Page 101 of Shelter
And you still bug me,Cole Whitehurst. I remember everything about that night and that stupid promise you wanted me to make. You made it impossible to forget. So, maybe for my 18th birthday, you could write me back.
I frownedas I reread the letter. She’d mentioned her birthday three times. Surely, I’d noticed that before, right? I hadn’t forgotten the promise I’d wanted to claim from her. But when we’d left for good, I couldn’t allow myself to think about it. Was this her way of saying she’d kept it?
Clutching the letter, I closed my eyes and slid back to that night. The sacred, heavenly part of that night when I’d had her. I’d known then — before my world ended — I couldn’t keep her. But I’d wanted her.
So badly.
I’d wanted her more than I’d ever wanted anything for myself. Yes, I’d needed safety for my mother and Ava. That had always come first. But I’d wanted Elise just for me.
She was the only thing I’d ever wanted just for me.
The horror of what happened after — and the years of trying to build a new life for Ava — had blotted out those precious details. But now they spread themselves open in my mind’s eye.
I’d asked her for a chance.
I had been jealous of anyone who had ever come near her. Of anyone whowouldever come near her. So much so, I’d told her she was too young to have a boyfriend. How selfish I’d been. I’d asked her to wait. Until she was eighteen.
“Oh, my God.”
I told her I’d come back when she was eighteen. And here in her letter she’d as good as told me that she’d waited for me.
Ava was right. I never listened. But that could change, couldn’t it?
Chapter 23
ELISE
They were the color of his eyes.
I stared down at the 6mm round-cut aquamarine stones as though for the first time. They were the color of Cole’s eyes. An exact match.
Since our text conversation on Monday, I’d been in a funk. A three-day funk. I’d left Monday night without finishing the bracelet. My joy for the project had vanished, so I’d put it aside, and then I’d woken up today — Friday — fed up with myself.
I was not allowed, I told myself, to think about him. To wonder if I should have said yes to his invitation, or to contemplate texting him back. Cole Whitehurst as a subject of contemplation was completely off-limits.
But when I’d sat down at the workstation first thing this morning, determined to finally finish the bracelet, the truth confronted me in the startling shade of blue.
I didn’t have to leave the solitude of the workroom to search the display case at the front of the store that held my name. More than half the pieces there bore that signature ice-blue. Aquamarines, Brazilian blue topaz, blue tourmaline. However I could find it. Ed had called that shade of blue my aesthetic.
But, in truth, it was my heart.
I’d been chasing after Cole Whitehurst for years. With nearly every piece of jewelry I made. Without even knowing it.
What did that say about me? I mean, what woman in her mid-twenties was still hung up on the boy she’d kissed at sixteen? We hadn’t even dated. What I’d felt with him in that short span of days as a teenager couldn’t have been real, right? At most, it was just new enough and raw enough to fill my head with fantasy.
I had measured every prospective boyfriend against Cole since that night on his patio, and as I’d known they would, they had all come up lacking. But maybe that was because I had been comparing them to an illusion.
Maybe falling for Cole had stunted me. My heart had been arrested, beating away in a time capsule.
“You okay, buttercup?”
I looked up to find Ed leaning against the doorway of the back room, watching me with a concerned frown.
I blew out a breath and nodded. “I’m fine.” I hoped I sounded convincing. Maybe I could even convince myself.
His frown deepened. “You’ve been moping around this place all week. Want to tell Uncle Ed about it?”
For once, my boss didn’t look ravenous for gossip. He looked worried. I gave him a weak smile.
