CHAPTER 27 #2
Dark jeans, blue sweater just a shade darker than her eyes, hair down. Her left arm is in a soft sling for the shoulder. She’s standing with her right hand wrapped around the strap of her bag, eyes immediately locking with mine.
I cross the lobby and stop in front of her. “Hi,” she says.
“Hi,” I say.
“Can we—” She glances around at the handful of agents milling about but all watching us from the corner of their eyes. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”
“My apartment,” I say, leading her to the elevator rather than the stairs, mainly just to get eyes off us.
We ride up in silence and there’s a charge in the air. It speaks to everything we both need to say but are saving for the right venue.
Tessa sets her bag on the entry table and we end up in the living room. She came to me, yet I feel like I need to be the one to speak first. I open my mouth to spill all the truths I realized in Malik’s office, but she turns to me, and the look on her face strangles my words in my throat.
“I was wrong,” she says, and while it’s a surprise, it’s also… not. I think I know by the mere virtue of her being here, she has been doing some deep thinking too.
“Tessa,” I say, reaching for her, but she steps back.
“Let me finish,” she says. “Please.”
My hand drops and I wait.
She looks at me with those blue eyes that I have never once been able to look away from when they’re aimed at me.
“I’ve been sitting with what you said. What we both said, but specifically what you said last. About the cabin.
About thinking you were too late.” Her voice is steady.
“I’ve been turning that over and over. The last few days I’ve received incredible job offers and accolades, people wanting me in ways I didn’t think were possible, and yet none of it seems important.
” She takes a deep breath. “I can’t think about any of that because I keep coming back to the same thing. ”
“Which is?” I prompt gently.
“You matter more,” she breathes out, as if she was releasing the weight of the world from her shoulders.
“That’s it. That’s what I keep landing on.
I’ve been so focused on defending who I am that I lost sight of the fact that I don’t know if I’m truly the same person.
I’ve changed, and I think for the better. ”
“You don’t need to change—”
She holds up a hand. “I’m not going to give up investigative journalism.
But the dangerous stuff… the part where I’m alone in a parking lot with a man who runs people down with cars, I can give that up.
I want to give that up, because you asked me to.
If it’s that important to you, and if that’s what makes you happy, and safe, and secure in life, I can do that.
I want to do that for you, because you’re more important to me than any story I could ever write. ”
My heart issues one loud thump, almost a calling out, and I’m stunned by the clarity in her eyes and the heartfelt truth in her words.
I look at her standing there with her arm in a sling and her absolute honesty.
I think about what Malik said not five minutes ago and about every version of this conversation I’ve been having with myself since I walked off her porch last week.
“No,” I say.
She blinks. “What?”
“No,” I say again. I cross the room and stop in front of her, close enough to see the confusion in her face. “I’m not taking that from you.”
“Cole—”
“I made choices based on the wrong assumption,” I cut in over her.
“I decided who you were going to be after that. It wasn’t fair.
” I hold her gaze. “The dangerous stories are part of what you do. They’re part of why what you do matters.
Erik Lanning was murdered and DelRey is in jail and that happened because you walked toward something most people would walk away from.
” I skim my fingers across her jaw. “I don’t want you to stop being that person because if I’m honest, that’s the woman I fell in love with. ”
Her expression is complicated. A mixture of confusion with epiphany.
“Then what—” She stops, eyebrows drawing inward. “What does this look like? For us?”
“It looks like we figure this out together,” I say, pulling her into my arms gently, careful not to jostle her shoulder. “You be you and I accept you as you are. Maybe we have some rules… to make me feel better.”
“Like what?” she asks.
“Like you tell me before you walk into danger. You keep your lifeline intact.” I pause. “And I work on the part where I’m so afraid of losing you that I forget to let you live.”
Understanding moves through her face. Slow and certain, an agreement settling into place.
“That’s it?” she says softly.
“That’s it.”
“That seems—” She exhales. “That seems very reasonable.”
“I have my moments,” I say.
She looks up at me and the corners of her mouth move. Then she reaches with her good arm and flattens her hand against my jaw and holds it there.
“I love you,” she says. “I should have said it back in the cabin when you said it. I wanted to. I just—”
“I know,” I say.
“I love you,” she says again, like she wants to be sure I heard it. “Not despite the fear you cause me and not despite the way we fight. Because of all of it. Because you’re the person who came through that door.”
I cover her hand with mine where it rests against my jaw. “I love you and I’m going to keep saying it until it stops feeling like I almost didn’t get to say it.”
Tessa nuzzles her cheek against my chest and I rest my chin on top of her head. We stand there in my living room, two people who have found their way back to each other and are taking a moment to feel the solid ground under their feet.
Outside the window Seattle goes about its business, indifferent as ever.
But inside it’s just us. Just her and me, finally, without reservation.