22. Avoidance
Avoidance
By Tuesday, Cole had convinced himself she was just busy, even though he knew better.
He stared at the text on his phone for the tenth time that morning between jobsite walkthroughs and vendor calls.
COLE: Inspector said your place was one of the cleanest installs he’s seen in a while. You should be proud.
Nothing.
On Wednesday, he tried again.
COLE: How’s Emmie adjusting to school? Tell her that roof can handle anything she throws at it.
Still nothing. No three dots. No quick “thanks.” No little laugh emoji that she used when she didn’t know what else to say.
By Thursday night, he gave up on clever.
COLE: Just checking in. You okay?
The message hung there, blue and unanswered, until his phone screen dimmed and went black.
He told himself not to take it personally.
Jenna had a soft opening to plan. A teenager to wrangle.
A life to hold together. He’d seen what her days looked like, lists on top of lists, decisions layered over grief.
Maybe she’d meant it when she’d said goodbye after the inspection.
Maybe that was her line: the job is done; so we are too.
But his heart pushed back against the lie.
By Friday, the silence felt like someone pressing a thumb into a bruise.
He tried to focus on the new project, an older guy’s house across town that needed everything from roof to foundation shoring.
He walked the property with his crew, pointed out rotten fascia, and made notes about gutter lines and soffit vents.
His mouth said all the right things. His head kept drifting back to a woman who still hadn’t texted him back.
Around four, he found himself at a stoplight with his blinker on for his street, and turned the other way instead.
He told himself it was practical. He could just pop over and check one more time that the signage guy hadn’t missed anything, that the back exit still latched cleanly, that the city hadn’t magically changed code in the last four days.
But he wasn’t going to the bakery.
His truck rolled past the Blue Cypress parking lot and rolled into her driveway.
He sat in the truck for a few minutes waiting for the engine to cool and his heart to slow down.
This was a bad idea.
Showing up uninvited at the house of a woman who hadn’t answered a single text all week was a bad idea.
He got out anyway.
He ran a hand over the back of his neck and walked up to her porch, the boards familiar under his boots now. The swing moved just a little in the light breeze.
He could turn around. He could go meet the guys like he’d promised. He could pretend this week hadn’t happened. Pretend he hadn’t thought about her every night since she’d slipped out of his bed.
Instead, he stood there staring at her front door, trying to work up the courage to knock.
He was trying to formulate some reason for showing up like this when the door swung open.
* * *
Emmie’s duffel bag hit the entryway floor with a dull thump.
“Text me when you get there,” Jenna said, leaning against the doorframe.
Emmie rolled her eyes in the way only a teenager could. “It’s twenty minutes away.”
“Then I expect a text in twenty-one minutes.”
Emmie just launched herself at Jenna for a quick hug that was mostly elbows and hair and threw the duffel bag over her shoulder.
“You sure you’ll be okay?” Jenna asked, quieter.
“It’s forty-eight hours,” Emmie said. “You’re the one who needs a break. Maybe read a book that doesn’t involve permits or get a hobby that doesn’t involve a checklist.”
“Rude,” Jenna muttered, but she smiled.
Emmie pulled the door open and blinked. “Um . . . someone’s here for you,” she murmured. Cole Bennett stood on the porch, caught off guard in a way that matched her own shock. Jenna’s stomach dropped so fast she thought she might actually be sick.
“Hey, Stranger,” he said with a slow, careful smile almost, but not quite, finding its way onto his face.
Emmie’s gaze bounced between them, picking up on the crackling tension instantly. “I will just let you two . . . do whatever this is,” she said, slipping past Cole with a tight little grin.
“Go,” Jenna said, fighting to keep her voice even.
The door stayed open behind her as she stepped onto the porch, a small crease forming between her brows.
“The guys and I are headed to karaoke at The Bridge,” Cole said, shoving his hands into his pockets like he didn’t know what else to do with them. “It’s bound to be absolutely terrible. Are you interested?”
She should have said yes. She should have said no.
Instead, something bitter and sharp rose up before she could stop it.
“Cole, why are you here?” she asked, arms folding without her permission. “Didn’t you get what you wanted?”
He blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You got to sleep with me,” she said, the words tasting like metal on her tongue. “Congrats. Mission accomplished. Isn’t that what this was?”
He stared at her like she’d slapped him. “Fuck, Jenna. Is that what you think?”
“That’s what you’ve been buttering me up for all summer, isn’t it?” The heat in her chest had nowhere to go; it spilled out as accusation. “Bike rides and beach mornings and stupid twenty-dollar champagne. You got your night, right?”
His jaw tightened. “If that’s all I wanted, I could’ve done that weeks ago,” he said, voice low now, anger threading under the control. “Back when you were practically begging me to come inside every time it rained. You know that’s not all this is.”
“If you’d done it then,” she shot back, “you would’ve had to face me the next day. Waiting until the end gave you a clean exit strategy.”
He let out a sharp, humorless breath. “That’s rich,” he said. “Classic projection. I’m here, Jenna. I’m on your porch. You’re the one who left. You’re the one ignoring my texts. Which one of us is trying to disappear?”
“Projection?” She barked out a short, disbelieving laugh. “What are you now, a therapist?”
“No,” he said, and now the hurt showed, thin and raw around the edges of his words. “I’m not. And it’s a shame, because you desperately need one. I can make some local recommendations if you’d like, since you’ve been gone so long.”
The words landed like a punch.
For half a second, everything went too bright. The porch. The street. The way he was looking at her, equal parts regret and frustration and something that scared her more than both.
She could have taken a breath. Could have stayed. Could have said the truth: I’m terrified. I like you too much. I am one more loss away from crumbling.
Instead, she did what she’d gotten so good at. She retreated.
Jenna turned on her heel, stepped back into the house, and shut the door harder than she meant to. The sound jolted through the frame. From outside, she heard his voice.
“Jenna, wait—”
She clicked the deadbolt and pressed her back to the wood, chest heaving. Silence closed in, dense and unmoving.
“What did you just do?” she whispered to the empty hallway.
She replayed it, line by line, every word she’d flung like a weapon because it was easier to be angry than afraid. Easier to act like he was any other man than to admit he’d climbed under her skin in a way she didn’t know how to undo.
The worst part was how much of what he’d said was simply true.
He was the one on her porch. He was the one who’d texted all week. He was the one who kept stepping toward her even when she gave him nothing but mixed signals and brick walls.
And she did need a therapist. God, did she need one.
She slid down the door until she sat on the floor, knees pulled up, hands pressing into her hair.
The shame stung almost as sharply as the grief.
* * *
The Bridge was already loud when Cole walked in, dim lighting, a slightly offbeat sound system, someone on stage two beats behind the track murdering an old Garth Brooks song.
Normally, he loved the noise, the laughing, the way his crew turned everything into a competition, including who could butcher a ballad the loudest.
Tonight, he felt like he was moving underwater.
Travis spotted him from a high-top by the bar and raised two fingers for the bartender. “Boss!” he called. “You’re late. We were about to assume you’d been kidnapped by building inspectors.”
Cole tried to pull something resembling a smile onto his face as he slid onto the stool. “Got held up.”
Travis narrowed his eyes. “Held up by?”
“A door.”
“Uh-huh.” Travis angled his body toward him, studying his face. “You look like somebody ran over your dog.”
Cole rubbed a hand along his jaw, her words replaying in his head, whether he wanted them to or not. He’d thought he could handle whatever came from showing up at her door.
He’d been wrong.
Cole stared at the condensation sliding down his beer bottle before finally saying, “I went by Jenna’s.”
Travis’s brows climbed. “Oh?”
“I invited her out. To karaoke. With us.” He let out a breath that landed somewhere between a laugh and defeat. “Thought it’d be low-pressure. Group setting. Terrible singing as a distraction.”
“And?”
“She slammed a door in my face.”
“You lost me,” Travis replied.
“I slept with her. Last weekend. Twenty-dollar champagne.” The confession tumbled out of him before he could stop it. The words felt wrong in his mouth, even if they were technically true.
Travis blinked. “Okay. Was it . . . bad?”
“It was the most exhilarating, passionate night of my life,” Cole said, dead serious. “That’s the problem.”
“I’m failing to see how that’s a problem,” Travis said. “Sounds like a win.”
“She thinks that’s all I ever wanted,” Cole murmured, fingers tightening around the sweating bottle. “Sex. One night. Box checked.”
“If that was true,” Travis said, “you probably could’ve pulled that off weeks ago.”
“Yeah,” Cole muttered. “That’s basically what I told her.”
Travis stared at him. “Oh no. You did not say that out loud.”
“And then,” Cole added, jaw tight, “I told her she needed a therapist.”
Travis dropped his forehead into his hand. “Shit, boss.”
“I know.”
They sat there for a moment, the noise of the bar filling the space where neither of them spoke. Someone on stage gave a valiant but hopeless attempt at the chorus of “Friends in Low Places,” their voice cracking on the high notes.
Travis lifted his head again, his tone losing all the usual teasing. “Listen, if you love her, you can’t give up that easily.”
Cole gave a dry, humorless laugh. “Right. Because a former client taking out a restraining order for stalking would probably be great for business. It’s done, bro.”
“The difference between stalking and not giving up is whether she wants you around,” Travis said. “You gotta figure out which side of that line she’s on.”
“I think she just made it pretty clear,” Cole said, lifting a hand to flag the bartender. “We’ll have shots.”
Travis sighed. “Shots? Really?”
“Tequila,” Cole said. “Put them on my tab.”
“Sure thing,” the bartender replied.
The first shot burned in a way that felt almost good.
The second blurred the edges of the fight as it replayed in his head.
As the night wore on, the bar filled up, the music got louder, and the guys kept sliding fresh drinks his way. He wasn’t counting anymore: beer, shots, something blue that Travis insisted was “tradition.” It all blended together.
By the time he checked his phone again, it felt heavy and slippery in his hand, the screen too bright as he squinted at Jenna’s name.
He shouldn’t text her.
He texted her.
His thumbs fumbled over the letters, the words coming out crooked but honest.
COLE: m sorry abt 2day. shdnt said that.
COLE: not just a night 4 me
COLE: im in lv w you more than im think allowed to be
He stared at the garbled confession until the letters swam.
Travis came back from the bathroom, took one look at the phone, and gently slid it out of his hand.
“Yeah,” Travis said. “We’re done with that.”
* * *
Jenna lay in the dark, staring at the hazy pattern of streetlight filtering across her ceiling. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Cole’s face on the porch, hurt, angry, so confused by her words that it made her want to crawl out of her own skin.
She flipped her pillow. Checked the clock—1:58 a.m.
When her phone buzzed on the nightstand, she flinched like her nerves had been waiting for something to go wrong.
Cole. The preview showed almost nothing. Just a blur of letters. She swiped it open.
COLE: m sorry abt 2day. shdnt said that.
COLE: not just a night 4 me
COLE: im in lv w you more than im think allowed to be
Her heart lurched.
He was drunk. The typos, the timing, the way the words tumbled over each other without his usual careful restraint. She could practically hear the slur in them.
This was the last thing she needed.
It was also the only thing she’d wanted to know since she’d slammed the door.
For a long minute, she just stared at the messages, thumb hovering over the keyboard, mind blank and loud at the same time.
A ripple of tension ran through her. She remembered Cole mentioning The Bridge earlier.
The guys. Karaoke. Travis was making a fool of himself on stage.
Her brain snagged on a memory of a group text from a few weeks back, Travis’s number sitting there attached to a photo of the almost-finished ceiling.
She scrolled until she found it, pulse pounding.
Her fingers moved before she could talk herself out of it.
JENNA: Hey, are you with Cole?
The dots popped up almost immediately.
TRAVIS: I only left him for a minute.
TRAVIS: He texted you, didn’t he?
She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
JENNA: Yep.
JENNA: Take his keys. Get him home.
TRAVIS: Already done. And yes.
JENNA: Aspirin and Pedialyte.
TRAVIS: Will do.
TRAVIS: Hey, he really cares for you.
She stared at that last line until the screen went hazy.
Three dots flickered in the corner of Travis’s window, waiting. She typed, erased, typed again.
I care about him too.
Her thumb hovered over send.
No. Absolutely not.
Delete.
I’m scared.
The words sat there for three full seconds before shame crawled up her throat.
She couldn’t send that either.
Tell him I’m sorry. Tell him I’m not good at this.
Not good at what? Grief? Love? Staying?
She erased that one too.
None of it felt safe. Finally, she settled on the smallest truth she could manage.
JENNA: Thanks for taking care of him.
She hit send before she could change her mind and set the phone face down on the nightstand, the glow bleeding weakly onto the wall.
In the heavy quiet of her room, with Emmie gone for the weekend and the house too still, Jenna lay awake and listened to her own heartbeat hammering in her ears.
Avoidance had always kept her safe. Tonight, it just made her feel hollow.