20. Chapter 20 The Break and the Choice
Cole
She goes still. Not the good kind of still. Not the way she goes quiet when she's thinking or when she's letting herself feel something. This is the other kind. The kind where I can actually watch her shut down, layer by layer, like a door closing slowly and then clicking locked.
"Cole."
Just my name. Nothing is attached to it yet. But I hear what's coming in the way she says it.
"Don't," I say.
"I haven't said anything."
"You don't have to."
She slides off the prep counter, and I let her because I'm not going to cage her. She puts two feet of space between us and crosses her arms over her belly, and I stay where I am and wait.
"That's not a proposal," she says finally. "That's a rescue mission."
"It's not."
"Cole." Her voice is careful and controlled. She's putting herself back together in real time, and I hate watching it. "You are a good man. You are maybe the best man I've ever known, and I mean that. But you don't have to do this."
"I know I don't have to."
"You feel responsible."
"Suzanne."
"You feel responsible, and you're trying to fix it the only way you know how, and I understand that. I do, but I am not a fire you need to put out."
The words land harder than she probably means them to.
I drag a hand through my hair and breathe out slowly. "You think I'm asking because I feel sorry for you."
She doesn't answer, which is an answer.
"You think this is charity." I push off the counter. "You think I've been here every day, every night, losing sleep over you, because I feel guilty."
"I think you're a protector," she says. "I think that's who you are down to your bones, and right now I am the most obvious thing in the room that needs protecting, and you can't help yourself."
"That's not what this is."
"How do you know?"
"Because I've never asked anyone to marry me before.
" The words come out rough. "Because I've spent five years telling myself I wasn't built for this, and then you showed up and I couldn't remember why I believed that.
Because when I think about you leaving Whiskey Bend, I can't breathe.
" I stop and make myself slow down. "That's not guilt, Suzanne. That's not charity. That's you."
Her eyes are bright. She's holding it together by sheer stubbornness, and I know her well enough now to know that means she's close to breaking.
"I come with a lot," she says quietly.
"I know what you come with."
"A baby that isn't yours. A man who wants to destroy me. A coffee shop that someone just tried to blow up." Her voice cracks on the last word. "I will ruin your life."
"You're already in it." I cross the space between us and stop close enough to touch her, but don't. "You've been in it since you walked out that back door and nearly knocked me over. My life already has you in it, and it's better. It's better, and I'm not letting go of that because you're scared."
A tear breaks loose. She wipes it fast, angry at herself for it.
"You deserve someone without all this," she says.
"I don't want someone without all this. I want you."
She squeezes her eyes shut.
For a second, I think she's going to lean in. I think she's going to let herself have it. Her chin drops, and her shoulders soften just slightly, and my chest aches with how much I want to pull her in.
Then she straightens. Chin up. Eyes wet but clear. That practiced composure she wears like armor.
"I need some time," she says. "I need to think."
"Okay."
"Don't do that."
"Do what?"
"Be understanding about it. It's harder when you're understanding."
I almost smile. Almost. "Go home, Suzanne."
She gathers her bag from the hook by the door. She doesn't look at me again, and I think that's intentional. If she looks at me, she'll stay. And she's decided she needs to go, and I'm not going to take that from her.
The door opens to her apartment and then clicks closed. Then she's gone.
Suzanne
The apartment is dark. I don't turn on a light.
I sit on the edge of the bed, press both hands flat against my stomach, and breathe. In. Out. The way I've practiced since Whiskey Bend, since before. The reset I built for myself when everything else was out of my control.
I ran through the logic the whole way up the stairs.
It still holds. Cole is a good man running on adrenaline and instinct, and I am a very convenient emergency.
He doesn't want a wife and someone else's baby and a politician's fixer circling his town.
He wants to fix the problem in front of him. That's who he is. That's what he does.
It holds.
It holds, and I'm still sitting here in the dark feeling like I made the worst decision of my life.
I lie back on top of the covers and stare at the ceiling. My body is tired. My brain won't stop. The apartment is quiet in a way that feels different from before Cole, like the silence has weight to it now.
My phone is on the nightstand. Cole's name is right there in my recents.
I picked it up. Stare at it.
Put it back down.
I'll figure it out in the morning. Sleep first. Think clearly. Don't make a decision at midnight when you're still shaking and stupid with wanting him.
I close my eyes.
The smell hits me before anything else. Faint at first, like something left on a burner downstairs. Then thicker.
My eyes open.
Smoke. The alarm screams.
Cole
I lock up the shop the way she showed me. Check the cameras on my phone. Check the new locks on the back door twice.
Then I drive to the station, because I'm not sleeping anyway, and being useful is the only thing that ever settles me.
I pull into the lot and sit in the truck for a minute. Phone in my hand. Her name is right there. One tap. I open the contact. I look at it. Thumb hovering. Then I set the phone face down on the seat.
She asked for time. That means I give it to her, even when every instinct I have is screaming to call, to check, to make sure she's okay.
There's a difference between giving someone space and giving them a choice.
She needs the choice. She needs to know I'll be here when she comes back around and that I won't be standing over her while she figures it out.
She needs to choose this. If I push her, I'm no better than the man she's running from.
I grab the phone and go inside.
The station is quiet. Two guys on the night shift are playing cards at the table. I pour bad coffee, sit with my phone, stare at her name in my contacts, and don't call her.
I'll give her the space.
I hate every second of it.
An hour passes. Maybe two. I keep thinking about what she said. You feel responsible. Like, I don't know my own mind. Like I've confused wanting her with wanting to fix her.
And then, underneath that, the thought I keep circling back to.
She might leave.
Not just emotionally. Physically. She could pack up the apartment tonight, load what fits in her car, and be on the highway before sunrise.
Whiskey Bend was supposed to be temporary.
She said that herself, in the beginning.
A place to land until she figured out the next move.
Nothing is stopping her from deciding that Whiskey Bend has gotten too complicated and somewhere else is safer.
I let myself sit with that. The version of tomorrow where she's gone. It settles in my chest like something heavy and cold.
The card game wraps up. Someone starts snoring in the bunk room. I move to the bay and sit on the running board of the truck and just breathe.
She's scared. She's been hurt by a man who used love as leverage, and now I've handed her a proposal in a dark kitchen an hour after she fell apart, and of course, she ran.
Of course she did. That doesn't mean it's over.
That doesn't mean she's gone. There's a difference between needing time and walking away for good, and I know her well enough to know the difference.
I just have to wait.
The radio crackles.
I'm on my feet before the words finish.
"Structure fire at Butter & Bean. Possible occupant inside."
Her address. Her apartment. I'm already moving.