Page 48 of Never Alone
It looked exactly the way I had pictured it. Minimal. Functional. Orderly. There was a couch, a coffee table, and a kitchen with a single coffee mug in the sink that he picked up and washed before he turned around. A bookshelf along the far wall. Two pairs of boots lined up by the door.
Noah found the models before I did.
Three things on the top shelf of the bookcase, the only personal items in any room I could see—a half-finished aircraftcarrier, a row of small tanks, a bomber with its decals laid out beside it like a project a kid had stopped halfway through.
Noah stopped at a respectful distance from the shelf. He didn't ask to touch them. He stood with his hands at his sides and looked.
Cole had been heading down the hall with our duffel bag. He came back when he saw where Noah was.
"You like planes?"
"Yes, sir."
"You can touch the carrier. The bomber's still drying."
Noah looked up at him. Then at me. I nodded.
He picked up the aircraft carrier with both hands and held it like he was handling something that might break. He turned it over once, looked at the deck, and set it back down exactly where it had been.
"Thank you."
Cole nodded.
It was the smallest exchange, and I watched Cole take it in. The careful asking. The careful hands. The thank-you. The nine-year-old who handled a stranger's model like it was something he couldn't afford to break. Cole looked at Noah for one beat longer than the moment had asked him to. Then he picked up the bag again and went down the hall.
It surprised me. I almost smiled.
Cole had been cold to me since the day he found out my real name. I had thought he'd be cold to Noah, too. I had braced for it.
He hadn't been. He'd set the bag down and given Noah a careful answer.
And Noah—who pulled into himself in every new room, every grocery store, every parking lot—had walked into a stranger's apartment, stood at the shelf, and stayed there when a man twice his size came toward him.
In eight months, he had not done that with a man he didn't know.
Cole came back out to the living room.
"Bathroom's down the hall. Bedroom's at the end."
I helped Noah change in the bathroom. Toothbrush from the duffel. Pajamas. The familiar steps of a bedtime routine done in a strange place. He let me help him without saying anything about it.
When we came out, Cole was at the bedroom door.
"Sheets are changed. You two take the bed."
"Cole—"
"It's a couch. It's not the first one I've slept on. We'll figure the rest out in the morning."
He moved past us down the hall.
I tucked Noah into Cole's bed. He was asleep before the blanket was up to his chin.
I went back out to the kitchen for a glass of water.
Cole was at the counter. He turned when he heard me. Reached for something. Set it down between us.
A small ring box. Black velvet. Closed.
