Chapter 17 #3
“Hey.” Steady fingers swipe away the tears that trickle down my cheeks. Cole sits us up, adjusting me so my back rests against his chest.
We’re alone in the bedroom—it won’t fit more than a double bed, so usually only one of my matches sleeps with me while the other two make do with the pull-out sofa and a mattress in the apartment’s living room.
Cole’s measured voice carries on by my ear. “You’re okay now. You’re here. It’s over. Nothing like that is ever going to happen again.”
Except it does. Over and over…
I can’t suppress a shudder.
Cole loops his arms around me to take one of my hands in his. He presses his thumbs into my palm and drags them to the tips of my fingers in a slow massage.
“You are strong,” he tells me as he trails the pressure up one finger and then another. “You can shape the world with these hands. You decide what happens to you next.”
That isn’t entirely true either, but I want to believe it so much that the tension in my gut unwinds. I snuggle into him, the haze of sleep creeping back up over my mind…
This Cole doesn’t offer that level of comfort, of course. I doubt this version of the professor has any interest in showing me that much kindness, regardless of what our bond might urge.
That thought finally pushes me out of his embrace.
I force myself to back up a step—not so far that it should feel like a total rejection, but enough to be clear I’m not clinging to him. “Sorry. I’m okay now.”
Cole gazes down at me, his gaze shadowed in the dimness of the landing. His hands fall to his sides and flex, as if he isn’t sure what to do with them. His expression has turned to stone. “You don’t have to apologize. I’m not going to stand by while you go catatonic on me.”
I manage not to glower at his gruffness. There’s an awful lot hanging between us, including plenty of things I can’t imagine he wants to bring up: the smack of his palm against my ass, the stroke of his finger against my clit.
All that was my fault too, even if he doesn’t realize it.
Maybe, in this moment, I can close a little of the other sorts of distance between us.
“I’m apologizing anyway,” I say. “Mostly for—I’m sorry our match was sparked this way. I never meant to have it happen out of the blue, before the graduation ball, in the middle of all this mess… I never would have wanted to drag you into my problems.”
Cole’s mouth tightens, but I think one corner ticks up just slightly. “I suppose I can believe you didn’t throw yourself and Mr. Cosgrave into the river on purpose.”
I do glower at him then, but without much heat behind it. What I’ve said doesn’t feel like enough.
My hand darts out to clasp his through our gloves. “And thank you for snapping me out of that memory just now. I do appreciate it.”
Cole holds my gaze through a few unsteady beats of my heart. Just as I’m about to let go of him, his fingers squeeze around mine.
He lifts my hand and brushes a kiss to my knuckles through the silk.
My pulse skips a beat. A dangerous heat floods every inch of my body.
I jerk my hand away before I can think through my reaction. There’s too much I want, too much some part of him must want too—but awakening his glim here could be disastrous.
And I have a very specific reason for being here, one I can’t afford to forget.
“If there’s something to see, we’d better make sure we’re actually watching,” I babble to cover the awkwardness of the moment, and hurry the rest of the way to the window.
I lean my forearms against the shoulder-height window ledge and peer out. The thick glass gives the world beyond a slightly misty quality, but I can still make out the people and vehicles passing below.
Cole comes up behind me, silent and ominous. I tune out his presence as well as I can.
A distant clock tower shows it’s just a few minutes before two. If my former assassination target has kept the same schedule in this world, and kept it for nearly three years longer than in my own reality…
An ivory sedan pulls up to the curb below. I almost choke on my tongue.
This time, I’m not throwing a vial of poison down my throat to inflict its damage on her. I’m simply watching when the driver’s door swings open.
A woman whose smooth black hair gleams with threads of silver steps out onto the sidewalk. A valet comes running from the nearest building to take her keys.
I keep all my attention on her.
She turns her face to glance down the street, and I absorb every detail of her profile. Every detail that’s exactly like the woman in the video Salvatore sent me.
I fumble with my phone and snap a picture just before she turns away and strides into the building. My pulse has slowed to a heavy pounding that seems to reverberate through my nausea.
“Who was that?” Cole asks. “Do you know her?”
Hardly at all, and yet way too well. I don’t know her name or what she does for work or even who she’s meeting in that tower.
I just know she’s so dangerous that very important people wanted her dead.
And I’m absolutely certain now that, for whatever reason, she’s the one who told Kenneth to murder me.