Page 61 of The Exit Strategy

“I’ll try to start the generator again.”

We dart out into the rain—lighter than before, but still enough to soak through in mere moments.

He stops at the garage door while I continue to the stairs.

“Good night, Junie.”

Pretending not to hear him, I hustle up the stairs. Once inside, I press my fingers to my lips because I still feel him there. I fear I may always feel him there. The pressure. The desperation. The sound he made when I pulled him closer.

The microwave beeps, and the clock blinks twelve o’clock.

And instead of doing anything productive, I enter my bedroom, go to the window that faces his, and turn on my light, knowing he’ll see it. Knowing what it means in the language of porch lights and lanterns and two people who have spent a lifetime speaking in everything except words.

Less than ten minutes later, across the driveway, his office light turns on too, and then he’s there, staring at me as I stare at him.

Hope, sadness, and a lifetime of mistakes hang in the space between us. But for the first time since I arrived in Porchlight Cove, it feels like an olive branch is trying to grow from his heart to mine.

And it will either end up being the beginning of something or the most beautiful way I’ve ever fallen apart.

12

LOCKED DOORS

COLE

I kissedJuniper Mercer last night, and she thanked me for it.

Then she locked herself in my bathroom.

But fuck. The sound she pulled from deep in my chest—that broken, gutted sound… And instead of pushing me away, she pulled me closer.

She pulled me closer.

I need to sit with that because my brain keeps trying to reclassify it as something it wasn’t. A mistake. A storm-induced lapse in judgment. A momentary failure of the six-year freeze I enacted to protect her from the catastrophe of being loved by me.

Think about Nolan.

Think about rebuilding the framework—the sacrifice, the carefully maintained distance that keeps Natalie from detonating and my entire life from unraveling, but…

It’s too late for that. I knew it the moment my lips crash-landed against hers.

Because I meant everything I poured into that kiss that was unlike any other I’ve ever experienced. I…devoured, claimed, demanded. That’s not something a man does when he’s committed to reinforcing boundaries.

I stare at the ceiling. Thinking I could ever be just friends with Juniper Mercer is the real lie.

Friends don’t kiss like that. Friends don’t grab fistfuls of shirts. Friends don’t make the sounds she made.

Fuck me. The sounds she made.

I drag both hands down my face and groan into my palms.

Nolan will kill me. Actually kill me. Not metaphorically. Hudson will represent him, and Fen will livestream the trial to sway the court of public opinion in his favor.

The threat of Nolan isn’t even what’s keeping me up though.

Of all the things keeping me from Junie, Nolan barely makes the list.

It’s something so much worse.