Page 19 of Never Alone
I crossed the kitchen and the strip of bay floor between us. The crew was twenty feet behind me, still making no effort to pretend they weren't watching.
She was looking at me.
"Hi," I said.
"I wanted to say thank you," she said. "Properly. Not the way I said it the other night."
"You don't have to thank me."
"I do." A small pause. "And I wanted to apologize. For—for what I did. On the lawn. After you got us out."
"It—" I caught myself. "Don't worry about it."
The words were out before I'd thought about them. They were the wrong words.
"Does it?"
She'd said it lightly. The corner of her mouth did something that was almost a smile. Her eyes stayed on mine.
I'd walked into that.
"No." I cleared my throat. "But you don't need to apologize."
She held the look one beat longer. Then she let it go.
"Thank you for that."
She glanced past me toward the box, now on the kitchen counter behind the crew, then looked back at me.
"Mrs. Thompson made most of them. I made the cinnamon rolls."
Oh.
The morning at the bakery came back to me in the time it took me to register the wordcinnamon. The Reeves cake. The smudge of flour on her apron. The smile she'd been holding the door shut with. Same woman.
I'd been carrying her around in my head without knowing it was her.
I made my face stay where it was.
"Tell her thank you. From all of us."
"I will."
Another small pause. Neither of us moved.
"I should introduce myself properly." She held out her hand. "Tessa Marin."
I took it.
Her hand was small in mine. Warm. Her skin was soft. Her grip was real—the grip a person gave you when she was meeting you on purpose.
"Cole Weston."
Her hand went slack in mine.
Tessa Marin. That wasn't the name on her chart.
For half a second, something moved across her face. Gone before I could name it. Then the smile came back—not the one from the bakery. Different. I watched her put it on.
