Page 84 of Never Alone
Thewedid the work it had been doing for weeks now. He looked at me. The look held.
"Yeah," he said. "We did."
He went back out into the hall. I heard him in the kitchen, opening the fridge, taking out something to start lunch.
I sat on the edge of the bed for a long minute.
Then I got up.
I went into the kitchen. Cole was at the counter with his back to me, slicing tomatoes for sandwiches. I stopped in the doorway and let myself watch him.
He set the knife down, reached for the salt, and glanced over his shoulder.
He saw me.
He held my eyes the way he always did. A second too long. He didn't smile. He didn't say anything. He turned back to the cutting board.
My nine-year-old son had told a court official, an hour ago, that Cole loved me. The proof was in the looking. I hadn't believed it. I had wanted to. I hadn't been able to.
I stood in the doorway and watched him.
He had looked.
CHAPTER 17
Tessa
I carried what Noah had said about Cole for the next several days.
The words turned over in me on the walk to the bakery in the morning, in the quiet stretches at the prep counter, in the half-hour after dinner while Noah did homework at the table, and I dried dishes I had already dried.He looks at her when she's not looking.I had a son who was nine years old, and a son who was nine years old had clocked my fiancé harder than I'd been letting myself.
I was softer around Cole the way water is softer than ice. I caught myself standing closer to him in the kitchen than I used to. I caught myself not jumping when his hand brushed mine, reaching for the same drawer. I caught myself looking at him a beat longer when he came in from his shift. Whether he noticed, I didn't know. He hadn't said anything. He wouldn't.
On the Tuesday after the GAL visit, we were in the kitchen after dinner. Noah was in his room with the model plane. Cole was at the sink in a T-shirt with his sleeves pushed up to the elbows, washing the pasta pot that the dishwasher wouldn't fit. I was beside him at the counter with the dish towel, drying.
He set the pot in the rack. He turned the tap off.
"Hey, Tessa?"
I looked up.
His voice had a careful note in it. The note men used when they were about to say a thing they hadn't been planning to say tonight, and were saying anyway because they had run out of ways not to.
"There's something I need to tell you."
My stomach went tight.
"Okay."
"There's this girl?—"
No.
The sentence Cole was starting opened only one way in the language of fake engagements.I've met someone. The arrangement is over.And I had been softening for three days. I had been letting myself want without naming the wanting. I hadn't realized, until that one word, that I had something to lose.
"—who's been bothering me at Sean's."
I let out the breath I hadn't noticed pulling.
