We hit 140 Million reads on TBBG! Please take this one-shot as a small thank you from my side, I can never get over just how much this story and you guys have changed my life, like WOW. 

This is basically a deleted scene, written in dual perspective comprising of Chapters 17,18 and 19! Hope you all love it, comment with 'TBBG Throwback' if you'd like some more of these :D

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Ships In the Night -A 'The Bad Boy's Girl' One Shot

Cole

I always tried not to think of 'what-if's' because they do nothing but give you nothing but regret. My life is the life I've built for myself and it's a good life, well mostly. I don't need to purposely think of a shit ton of imaginary situations which could have made it better.

Poison words again, could have, should have. You don't need those around you. Maybe it's easier for me now to say these things, things you pay your Ivy League educated therapist thousands of dollars to tell you. I've got a reason to believe that things happen for a reason and that in the end, you eventually get what you deserve be it good or bad.

My hands shake, hell my entire body is trembling from the exchange. I sit on the edge of my bed, a ball of nervous energy. Is this is, is this finally happening? Did I just get the girl? I get up and pace around the room, something I've definitely inherited from my father but I doubt we've ever had the same reasons to be worried. I laugh, thinking how he'd react when he finds out that I might just have a shot with Tessa O'Connell. He knew about my crush even before I did and I still haven't figured out whether that's a good or a bad thing. In what was probably one of the most embarrassing days of my life, he and Cassandra had sat me down and had told me the proper way to court and 'woo' a girl. I cringe as I remember.

I'm good with turning her into a Smurfette, it worked in the hand right?

Holding my head between my hands, I let out an incredulous laugh.

"You told Jay, you thought I was sexy?"

"Do you like me Tessie?"

For all my bravado, I might as well have ripped out my heart and been holding it out to her in the palms of my hands as I'd asked her this.

It's easy to be cocky, confident and act like you own the world. Years of training have made it child's play to pretend in front of the girl I've loved for the longest time possible that I'm not affected till the point of insanity by her.

Like being around her doesn't make it hard for me to breathe.

Like it's not the most difficult thing in the world to keep my mouth shut, to not scream and shout and beg her to see me for the faker that I am.

I wanted her to be the one to make the first move and I think I read my signs right.

God, I fucking hope I did.

And then she'd said, "I wouldn't say no, not after everything." So quietly and softly at first that I'd almost asked her to repeat it but you don't ruin the best damn sentence in the history of sentences but asking for someone to repeat it.

"I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse." Would it really make the same bone chilling , cool as fuck impact had Don the mob moss been asked to say it again. Or what about the creepy kid in the 'Sixth Sense', if he kept telling every person he ran into that he saw dead people well...you get my point.

So I didn't ask her to repeat herself, oh no I took the moment for what it was, my big chance to finally, finally touch and hold the girl I'd known for a while was it for me.

Tessie, I've got you now.

***

Tessa

I stand in front of the full length mirror in my room and wonder if I look any different. If the girl I'd been before having been swept off my feet by the force of nature otherwise known as Cole Grayson Stone and the one who'd lost faith in the only guy she'd ever thought she'd loved. But it was a joke, what I'd imagined my feelings for Jay to be because now I know what it's like to have someone look at you like you're everything to them.

I've never been looked at like that.

"You're sexy when you get bossy."

It's like someone's lit my body on fire but in the best kind of way possible. I feel heated, frenzied, my skin itching to do something, to tell someone, to smile and laugh and cry for no reason.

I'm giddy.

My hand traces the spot on my cheek where Cole kissed me, the fire burning scorching hot. Is that what it's like for everyone? The feeling that you're someone entirely new, like your existence before that person and after them has been completely altered?

Flopping down on my bed, I try and think about something else for the sake of my sanity. But my mind is racing with thoughts, with newness of it all and with the idea that what my life was like a few months ago, it'll probably never go back to that.

"I thought you were the prettiest girl I'd ever seen and I got your attention the only way I knew."

I read a lot and I honestly know more fictional people than I real ones which is why I think it's perfectly acceptable to swoon and swoon I do. Of course someone smarter will tell me to question all of Cole's claims. I'm not the best judge of people, never have been and that's probably because I'm a sucker for affection. I'll take it in whatever, poor, neglected half assed way that I get it.

Until now.

Because no one's ever tried to show me exactly what I deserve.

But then this blue eyed boy came along and turned my world on its axis.

"You were always the prettiest girl I'd ever seen. I don't care about your weight Tessie, never have never will. I don't give a shit if you're as large as a house or as skinny as one of those skeletons on the runway, though I wouldn't encourage becoming anorexic. Anyway, you'll always be my Shortcake. The girl who's gorgeous but doesn't have a clue about it. The girl who's so forgiving and kind, funny and sarcastic as hell,"

As I go to sleep I say those words to myself, over and over again. Every moment of today's engraved in my mind and I'll hold on to them to get me through the toughest times.

***

Cole

"So let me get this straight, you finally had the balls to ask out the sweet O'Connell girl?"

"Yes Grandma,"

"And..."

"And what?"

She picks up the bar of chocolate I'd sneaked in for her and aims it for my head but then apparently realises that she might damage the precious item and clutches it to her chest.

Hershey's is the way to this old lady's heart.

"Do you get some kind of sadistic joy out of making a poor old woman suffer in agony. Do you want me to die wondering if I'll ever get to see my great grand babies? Is that what you want? Is that the man I raised you to be?"

I barely get the chance to open my mouth before she continues her monologue, following a well placed dramatic pause.

"I've been cooped up all alone in this place, waiting for company each day." Quick, someone grab me an Oscar statuette. "All I ever ask for her in return is for you to fulfil my dying wish. I need those blonde haired, blue eyed bundles of joy, your hear me boy?" She gives me a threatening glare that would make the men named Big Billy in federal prisons shiver.

"I'm working on it gram." I don't mention how the place she's staying in is nothing short of a five star resort because I value my life more that my wit.

She shrugs a shoulder, "You better, we don't want this place filing yet another law suit for your father to handle now would be."

"Damn woman you're devious."

She winks, her faded blue eyes glinting, "Where do you think you get it from?"

***

Tessa

"...Give me a second chance Tessie and I promise I'll do it right this time."

A lifetime's worth of memorabilia is gathered by my feet but there's something wrong with everything I touch. All these memories, all the objects remind of a person I don't want to be anymore. Mostly it's a shrine to the connections I've lost, old family photos, birthday presents from Nicole and Jay, cards and handwritten notes from both. I don't need this cluttering my life any longer.

We all need second chances, Cole's not the only one who has some redeeming to do. I feel like I need to prove a point to myself that I'm not the pathetic, clinging creature I've been for the last couple of years.

"Is it weird for you? Me being in a room when..."
"There's some obvious sexual tension between us?"

I slap my hand over my own mouth, slightly disturbed by the lack of brain to mouth filter, well more lacking than usual.

Cole laughs but I can tell I've made him nervous and that's quite the feat. So I do what I do best in moments like these, I make it even more awkward.

"Would you like to help me burn all the notepads I have that are covered with Jay's name?"

He blanches visibly and I mentally kick myself for being so tactless. He's basically put himself out there for me and I remind him of my psychotic obsession with his stepbrother. He'd come over even after I had to cancel on our first date because of Beth's current state. But he had still shown up with ice cream for both me AND my best friend, he even knew what both our favourite flavour are and what do I do in return?

"Okay forget I ever said that, please just..." I press a sweaty palm to my forehead. "I'm just so nervous, god I don't know how to breathe around you anymore."

He looks even more hurt and in my head I'm swinging a sledgehammer at my face over and over again.

"That didn't come out right, I mean't it's so different now. It's all so incredibly different but in a better way..." I take a deep breath to look at his face that's all lit up now, eyes shining bright and the corner of his mouth lifted in a barely there grin.

"Last night I kept thinking about how I never expected this to happen." I gesture between the two of us, feet tapping restlessly on the ground. "I'm a planner, I like lists and organising every second of my day but this, no amount of agendas and to-do lists could've led me, led us here and it's so mind boggling. It's all I can think about, you are all I can think about." I hide my face behind my hands and take a seat at the edge of my bed, knees trembling. Neurotic word vomit is the worst kind of vomit, alcohol poisoning be damned.

"Tessie, are you breathing back there?" Cole's voice is gentle and comes from a place that's way too near me. I peek through my hands to find him on his knees in front of my, his scent taking up the air around me and making me dizzy.

He takes my wrists in his hands, caressing the inside of them lightly with his fingers and prying my hands away from my face.

"Will you believe if I say I'm the same, if not worse?"

***

Cole

Can she hear how fast my heart's beating? Or maybe it's trying to stop beating altogether and burst out of my chest. I'm holding her hands in mine, telling her that it's okay for her to be scared of what's happening between us because the truth is I'm fucking terrified.

But also ecstatic.

Call me a freak, I don't care.

I've got this girl nearly trembling in my arms because of what she feels for me and it's heaven.

"How did this happen?" She whispers, "How did we go from you hacking my email account and sending a mass message that I want to have the janitor's babies to...now"

I scratch the back of my neck, my skin prickling with reminders of just how much I'd humiliated her, all stunts to get her attention or out of anger that she didn't even care if I were dead or alive.

Worse actually was the knowledge that she'd be happier with the former.

I hang my head in remorse, "Maybe it would sink in faster if I hadn't been such an asshole."

"I don't hate you or anything, that wasn't my point." She says quickly, "I just, I've been questioning my choices lately. The people I'd held on to for so long never really cared and the ones I pushed away well..." She looks straight at me and it's a shot to the chest, "I've learnt that those people were the ones who deserved my time."

My eyes flash to the door of her bedroom, I'm not sure what kind of privacy we have here. Her brother could come back, Beth who's still wary of me could very well kill the moment but I take the risk anyway.

"Maybe it's a good idea to stop regretting and moving on, maybe we've both made mistakes and missed some signs but that doesn't have to define who we are now."

She smiles and it's like the sun beaming down after a New York winter.

"And who are we now?"

"Whoever we want to be Shortcake, who the heck ever."