as her hands caressed her growing belly she couldn't help but feel like she was a witness to a bond that she had seen many times before her accident between John and Cole. Seeing it now, up close and personal like this only made her feel more confident in John's abilities to be a good father to their little girl and God forbid if anything happened she knew Cole would be in good hands.