Page 79 of Never Alone
"I know."
A long beat. Then him, quietly: "Goodnight."
"Goodnight."
I lay in the dark and listened to him settle on the pullout. The sheet rustled. The mattress shifted twice.
I thought about all of them.
I thought about Aunt Jenna, who had raised this man and given my son a painted fox. About Jamie, who had hugged me without asking and saidanytimeabout Noah like she meant it. About Quinn making the joke that had run my face hot.
I thought about the people who had made Cole. The ones he'd come up under. The ones who'd shown him what being good was for.
And then I thought the other thing.
I hadn't earned them. I'd borrowed them. They were Cole's people, and they had welcomed me because I came with Cole, and someday—maybe not soon, but someday—Cole and Iwouldn't be coming places together anymore. The case would resolve. The arrangement would end. He would go back to his life. I would go back to mine.
The people in that yard today would still belong to him.
They would still be kind to me when they saw me. Of course they would. That was who they were.
But I would no longer be the woman whose hand Jamie squeezed on her way past, whose son Ben tackled into the grass, whose afternoon Aunt Jenna had been waiting on.
I would be someone Cole used to bring around.
I closed my eyes against it.
Sleep came before I was done.
CHAPTER 16
Tessa
The GAL visit was scheduled for that same week. The morning they were due, I got out of bed before five and went to the kitchen.
By six, I had bacon in the oven, muffins on the cooling rack, and a coffee pot full of something I had no intention of drinking. By seven, I had cleaned the entire kitchen. By eight, I had cleaned it again.
I didn't hear Cole get up. I didn't hear him cross the carpet of the bedroom or come down the hall. He was just suddenly in the kitchen doorway, in the T-shirt he slept in and the sweats he kept folded on the chair, taking in the wreckage of food on every surface like he was reading a chart.
"Hey."
He came in. He walked past the cooling rack, the bacon pan, and the pristine kitchen like he wasn't surprised. He poured himself a cup of the coffee I hadn't been planning to drink and leaned against the counter across from me.
"We'll be fine."
I wanted to believe him. I nodded.
"Yeah."
It came out flatter than I meant it to. He didn't push. He just looked at me, the look he had when he was waiting to see if I needed something I hadn't asked him for. I shook my head. He nodded once and looked into his coffee.
I had been doing this all morning, wanting to tell him I was scared and not telling him. I was tired of my own face by eight in the morning.
"I made too much food," I said.
"You made enough food. We'll eat it."
"Noah's going to want pancakes."
