Page 87 of Never Alone
I pulled three yellow swatches off the wall and held them out. He took them. He flipped through them slowly, the way he flipped through anything he was actually thinking about.
"These two," he said.
"That's the one I would've picked."
He pulled one of the two off and put the other back. He kept looking at the swatch in his hand.
While he was looking at it, my mind went somewhere it had been going for days.
He's building me a room, Noah had said, to a woman with a clipboard, in a careful voice.In the new house. On Ashford Street. The room is going to be on the second floor. He let me pick which one.
I'd been planning to ask Cole about it. I hadn't yet figured out how. We'd walked through the house together once, weeks back. He'd told me he was going to fix it up. He hadn't told me he was building a room for my son.
Cole didn't say things he didn't mean. If he'd said it to Noah, he meant it. Which meant that some weeks ago, on a quiet afternoon I'd never know about, Cole Weston had decided whichroom in his house was going to belong to my nine-year-old son. And he had told my son. And he hadn't told me.
How long had he been planning?—
"Tessa."
I looked up.
Cole was looking at the front door.
"That's her."
I followed his eyes.
A woman had just come into the shop. Mid-twenties. Dark hair pulled back. A heavy coat she hadn't unbuttoned, even though the day was warm enough that she should have. She had a phone in her hand, the way the woman at the bakery had held her phone the day she'd recognized me.
She caught sight of us across the shop.
I made my decision in the time it took her to take her second step toward us.
I tapped Cole's shoulder.
He turned to me.
I went up on my toes, put my arms around his neck, and kissed him on the mouth.
For a fraction of a second, he stiffened the way he had stiffened on the lawn that night at the fire—the same small stilling. Then his arm came around my waist. His other hand settled at the small of my back. And he kissed me back.
He kissed me back like he'd decided to.
His mouth was warm. He tasted like the coffee he'd been drinking on the way over. The arm at my waist was solid and certain, and the hand at my back drew me a half-step closer than performance required. He wasn't performing. Whatever I had started, he had taken into his own hands inside of two seconds, and what was happening now was not a thing I had started.
I hadn't been kissed in months. Years, by anyone who'd wanted me kindly. I had forgotten what a kiss could feel likewhen nobody in the room wanted to hurt anyone. The shape of his mouth. The warmth of him. The smell of him—soap, woodsmoke, something cedar from the house he'd been working on. His hand at my back, holding without holding tight.
I forgot we were in a hardware store.
I forgot the woman.
I forgot the swatch wall, the bell over the door, the air conditioner running hard against the door cracked open, and Sean, somewhere behind us, watching this happen.
"Get a room!"
Sean's voice broke us apart. He'd been waiting to make that exact joke for months. It came across the shop now like a man finally handed his opening.
Cole pulled back a fraction. Not all the way. His hand was still at my back.
