Page 102 of Never Alone
The third door was at the end of the hallway. I had not been in that room. I'd assumed it was unfinished, the room Cole would do last, the room there had been no reason to talk about.
I opened the door.
The room was painted.
Green.
The exact green I had picked up at Sean's the day Cole had taken me to look at swatches—the green of my own eyes, the eyes I had been hiding behind contacts for nine months. I had pulled the swatch off the wall, held it for a second, and put it back on the hook.
He had registered.
The walls werethegreen. Two coats. Even, careful, the corners cut clean. The window had new trim. The floor had been refinished like the others. There was no furniture. There was no bed. There was no shelf.
There was just the green.
I remained in the doorway, and the thing in my chest did the gathering again, harder this time. I put my hand flat against the wall the way I did at the bakery when I needed to remember that the wall was real.
Behind me, in the hallway, the floor creaked.
I turned.
Cole was standing there. He had a paint can in one hand, the lid still on it, and a brush in the other, the brush still wrapped in plastic. He had come up the stairs to put them in the room and had stopped when he saw me.
He looked at the wall. He looked at me. He looked at the wall again.
"Was thinking I'd do an accent wall," he said. "The one behind the bed. If you wanted."
He said it once. Plainly. Like he had already worked it through and was telling me the conclusion.
I found my voice on the second try.
"Why?"
"Trick of the eye." He set the paint can down on the floor inside the doorway. "Makes the room read wider."
He stepped in.
I didn't move. He came in slowly. He stopped a step away from me. The brush still in his hand, the plastic still on the bristles.
"No," I said. "Why are you building a room for me here?"
His head tilted, just barely. The smallest version of a man registering a question. He looked down at me.
"Was I not supposed to?"
The way he said it—flat, almost confused, like he hadn't understood the room could mean a thing he should have asked about first—went through me. He hadn't known he had to ask. He'd bought a house with three bedrooms, and one of themhad been waiting, and he had filled it. He hadn't made an announcement. He hadn't asked. He'd just done it. The way he'd done the locks, the smoke detectors, and the ride to the school.
I couldn't make my mouth move.
He was close enough now that I could smell him. Soap and the trace of paint and whatever he had on, which was not cologne, just clean. His eyes were on mine. His eyes had dropped to my mouth once and come back up. I had felt them do it.
I felt my chin tilt. I didn't tell it to.
He set the brush down on the windowsill without looking. He brought his hand up and rested it on the doorframe above mine. He was so close his breath moved my hair.
"Tessa."
He'd never said my name like that before.
