Page 17 of Broken Silence
“I haven’t heard you ramble like that since we were little kids.”
Cole was seven when I stopped talking, so I was surprised he remembered my old voice.
“What was university like?” I asked.
He lifted a brow, his jaw tightening. “You want to talk aboutschool?”
Not really, but school was a safe subject. I nodded, wrapping my arms around myself, now feeling the cold sinking into my bones.
He sighed sharply. “All right. Uni was fine. The course was good. Could have done it anywhere.”
Ouch. He’d managed to tell me he could’ve got his degree in Australia without even mentioning the country. Of course, I wanted him with me over there, but there was a lot I needed to unpack with my mum and brother. It was heavy, and I didn’t want to drag Cole away from his family and his life to be thrown into our trauma.
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. What’s Australia like?” he asked, clearing his throat. He sounded like he wanted to talk about anything else… or perhaps nothing at all, because his eyes drifted to the door.
The small-talk thing was new for us and massively uncomfortable—not something I had ever felt with him.
“Hot,” I finally said, missing off: tranquil, safe, heart-breaking.
“You’re cold now,” he said, nodding towards the goosebumps that covered my arms.
“Oh, I’m okay,” I said, looking down at my arms.
He clenched his hands twice and exhaled deeply through his nose. Without a word, he pulled his hoodie over his head and handed it to me.
“It’s okay, I–”
“Please… just take it,” he bit out through clenched teeth.
I reached across and took the hoodie from him. His fingers brushed mine for a heartbeat, taking my breath away. Cole retracted his hand as if I’d taken a flame to his skin, as if being close to me was agony.
“Thank you,” I said, putting the hoodie on. His scent surrounded me in an embrace that healed something deep in my soul. The old hoodie I took with me had stopped smelling of him years ago.
“When do you have to give evidence?”
“A couple weeks.”
He nodded once, and I could feel the anger radiating from his body, for my dad and Frank, and for me. “Are you staying at Ali’s?”
“Yeah. Weeks and weeks of Lizzie…”
“She hasn’t changed, then?”
“Not a bit. She calls me now, too, wanting all thegosson Australia’shot surfers.”
Cole’s frown deepened. “Right… surfers. Hold on, can you surf?”
I laughed and shook my head. “I tried once, but itdidn’tgo well. I almost drowned and had to be pulled out of the water. Jasper’s pretty good, though. Surprisingly.”
Jasper could drown in a puddle but ride a wave like a pro.
After a few minutes of awkward silence, Cole said, “You finished school in Australia?”
“You really want to talk about school?” I asked, using his words.
His mouth twitched into a smile. “Touché.”
He was less closed off now, but I wasn’t going to get my hopes up. He was hardly going to start yelling at me with everyone else here. Perhaps if he did, we could clear the air a bit and stop this weird exchange that was leaving a nasty taste in my mouth.
