CHAPTER 25
Cole
Tessa stands in the middle of her living room and looks around slowly. Everything has been cleaned up from the night of the attack a week ago. I had a cleaning company in to remove the blood from the floors, replace the glass in the living room and install a new door in the kitchen.
“Feels good to be back here,” Tessa murmurs.
I lower her bag to the floor and nod toward the bathroom. “Why don’t you go take a shower.”
“Yeah,” she says with a tired smile. “That will feel good.”
The bathroom door stays open, not for any reason other than there’s no modesty between us.
I lean against the wall in the hallway just outside it, arms crossed and listen to the water run.
If this were an ordinary day, I’d undress and join her but right now…
I’m watching over her. It’s all I’m capable of at the moment—maintaining proximity.
“DelRey’s probably lawyered up already,” she says from behind the frosted glass, and I could almost smile at that. I’m not surprised that’s where her head goes, working through all the conclusions.
“Man like that has his lawyer’s number on speed dial,” I reply blandly.
“Won’t matter,” she says confidently, and I sneak a glance in. She’s gingerly soaping up her hair, head tipped back to let the hot water hit her chest. “The circumstantial evidence is overwhelming.”
“Schwartz will flip,” I say. “He’s not built for prison. He’ll give up DelRey inside of a week.”
“Good. Let him.”
I watch her through the frosted glass, looking like a mirage.
I think about the drive back from Seattle.
Reid stuck around until she was discharged and drove us both home.
I sat in the back seat with her, her head against my shoulder, not sleeping exactly but not fully present either.
I felt the weight of someone whose system had burned through everything it had and was running on fumes.
I’d kept my hand on her the whole drive, making sure she was alive and whole.
She makes a sound when the water hits her shoulders—sharp, involuntary—and I’m off the wall.
“I’m okay,” she says immediately. “Just stings a bit.”
I stop and slowly back against the wall again. “I know.”
Tessa takes her time. When the water finally shuts off and she reaches for the towel, I move into the living room, stand before the window that was replaced.
The street looks so quiet and normal… streetlights glowing on wet pavement, a car passing slowly at the far end of the block.
The world completely indifferent to everything that happened in the last several hours.
I hear her come out of the bathroom and turn to find her in a robe, hair damp and feet bare. She looks small in a way that Tessa almost never looks and it makes my chest feel like it’s caving inward.
“Sit,” I say. “I’ll make tea.”
“I don’t want tea.”
“I know. Sit anyway.”
I find the kettle, fill it, locate mugs with the ease of someone who has spent enough time in this kitchen to know where things are.
I make the tea she doesn’t want and carry both mugs to the living room.
She accepts hers, curling around the heat and blowing across the top.
I sit on the other end of the couch, and we exist in comfortable quiet for a bit.
I watch her from the corner of my eye and she stares across the room, and for a few minutes neither of us says anything.
Then she says my name. “Cole.”
I look at her.
“In the cabin,” she says in a measured tone. “After. You said—” She stops. Tries again. “Were you going to mention that, or would you like me to pretend I didn’t hear it?”
I keep my eyes trained on her so she knows I’m telling her the truth. “I meant it, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I’m asking.”
“Then yes,” I tell her truthfully. “I love you, Tessa. I’ve loved you longer than tonight and I loved you when we ended five years ago.
Tonight I just—” The words are harder to say in the space of her living room than they were in the cabin with adrenaline still running hot. “Couldn’t not say it anymore.”
She looks at me across the couch with those blue eyes and her expression softens. But I also see the complication within. “I love you too,” she says softly. “Always have, always will.”
But what exactly do those words mean? Sitting here with her safe, warm and alive, it’s easy for me to see the future behind them.
The possibility of a true second chance, what we tried to build five years ago and can build correctly now.
We just have to come to an understanding of the consequences that occurred.
We’re on the other side of this story, and the danger is in the rearview mirror, and I think the obvious answer is that we both probably learned a valuable lesson.
The thought arrives fully formed and certain and I say it before I’ve examined whether I should. “I think we can actually do this now. Move forward the way we couldn’t before.” I pause, then let loose the real truth of my feelings. “Now that you’re clear of this kind of work.”
I watch her go still and I can tell that she disagrees so fundamentally with what I just said that she’s giving herself a second before she responds. “Once I’m what?” she says.
I recognize the battle in her eyes, the line being drawn, and it raises my hackles. I enunciate my words. “Now that you’re clear of this line of work. Now that you’ve survived what was very nearly your death, surely you know that’s the only logical choice.”
There really can’t be any other path forward.
She must give this up. I’ve built it in my head already—the version where she comes out the other side and understands, the way I understand, the way anyone who’s been through what she’s been through should understand, that some stories aren’t worth the cost.
“You thought I’d quit,” she murmurs flatly.
“Well, with you almost getting killed, I thought it might make you see things clearer,” I snap.
Heat flares in her eyes. “It only clarified that I’m damn good at what I do for a living.”
“Tessa—”
“Look at what I did.” She sits forward, placing the cup of tea on the coffee table.
And there she is—the Tessa I know, the one who walked into an arson conspiracy and murder without flinching, fully present and completely certain.
“Look at what we did. I followed a paper trail nobody else was following and I took down an arson ring that had been operating for years. I solved a murder that the Seattle PD was paid to ignore.” Her voice rises and she means every word of it.
I can hear that, and some part of me that isn’t afraid is actually proud of her for it.
“Erik Lanning died in that parking garage and tonight Gavin DelRey is in handcuffs. That matters.”
She’s so very right and I hate that to be true. “You were hanging from a hook,” I snarl, standing from the couch in fury. “Hanging from a fucking hook while being electrocuted.”
“I know that,” she retorts. “I’ve got the wounds to prove it.”
I can’t help but flinch at the reminder. “I heard you scream.” The words come out rough at the edges. “In those woods, I heard you and I couldn’t—” I stop. “Do you understand what that was like?”
“Yes,” she says quietly. “I think I do.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I don’t think you can possibly understand what the worst moment of my life was truly like.”
She stares at me, eyes wide and misted.
“Then how—” I shake my head. “How are you sitting here telling me you’re going to keep doing this?”
“Because it’s who I am.”
And there it is. The same answer. The same line drawn in the same place it has always been drawn between us, and I am so tired of that line. I am so tired of loving a woman who keeps walking toward the thing that might take her away from me and calling it purpose.
“You knew that when you—” she starts.
“I knew it,” I say, and I hear the edge in my own voice, but I don’t pull it back. “And I watched you walk out a service exit alone to meet a man who ran his own assistant down with a car. So forgive me if knowing it isn’t enough anymore.”
“That was a mistake. I know it was.”
“You say that now.”
“I mean it now.”
“You meant it before too.” I pace because I can’t sit still with this much pressure in my chest. “And then something came along that you couldn’t resist and you made a calculation and you walked out that door.”
She’s on her feet now too. “I won’t do that again. I’m telling you—”
“How many times do we have to have this conversation?” I hear my voice going flat and I know what that means and I can’t seem to stop it. “How many times do I have to stand here and tell you what it costs me and have you tell me it’s who you are?”
“How many times do I have to tell you that I need you to accept me as I am?” she fires back. “I have never asked you to stop being who you are. Not once.”
“That’s different.”
“Is it?”
I move to the window and back. The living room isn’t big enough for what I’m feeling and there’s nowhere to put it.
“You know what the difference is?” I say, spinning on her. “I would give it up for you. If you told me you were too worried about my job, I’d walk away in a heartbeat.”
“I know you would.” Her voice drops. “And I love you for it. But I would never ask you to give yourself up.”
I look at her across the room. For a moment—a very minute piece of time—I actually hear her.
She’s standing there in her robe with damp hair and bruised wrists and she’s looking at me so open in her face that it almost reaches me.
Almost gets through the fear and the image of her hooded and hanging from a hook.
I take a breath and step toward her.
And then I think about those woods. That scream. The eternity that Reid and Sully held me back while she was in that cabin being tortured.
And I can’t handle it.
“I just need you to care enough about us to consider it,” I say. “That’s all I’m asking.”
Her expression closes off and I know there’s no compromise tonight. “And I need you to care enough about me to accept who I am. That’s all I’ve ever asked.”
Stalemate.
“I can’t do this, Tessa.” I pick up my jacket from the chair, but I don’t put it on.
I stand there holding it and looking at her and she looks back at me.
The distance between us is only about eight feet and it might as well be the entire Cascade Mountain Range. “I can’t watch you almost die again.”
“And here we are once more,” she says, her voice watery. “An impasse.”
I stare at her, my eyes roaming her entire frame and soaking it in. This woman I have loved without particularly choosing to. This woman, who is going to walk back into the fire the first chance she gets, expects me to wait on the other side of it.
“I watched you hang from a hook in a cabin,” I say, “and I thought I was too late.” I let that sit for exactly one second. “And you’re standing here telling me it was worth it.”
I don’t wait for her response and instead, I walk out. The night air hits me on the porch and I stand there for a moment with my jacket still in my hand and the sound of her silence on the other side of that door.
I wait to feel like I did the right thing, but it doesn’t come. So I walk to my truck, get in and drive away.