Page 57 of The Exit Strategy

This was taken the night of Nolan’s grad party. I can tell by the dress—it was the one and only time I wore it. This was the night I knew I was losing Cole for good—it happened even before he left Boston. I felt it that night dancing. The surgical separation. The stitches in the barrier reinforcing.

Why does he have this? Who took it?

The storm outside screams as loud as the thoughts in my head, and I attach a new magnet, then back away from the fridge. I sit numbly at the island with my dead laptop clutched to my chest and my candles and my catastrophic inability to stop collecting evidence about a man I’ve vowed to keep at arm’s length.

Something metal crashes in the yard—my money’s on Stanley’s new aftermarket fenders. The rain is so heavy it sounds like static, like the world outside these walls has been replaced with white noise. Or is that just in my head?

I twist the ring on my finger with growing irritation. I’ve already rubbed the skin around the band raw, and still it doesn’t budge. At this point, I’m half convinced Nana Mae had it enchanted by a sea witch before she forced it onto my finger.

How the hell did she even get it over my freaking knuckle?

The back door crashes open forty minutes later, and Cole blows in with the storm.

Have I really been sitting here staring at those freaking pictures this entire time?Get a grip, Juniper!

Cole shakes his head, and water droplets fly about the room. He’s drenched. Absolutely soaked through. His rain jacket dripping a river on the hardwood, boots leaving muddy prints that would give Nana Mae a stroke.

“Clubhouse is set,” he says, shaking the water from his hair again like a dog. A very large, very annoying, very attractive dog. “Everyone’s accounted for. Stanley tried to do a perimeter check, but Bea physically blocked the door.”

I hand him a towel without being asked because apparently, my body is making this a home while my mind tries to burn it down.

He takes it.

Our fingers don’t touch—I ensure it. I’ve developed an entire system for object exchange designed to prevent skin-on-skin contact, and it’s fine. Not at all pathetic.

“Generator?” I ask.

“Breaker panel first. Something tripped when the transformer blew.” He towels his hair, and I look away because a wet Cole is a hazard I didn’t prepare for. “It’s in the utility room. I need you to hold the flashlight.”

Of course he does.

The utility room is the size of a closet, which I didn’t fully appreciate until Cole stepped inside and took up approximately 80 percent of the oxygen.

I’m wedged between the water heater and the wall, holding the flashlight at the angle he specified—forty-five degrees because he’s anal like that. He’s working thebreakers with both hands, flipping switches in a sequence that apparently makes sense to him and looks like a guessing game to me.

“Higher.” He’s gruff, and I almost tell him to stick the flashlight up his ass.

Instead, I adjust it, silently cursing how much heat this man puts off. If he were standing outside, he’d have steam rising from his appendages.

“More to the left.”

Now, he’s pushing it.

I adjust again, but my arm’s beginning to shake. I don’t remember the last time I worked out, and my biceps are not built for this.

“Steady,” he mutters.

Is he just messing with me now? I glare at him in the dark.

“I am steady.”

“You’re drifting.”

“You try holding a flashlight at a mathematically precise angle in a room the size of a coffin while a man who apparently generates his own gravitational field and heat source takes up all the breathable air.”

He pauses. Turns his head just enough for the edge of his jaw to cut into the flashlight’s beam. There’s a drop of rain still caught in his stubble.

I definitely should not file it away in the growing vault ofThings About Cole Whittaker That Are Ruining My Life.