Page 141 of Never Alone
"You shouldn't be driving."
"I know."
"Quinn shouldn't have let you."
"She didn't let me. I went."
I had nothing to say to that.
He sat down.
He did it slowly. The chair next to mine. He didn't look at me while he was sitting. He kept his face the way he did. He set his good hand on his thigh. He breathed in once, slowly, through his nose. He breathed out.
When he was settled, he turned his head and looked at me.
"Tessa."
"Cole."
"Talk to me."
He sat there and waited.
I had had a speech in my head all morning. I had been rehearsing it on the highway. The version where I told him in plain words why I was leaving, and he understood, and he let me go. I had rehearsed it well enough that I could have said it in the bakery to Mrs. Thompson, in Miranda's office, in front of a courtroom.
Cole had walked into the terminal, and the speech had gone out of me.
I made myself find it.
"He's not going to stop."
Cole didn't say anything.
"Nicholas. He won. The hearing. The order. He lost all of it. He doesn't lose, Cole. He doesn't let things go. He sent men with a pipe to Sean's parking lot, and he made me watch. He's not going to stop. He's going to keep going until someone is dead. Until you are dead. Or Sean. Or Quinn. Or one of Sam's kids. Or Mrs. Thompson. He's going to keep working through the people I love until there's no one left, and then he's going to come for me."
The words were coming faster than I wanted them to. I was talking through tears now, and I could not get the tears to stop.
"If I leave, he stops. The whole thing stops. He doesn't have a reason to hurt anyone if I'm not here. I did this before. I left him once, when I left Virginia, and he didn't hurt anyone for seven months because I wasn't there for him to use them against. I justhave to keep moving. I just have to be far enough away that the math doesn't work for him."
"Tessa."
"Noah deserves a mother who doesn't bring this with her. He deserves a town and a school and a—he deserves a normal life. Not me. Not this. He has Sam and Jamie. He has Aunt Jenna. He has you. He has more people now than I ever gave him. If I'm gone, he gets to have that. He gets to be a kid. He doesn't have to be a kid who waits at a window for his mother because his mother brings men with pipes to her parking lots."
I had not meant to saywaits at a window.The phrase came out before I'd thought about it. I had heard it in his voice two weeks ago, and it had come out of me now in mine.
His face didn't change.
He let me finish.
"Tessa."
"Cole—"
"You done?"
I nodded. I didn't trust my voice.
"Okay."
