Page 99 of Never Alone
She was looking at me across the candle the way she'd looked at me when I'd come out of the shower and asked her if she'd wanted to go.
The candlelight wasn't helping me think straight.
She laughed quietly. Took a last sip of her water and set the glass down.
"Ready?"
"Yeah."
I held the door for her on the way out.
The street had cooled. Air moving up off the harbor a few blocks down. We started back toward where I'd parked.
She slipped her arm through mine before we'd gone three steps.
She didn't make a thing of it. She didn't look up at me. She hooked her hand at the bend of my elbow and walked.
I didn't pull away.
It wasn't a performance. Nobody was on this stretch of King Street at this hour. She'd done it because she'd wanted to be holding my arm.
I'd wanted her to be holding my arm.
We walked the half block to the truck without saying anything.
We picked Noah up from Sam and Jamie's on the way home. He climbed into the back seat half-asleep and was all the way asleep by the time I'd backed out of the driveway. Jack and Ben had run him into the ground.
The drive passed in silence. Tessa had her arm against the window and her head against her arm. I didn't reach for the radio.
I parked, cut the engine, went around to the back, and got Noah out. He was heavier than he looked, and he didn't wake up when I lifted him. His head went into the side of my neck and stayed there. I carried him up the three flights.
Tessa had the door open by the time I got to it. She closed it behind me, went past me down the hall, and turned on the lamp in his room—the one we'd put low on the nightstand for the nights he didn't want it all the way dark. I laid him on the bed.
"I've got him."
"Yeah."
I stepped out of the way. She knelt by the bed and slid his shoes off, setting them by the rug. She got his arms out of his shirt the way a person who had done it a thousand times, eased him into his pajamas, pulled the comforter up to his chest, and tucked the edges in along his sides. She brushed the hair off his forehead and kissed it.
She didn't see me in the doorway. I stood there longer than I needed to.
There was a woman on the floor by the bed with her hand on her son's hair, doing what she had probably done for him every night of his life. There was a boy in that bed who had come into my arms in the back of the truck without waking up because his body had decided I was a person it slept against.
I had known it while walking back from the restaurant with her hand at my elbow. I had known it at the candle. I had known it standing in my kitchen this morning with Shelby's recipe card propped against the box. I knew it standing in this doorway in a way that wasn't going to come back out of me.
I didn't want them to leave.
Not for the case. Not for the year. Not at all.
CHAPTER 19
Tessa
Cole had taken me to dinner.
I had not made a thing of it at the time. I was trying not to make a thing of it now. He had come out of the bathroom with his hair still damp and asked me, the way a person asked about coffee, if I felt like eating out. I'd said yes before I thought about whether I should. He'd taken me to a small place on King Street. Twelve tables. Brick walls. A tin ceiling. He'd paid the bill. He'd walked me back to the truck.
He hadn't made a thing of it either.
