Page 92 of The Exit Strategy

The weight of his gaze is as effective as physically pressing against my windpipe to cut off my air supply.

“You look like shit.” He says that as though he expected something different.

“Thanks, Hud.”

“I say that as your friend.” He wraps one hand around the railing. “I know you, Cole. And while I don’t know all the details of what made you leave six years ago, I have a pretty good idea.”

My heart is racing too fast. Hudson can’t be involved in any of this. I don’t know all the legal ramifications of blackmail and coercion, but I won’t be responsible for him being disbarred.

“I also think you’re about two weeks away from doing something about it or pushing her out of your life again, and I don’t have the stomach for the second option. So.” He lifts his glass in a gesture that’s more dare than toast. “Get your shit together.”

Hudson has no idea what he’s asking of me.

And I hate that he’s right.

The houseslowly descends into silence.

After Katie and Junie each had two glasses of wine, Stanley arrived in his golf cart to escort Katie back to her place, but not before Hudson told him that a golf cart rideshare for the neighborhood would be an excellent source of income.

Now I’ll wake up to twenty emails from Stanley with anew business plan and twenty more from Marley about proper documentation.

Nana Mae ushers Fen and Hudson toward the family room with promises of a nightcap while I slide into the rocking chair on my porch so I can ensure Junie’s meandering actually leads her back to her apartment and not to the ocean’s edge. Giddy and content is a good look on her—but not if it’ll put her in any type of danger.

As her stairs illuminate one after another, I sigh in relief just as the chair next to me shifts.

Nolan drops into the rocking chair like a man with something he’s been working up to for a long time. I know that feeling—I live in that particular waiting room.

Nolan’s sigh is heavy. “What’s happening here, Cole?”

My throat is thick as I swallow, but I don’t say anything. There’s nothing to say yet. He has a point to make, and my apology will need to fit whatever crime he’s talking about.

There are so many to choose from.

“I’m just trying to help.” That, at least, will always be true.

“That’s not—Fuck, Cole. I owe you an apology.”

It’s so unexpected that my response lands wrong and hard. “You don’t owe me a fucking thing.”

“I do though.” He leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees. “For my graduation party, and…after.”

Everything that makes me a functioning adult goes on hiatus.

“I was…struggling with everything. So many things were changing at once. We’d just lost Mom. My dad was, well, fuck. He’s a complication we should have seen coming. Junie refused to celebrate her birthday because she didn’t think she had anything to celebrate. I was worried about med school and getting her through life when she wouldn’t even talk to me. But then she danced with you, and I saw your face, Cole.”

I make a conscious effort to breathe.

“And what I saw—the emotions she’d never been able to hide when it came to you reflected in your expression. Jesus, Cole. I said something I thought was clear at the time, but after seeing you with her now, my words must have completely missed my mark.”

That conscious effort is a futile endeavor.

“I told you that night that she’s not a trial run—that she doesn’t give second chances, not even for you.” He looks directly at me now. He must see the fear in my eyes. It’s a living, breathing entity that hinges entirely on whatever he says next. “I meant that she would only allow herself to be vulnerable enough for love once, completely, all in with no walls to hold her back, and if you weren’t ready to do the same, you needed to wait until you were.”

He stands and drags his palm over his thigh, back and forth like he’s nervous. “I meant that you were the best thing in her life, even if it hurt me that I couldn’t be that for her, and I meant that I trusted you, no one else, with her because of it.” He pauses, scanning my face for a lie, a truth, the reason I broke everything good in my life. “I didn’t mean you should leave.”

The porchlight flickers in the salt air blowing in from the ocean. It highlights the pain he carries that matches my own—just for very different reasons.

He was never warning me away—he was giving me permission.