Page 160 of Never Alone
"I know."
The words came out softer than I had meant them to. She heard the soft.
"You're standing in the doorway."
"Yeah."
She had the small stillness she got before something. Her shoulders had stopped moving. Her hand was on the counter behind her, palm flat against the wood.
She tilted her head.
"What?"
The afternoon light through the kitchen window was at the angle I had been thinking about since I woke up. Gold on the edge of the cabinets. The room held its breath the way an empty room holds a breath before someone walks into it. Except that the room wasn't empty. She was in it. The whole year had been leading to this—her, standing in it .
I went to her.
I took something out of my pocket.
I’d carried it there for two weeks. I’d bought it the week after she'd come back from Savannah, on a Wednesday afternoon when she was at the bakery, and Noah was at school, and I had no shift. I’d gone to the same jewelry store I’d gone to last summer. I’d asked for the same man. He’d remembered me. He’d asked if there had been an issue with the first ring.
I’d told him no. The first ring had been for the court.
This one was for us.
I held it out to her now.
"The first one was for the court."
Her eyes dropped to the ring. They came back up.
She looked at me.
Her hand had come up to her mouth. She didn't seem to have decided to put it there. It was just there. The fingers were trembling at the knuckle in the way her fingers trembled when she was running a length of icing under hard concentration, and her body remembered to breathe a beat late.
"This one's for us."
The kitchen was very quiet. Somewhere two floors down, in the basement, Noah was unscrewing the cap of a glue bottle. The radiator in the front room clicked.
She didn't say anything for a beat.
Then she said, "Yes."
"You haven't heard the question."
Her face was doing the thing it did when she had figured a thing out before I had finished offering it. The corner of her mouth. The small lift.
"I have."
"Tessa—"
She put a finger against my lips. Light. The way you stop a child from saying the next thing he is about to say because the room doesn't need it.
"Cole. I have."
I had no answer for that. I gave her the one I had.
I put the ring on her finger.
