Page 110 of Never Alone
"I'm sorry, Cole."
Her voice was small.
"I'm sorry. I've been—I've been imagining what I'd say to you if I ever saw you again. Since I was nineteen. Since I was twenty. Every year. I had the words. I had them ready. I knew I'd been wrong about you. I knew the boy I'd screamed at in that parkinglot had been the only person who'd tried to help me. And I never—I never came back to say it."
She wiped under her eye with the heel of her hand.
"I'm sorry I said you had no right. I'm sorry I told you you'd ruined my life. You hadn't. You'd been the only person who saw it. I'm sorry, Cole."
I lifted my hand. I put it on the side of her face. I caught the wet under her eye with my thumb.
"I don't blame you for my sister's death. Not anymore."
She looked up at me.
"What?"
"We were dumb teenagers, Tessa. Shelby died because I didn't know better. You were angry at me because I sent the boy you thought loved you to jail. We were both dumb. That was a long time ago."
She made a sound. It was small. She brought her hand up to mine on her face and held it there.
"Do you want me to leave the apartment?"
She was fully crying now.
"I don't."
"Good. Because I'm not going anywhere."
I gave her a count. Two. Long enough that if she was going to step away, she would.
She didn't.
I leaned in and kissed her.
Her mouth was soft. She tasted like salt. Her hand came up between us, slow, and rested on my chest. Not pushing. Not pulling.
I kissed her again.
CHAPTER 21
Tessa
Noah was at Sam's and Jamie's.
He'd been over the moon about it for two days. Sam had bought the boys a new console—Jack had told Noah at school, and Noah had come home with the news the way he came home with news that mattered, all at once, between getting his shoes off and getting his backpack to the floor.Mom, can I sleep over on Saturday? Sam got them a new game. Can I please?
I'd said yes before I'd thought about whether saying yes meant anything. It hadn't, then. It had just been my son asking for the kind of thing other nine-year-olds asked their mothers for, and me saying yes to it the way other mothers said yes.
It was the first sleepover he'd had in a long time. The first one since Havensworth.
I'd packed his bag that afternoon. Toothbrush, pajamas with the rocket ship he'd outgrown but still loved, a clean shirt for the morning, the painted river stone Aunt Jenna had given him because Noah didn't go to sleep without it. Cole had driven him over before the bakery closed. By the time I'd locked the front door behind us, Noah had been three streets away making jokes with Jack, and the apartment had been a thing waiting for me when Cole and I came home.
I don't remember how it started.
We came in the front door together. We took our coats off. I walked into the kitchen for water. Cole walked into the living room for something—keys, maybe, or a pen he'd been looking for—and turned around to ask me a question, and I was right there because I had followed him without thinking.
What I remember is that there was nothing else I wanted to do but kiss him.
