Page 83 of The Exit Strategy

“I’m here until I’ve fixed your books, Cole.”

That’s the kill shot she’s been holding onto. And believe me, I fucking feel it.

“Will you be able to uncomplicate things before then?”

I almost lie just so I can remember what she feels like pressed against my lips. Just so I can taste her, experience her, love her.

But I’m already drowning in lies, and I won’t do that to her again.

“I don’t know.”

Her lips turn in as she bites down on them with an aggressive nod of her head, and the painful organ in mychest bursts into flames as she takes a slow stroll around my sanctuary.

Her gaze snags on the scrap paper on my desk.

“That’s not right.” She points to a joint calculation she wouldn’t understand, but she sees the math equation immediately. “The calculation is wrong.”

She’s so damn smart.

Beautiful.

Meant to be mine…but may never get to be.

“I know.” I offer a small smile. It feels like a breaking point between her and me. I can’t move forward, and she isn’t willing to sit in this purgatory with me for much longer—and I don’t blame her at all.

I’d never ask her to do that for me anyway—I have a six-year separation to prove it.

Then she moves to my shelves. They run floor-to-ceiling along the north wall, the one with no windows. Archival tubes stand like soldiers on the bottom, labeled in my handwriting from years ago. Flat files lay haphazardly in the middle. And the top three shelves, running the entire length of the room, hold my sketchbooks.

She knows instantly what they are. She used to sit with me while I dreamed in those pages.

“You still do this?” she asks, proving a point. She knows I don’t dream that way anymore—if I did, she would have witnessed it already.

“No, Junie. Not since…”

Not since you.

Her hand lifts—not quite touching the spine of the nearest one.

“Go ahead,” I say.

Her smile cracks through her defenses as she takesdown the first leather-bound volume and settles onto the floor in the corner of the room.

I only watch her for a moment. Three breaths. It’s all I can afford.

Then I stop lying to myself, cross my arms, and stare at the most stubbornly beautiful woman I’ll ever meet.

The book she chose is from my first year of grad school. The same one she studied over my shoulder when she was too young for me to be noticing she was hovering over my shoulder.

“This one.” Her eyes light up in recognition. This, right here, is why I’m watching her. This is a reaction that could quickly turn into an obsession.

She holds up the page she’s looking at with an integrated vertical garden—one of the concepts I was working on before the bottom fell out. I haven’t thought of that in years, but it holds some possibilities for Frank’s greenhouse.

“The load distribution for the green walls. Did you ever resolve it?”

I love the fact that she remembers these details. I hate the fact that it makes me fall for her even more.

“In theory,” I say quietly.