Chapter 7 #2
I started walking toward the building.
"Tessa? Could we have a moment? I'm Lacey Maddox with WCBC. We just want to ask you a few questions about—"
"No."
"It'll only take—"
"No."
I kept walking. Noah was close to my leg. The cameraman was moving sideways to keep us framed. The woman, Lacey, was matching my pace.
"The video has had over twenty million views—viewers want to know—"
"No comment. Please."
"Just one question—about the firefighter—"
Noah's hand tightened on mine.
I looked down at him. His face had gone the color it went when he was trying not to cry. His mouth was a small, flat line. He was looking at the camera and trying not to, and his other hand was bunched in the leg of my pants.
I felt the cold start low and go up fast.
I heard an engine behind us.
A truck pulled into the parking lot.
The woman with the microphone glanced past me, registered who it was, and her face changed in a way I didn't have time to read.
The driver's door opened and shut. I heard boots on the asphalt.
Cole walked past her without looking at her.
He didn't break stride. He didn't say anything.
He came up to me, bent at the knees, scooped Noah up against his chest with one arm—the same one-armed practiced lift he'd used when he'd carried him out of the window—and put his other hand flat on the small of my back, turning us both toward the building.
His hand on my back was warm. His hand stayed.
The cameraman tried to circle around to get us in frame. Cole turned his head.
"She said no."
It was the voice of a man who was telling you something one time and was not going to tell you twice.
"Now, get off the property."
The woman opened her mouth. Closed it. The cameraman lowered the camera a fraction.
Cole didn't wait for them to leave.
He walked us into the building.
The door swung shut behind us, and the sound of the parking lot cut off. The hallway was empty. He didn't put Noah down until we were out of sight of the lot.
"Thank you." My voice came out small. "Thank you, Cole."
Noah pressed against my hip and held on with two fistfuls of my pant leg. His face turned away from the front door we'd just come through.
"You two alright?" Cole asked.
"We're okay."
He held my gaze. His eyes were dark and steady, and he was holding something back.
"Can we talk?"
Something in me went still.
"Okay."
I led him to the stairs. Noah clung to me. He looked back at Cole twice on the way up, as though he was making sure he was still there.
I got the key into the lock on the second try and pushed the door open.
Inside, I crouched in front of Noah. He was still pale, his mouth still that small, flat line.
"Noah, why don't you go play in your room for a few minutes? I just need to talk to Cole."
Noah looked at me, then at Cole, then back at me. He wasn't going to leave me with a man he didn't know. I gave him the nod I always gave him when something was scaring him, and I needed him to believe me anyway. He held on for one more beat. Then he let go and walked down the hall to his room.
I led Cole to the dining table. He sat across from me, put his forearms on the table, looked at his hands for a second, and looked up.
"I've been thinking about what you asked me."
My stomach went tight.
He doesn't have to say yes, I told myself. He doesn't owe you anything. You asked him for something big. You knew it might be this one.
"Before I give you my answer," he said, "I want to ask you a question first."
"Okay?"
"Is your real name Tessa Marin?"
I looked down at the table. I'd been bracing for this question for two days, and I'd practiced what I'd say a dozen times in the kitchen, and now that he was asking, none of those answers was in my head.
"No."
He let the no sit for a beat before he said the next thing, and I knew what it was going to be.
"Your real name is Natalie Shaw."
I'd been dreading the moment he said my real name out loud since the morning I'd found out his.
"Cole. I'm sorry."
"Why didn't you tell me? You knew who I was."
I heard what was underneath the question. Hurt. Betrayal.
"I tried to tell you. At the firehouse. I tried, I—I couldn't."
He nodded once. Small. Like something had quietly rearranged itself in his head, and he was still catching up to it.
"And after that, I didn't know how to bring it up again. Every time I was going to—" I stopped. Took a breath. "I knew you'd have to find out eventually. If you said yes. My legal name is on the filing. I just—I didn't know how to tell you sooner."
He looked at me for a long beat, reading me, and I let him.
"You didn't just change how you look. You had to change your name, too."
I didn't answer. There wasn't a clean way to answer that.
"The husband situation is that bad."
I nodded.
He looked away from me—out the kitchen window, back at his hands—and then at me again.
"So you've gotten yourself into another messed-up situation."
The heat came up before I could stop it.
I knew, even as it was coming up, that it was the firefighter in him talking.
The man who'd seen people make bad calls and had to live with them.
The man who'd reported my boyfriend at sixteen because he hadn't known another way to make it stop.
He hadn't said it cruelly. He hadn't said it to hurt me.
It hurt anyway.
"I don't need the lecture right now, Cole."
My eyes filled with tears. I didn't blink them back fast enough.
He saw them and sighed. "I came here to tell you I'll do it."
What?
"I'm doing it because it's the right thing to do. Not because I want to."