Chapter 8 Angelina #2
Thai takeout containers line the counter because Cole ordered from the place I order from twice a week, the same pad see ew for me and the same chicken satay for Chesca.
I know he knows the order because he's been watching me for seven years, and he knows I know he knows, and neither of us says a word about it.
Chesca pulls Cole into the volcano project before he's finished setting down the food, no preamble and no hesitation, with the social fearlessness of an eight-year-old who has decided this person belongs in her kitchen.
"You have to help. It keeps falling over."
Cole studies the leaning cone for three full seconds, then he pulls out a chair and sits down. "The structural problem is your base. You need to redistribute the weight."
"It's a volcano."
"Volcanoes have structural integrity. This doesn't." He picks up the wadded newspaper Xander abandoned and starts packing it around the base, his hands moving with the same precision he brings to everything else, as though margins of error matter even for third-grade science projects.
"You need more support here before you add another layer of paste. Otherwise, it'll keep leaning."
Chesca watches him work, her skepticism shifting to interest. "Xander said we should just tape it."
"Tape is a temporary fix. This is engineering."
"Oh, now it's engineering," Xander mutters from across the table. "Four hours of my life, and I get 'Xander said we should just tape it.'"
Chesca ignores him, leaning closer to Cole. "What about the lava? His lava wasn't red enough."
"It was magenta. Magenta is close," Xander protests.
"Magenta is pink."
"It's between red and purple, technically," Cole says, not looking up from the base he's reinforcing with wadded newspaper.
He glances at the small bowl of red-pink liquid sitting on a paper towel away from the volcano, the baking soda and vinegar test batch. "She's right. You need more red food coloring. And less vinegar, or the reaction will overflow before it looks impressive."
"See?" Chesca points at Cole like he's a star witness. "He knows things."
"We're not testing the lava until the structure dries," Cole adds, and Chesca's face falls for exactly two seconds before she rallies.
"Tomorrow?"
"If the base is solid."
Xander catches my eye across the kitchen, his eyebrows raised and hands still up, the look of a man who has been outranked by an eight-year-old and a newcomer in the span of thirty seconds. I press my lips together to keep from laughing, which Chesca catches and giggles at, which makes it worse.
I unpack the takeout and watch from the counter.
Cole measuring baking soda with a plastic spoon, his sleeves pushed to his elbows.
Chesca leaning into his space the way she leans into mine — without caution, without the careful assessment of distance that I perform with every adult male who isn't family.
The overhead light making the kitchen look warmer than it is.
He glances at me once, mid-volcano. Brief, as checking on me, not Chesca. His eyes hold for half a second longer than necessary.
I look away first.
Xander leaves after dinner with a fist-bump for Chesca and a nod at Cole. A look passes between them that I don't catch, some shorthand I'm not part of. Then he's out the door and it's three people in a kitchen, and then two, because Chesca runs upstairs to brush her teeth without being asked.
She never does that. She's showing off for Cole.
The kitchen is quieter with Xander gone. Cole washes the takeout containers. Rinsed, sorted, placed in the recycling bin under the sink that he should not know the location of.
I dry a plate and set it in the cabinet. The silence between us isn't comfortable but it's not hostile either, just full of every observation I've filed away today and refused to process. His hand in the stairwell. The jacket. The level scoop of baking soda.
"She doesn't warm up to people like that," I say, and don't know why I'm saying it.
Cole rinses the last container. "She's eight. She warms up to everyone."
"No. She doesn't." I put the plate away and don't look at him. "She's polite and she's friendly, but she doesn't lean. She leaned into you."
He's quiet long enough that I glance over. He's standing at the sink with the water off, looking at the dish in his hands like he's forgotten what to do with it.
"I noticed," he says.
The kitchen gets smaller. I put the last plate away and leave without looking at him again.
Bedtime takes the shape it always takes.
Chesca's sound machine is humming ocean waves, the same recording she's fallen asleep to since she was four.
Comforter is pulled up to her chin, my lips pressed to her hair, ten seconds in the doorway because ten seconds is all I allow myself before it becomes lurking rather than saying goodnight.
I pull her door almost-closed. Check the hallway night light. On and low, the warm one she prefers.
Cole is against the wall opposite Chesca's door.
"You could at least pretend you weren't standing guard," I say. Barely a whisper. Conscious of the child sleeping six feet away.
He knew I was here, heard me coming, probably counted my footsteps. He always knows.
"And you?" He keeps his voice low. "How many times do you check on her before you actually go to bed?"
I could lie. "Six."
"Then don't lecture me about overprotective."
The laugh slips out before I can catch it. Soft, tired, real. I press it down but it's too late. He heard it.
When was the last time someone made me laugh about the anxiety instead of dismissing it? When was the last time someone understood that checking six times isn't crazy, it's just what you do when you've learned the hard way that safety is a lie you tell yourself?
The hallway is dark with recessed lighting turned low the way I keep it after nine. He's in a black t-shirt, leaning against the wall like he belongs here.
I'm in sleep shorts and a tank top, the thin cotton kind I wear to bed because no one sees me after Chesca falls asleep.
Bare legs, bare arms, nothing between my skin and the air except fabric that suddenly feels inadequate.
I became aware of both facts about two seconds ago, and I hate that I'm aware of them now.
His gaze drops. Just for a beat, down and back up, and he catches himself, brings his eyes to my face. Holds them there like it costs him something.
Heat floods my cheeks. Lower.
No. Absolutely not.
"Goodnight, Cole." I say it too fast and turn before he can answer, before my body can betray me further, and walk to my room and close the door.
I lean against it, breathing harder than I should be.
Eight years. Eight years of nothing, of numbness, of convincing myself that part of me died with the marriage, that Adrian took my ability to want along with everything else. And now my skin is burning because Cole Tanaka looked at me for half a second too long.
Get it together, Angelina. He's protection detail. He's your past. He's a man who watched you through cameras for seven years without saying a word.
None of that stops the heat.
I shower too hot for too long. Stand under the water for twelve minutes trying to rinse off the residue of the day, the stairwell, the jacket, the baking soda, his eyes dropping in the hallway just now.
The water goes lukewarm. I still feel all of it on my skin.
His hand holding mine. I didn't flinch.
The realization won't leave me alone. I didn't flinch. Five days ago, I would have. Five days ago, unexpected touch from any man made my whole body go rigid with memories I've spent years trying to bury.
It doesn't mean anything. I was distracted by the alarm, the evacuation—
Liar.
I turn off the water and stand there dripping, staring at the tile wall.
When did I start trusting him? When did my body decide he was safe without asking permission from my brain?
You don't trust him. You can't afford to trust him. He left, Angelina. He made that choice for both of you, and you spent three years picking up the pieces, and then Adrian—
I shut that thought down hard. Towel off. Pajamas. Teeth brushed. The motions automatic, the same sequence every night, routine and control.
I lie down on cold sheets and close my eyes.
The jacket I wore all the way to my office, the smell of saffron and cedar. Then don't lecture me about overprotective. The way he said I noticed about Chesca leaning into him, like admitting it was a door he couldn't close again.
Sleep.
The ceiling stares back.
I turn onto my side and then turn back. The house ticks and settles around me.
My body won't quiet, and not with the anxious energy I'm used to but the other kind, the kind that lives lower and hasn't stirred in years.
My skin feels too warm under the sheets, and every time I close my eyes I see his face.
And that beat where his control slipped, the way he pulled it back like slamming a door.
I lie there for a long time.
Then I get up.
My feet are cold feet on hardwood. No slippers, no robe. I walk to the landing, the wide square of floor where the left hall meets the right.
Left is my territory. Chesca's door pulled to, the warm night light. Safety.
Right is his.
I turn left and take one step toward my daughter's door. Then I stop.
And turn right.
The carpet runner muffles my footsteps as I walk down the guest hall. Past his bedroom to the monitoring room is at the end of the hall. Light leaks from underneath.
He's awake. Of course he's awake.
Why am I here?
I don't have an answer that would hold up under cross-examination. My hand finds the door handle anyway.
The room is lit by four screens cycling through camera feeds.
My empty kitchen, my dark living room, the street outside where nothing moves, the hallway I just walked down.
Cole sits in front of them and looks up when the door opens.
His expression is something I would pay a considerable amount of money not to see, because it isn't surprise.
He watched me walk here. Leaving my room, crossing the landing, turning right, pausing and turning left. He sat here and let me come to him.
"You should sleep," I say. Which is not why I came, which we both know is not why I came.
"In a bit."
I don't leave and he doesn't ask me to.
The screens cycle. Kitchen, living room, street, hallway. I'm standing in a doorway in a tank top and sleep shorts at eleven at night, and he's looking at me, and I need to walk away.
I step in and close the door behind me.
His hands stay flat on the desk, deliberately still.
"I can't—" I start and then stop. Can't do this. I can't stand in a room full of surveillance feeds of my own house wanting a man I only allowed in because Sal gave me no choice.
"It's been a long day." His voice is careful. Controlled. Giving me an exit. "The evacuation —"
"It's not that."
I watch his throat move as he swallows. He's not going to reach for me. He's going to sit there and let me decide, the way he held out the jacket on two fingers, the way he opened the stairwell door without touching me.
He keeps giving me the choice. And I keep choosing wrong.
One more step, close enough that I can see him swallow.
"I need—"
The words stop in my throat. I don't know how to finish that sentence, don't know what I'm asking for. His hands on me, his mouth, the oblivion of letting someone else carry the weight for five minutes?
All of it. None of it. Something I can't name but my body remembers after years of trying to forget.
His hands stay flat on the desk, deliberately still, giving me the choice he's always given me—the jacket on two fingers, the door opened without touching, this moment where he waits for me to decide.
I take another step.