Page 6 of The Exit Strategy

God, this is painful.

“Fine.”

He flinches. He’s always hated the word fine. It’s funny what you forget when you spend six years pretending someone doesn’t exist. A tiny spark of vicious satisfaction flares in my chest because he spent years forcing me to elaborate—and now he doesn’t have that privilege.

“Fine” is not a descriptor for your feelings, Junie.

It was his favorite saying. Now I’m using his hated word as a weapon, one that’s helping me build my walls, and he knows it.

Good.

He’s already reaching past me for the trunk before I can process what’s happening.

“I’ve got it.” I step between him and the suitcase, dragging out the smaller of the three I’ve packed. It’s all I’ll need tonight anyway.

His hand drops, but he doesn’t step back to give me space. He just stands there, watching me wrestle the bag across his cobblestone driveway like a man physically restraining himself from calibrating a problem I didn’t ask him to solve.

“Junie—” His voice is rough, clipped, and it makes me irrationally irate.

He doesn’t get to be mad, or sad, or confused. I hold all the stock there.

“Juniper,” I hiss, cutting him off before he can say something that will bring out emotions I’m not here to face. “You should probably call me Juniper now. You know, since you’re myboss.”

He drags a palm down his face, but it doesn’t hide the pain there.

“Right,” he says quietly. “Juniper. Your apartment is above the garage. Nana Mae left the key under the mat. She wanted to welcome you, but she had a…scheduling conflict with her club.”

I don’t respond. I was never particularly close with his Nana Mae, not like the boys are. She’d already moved back to South Carolina when they all came to live with us anyway, and I refused to go when they visited over school vacations.

She’d only relocated to Boston to raise Cole after his parents died when he was five, so I think she was ready to get back to her life in the Carolinas when he graduated high school.

Nodding, I continue dragging my suitcase toward the garage where I’ll figure out what the hell to do with my life now.

“Juniper.”

His voice stops me cold. My body remembers him, and it feels like a betrayal. How can it still long for someone who actively broke my heart?

There’s a beat of silence. Then, as though the words are being cut out of him with dull knives, he says, “I’m glad you’re here. Even if you’re not.”

My chest is too tight, and my eyes are too hot as I drag my suitcase as fast as I can toward the stairs.

With his eyes burning into my back, I make it to the landing, willing my hands to stop shaking as I search for the key.

But the door flies open, and the woman from the sidewalk tugs me inside.

“Katie,” Cole barks from below. “Get the hell out of there and leave her alone.”

Am I being kidnapped now?

“I’m Katie,” tube-top woman says, shutting the door and dragging me toward a small table set up under a window that looks out over the driveway.

Cole’s standing in the glow of the lanterns, staring up at my apartment as though he expects me to storm out at any second.

He should know better—confrontation isn’t my style.

“Oh, shit.” The woman hums. “You’re holding onto something explosive. You’re a powder keg of emotion.”

I turn away from the window to find this stranger assessing me. “I’m sorry, who are you?”