10. Chapter 10
Kara
Cole opens the vehicle door for me again, but this time I catch the mechanics of it.
He is not being old-fashioned. He is stepping out first, looking left, then right, checking the sidewalk, the parked cars, the tourists drifting past with iced coffees and shopping bags.
Only after that does he angle his body slightly and give me room to pass.
I should feel ridiculous needing that. Instead, I feel watched over. There’s a difference, and I am starting to understand it.
“We don’t have to go straight back,” he says.
I look up at him, surprised. “Is that you saying my therapist was right?”
“No.”
“Because it sounded suspiciously like my therapist was right.”
“It’s me saying isolated people are easier to pressure.”
“Ah. Tactical fresh air.”
His mouth moves, almost a smile. “If that helps.”
“It weirdly does.”
We walk toward the boardwalk because everyone else seems to be walking toward the boardwalk, and for once, joining the current feels easier than fighting it.
Sunbreak Harbor is louder here than on the quiet stretch near The Sandpiper.
A man with a guitar sits beneath a striped umbrella playing something beachy and soft while a toddler drops coins into his open case one by one with great solemnity.
The whole town looks like summer decided to build itself a body. I want to enjoy it. For a few minutes, I do.
Cole stays close without making a production of it.
Not touching or crowding me with his body, although I feel a twinge inside me that almost wishes he would.
He’s a constant presence at my side. We pass surf shops, a bookstore with a display of vacation reads, and a kiosk selling sun hats I immediately know would make my head look like a decorative mushroom.
Ahead, the boardwalk opens into a small public green where a stage sits beneath a curved roof. Workers are stringing lights and checking speakers while a banner flutters in the breeze.
SUMMER NIGHTS CONCERT SERIES — HIGH TIDE PAVILION
“Concerts?” I ask.
“Every Friday night.”
“Big crowds?”
“In summer? Yes.”
“Do you hate crowds?”
“I respect crowds.”
“That sounds like bodyguard language for hate.”
“It’s bodyguard language for crowds hide a lot.”
My stomach gives a small, unpleasant tug, but Cole’s tone stays even. He isn’t trying to scare me. He is simply telling the truth as he sees it.
That might be one of the things I like about him. Dangerous thought.
I steer myself away from it by watching a group of teenagers near the stage dance badly while a sound tech plays ten seconds of music, stops, adjusts something, then plays it again. A woman nearby films them, laughing.
Then her phone tilts slightly toward me but not directly. It’s maybe not intentional. Still, Cole notices before I fully do.
His body shifts by a fraction, placing himself between me and the woman’s camera without making it obvious. It is so smooth I might have missed it if I were not hyperaware of him in every possible way.
“What did you see?” I ask quietly.
“Phone.”
“Taking a picture of me?”
“Maybe. Maybe filming the stage.”
We keep walking, but the world feels slightly less easy now. Not ruined. Just adjusted. I am still the same woman who posed for a sweet teenager at breakfast. Still the same woman who knows public recognition is part of the life I built. But now every phone feels like a tiny open door.
I hate that, and I hate how quickly fear takes ordinary things and sharpens them.
At the end of the boardwalk, the view opens toward the marina. Bluefin Marina, according to the large painted sign near the entrance. Regatta Row stretches beyond it, all gleaming railings, fluttering flags, sailboats, fishing charters, and sleek yachts with names like Second Wind and Bad Decision.
“That place looks expensive,” I say.
“It is.”
“You sound unimpressed.”
“Boats are useful. Floating status symbols are less useful.”
“Spoken like a man who catches his own dinner with string and stubbornness.”
“Line.”
“What?”
“It’s line, not string.”
I give him my most serious nod. “Thank you for clarifying. The dignity of the fish depends on it.”
This time he does smile at my joke. He’s getting better at it.
We stop near the railing where the breeze comes off the water stronger. The marina smells like salt, fuel, sunscreen, and sun-warmed rope. A bell rings against a mast somewhere, steady and metallic. People move along the docks carrying coolers and canvas bags, their laughter drifting up in pieces.
Cole watches everything. I watch him watching everything.
“Do you ever turn it off?” I ask.
“No.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It’s quieter than you think.”
I lean my elbows on the railing, careful not to look directly at the people with phones. “That makes no sense.”
“It’s just sorting. Normal. Not normal. Worth watching. Ignore. Move on.”
“And where am I in that system?”
His gaze comes to me. That was not what I meant to ask. Or maybe it was.
“You,” he says, “are the reason for the system.”
Oh.
Heat moves through me quick. I feel myself blushing as I turn back toward the water before my face gives me away.
For a while, neither of us speaks. The silence should feel awkward, but it doesn’t. Cole is good at silence. Maybe because he doesn’t seem to need to fill every empty space with proof of himself.
Eventually, I hear my own voice say, “Dr. Vale helped me years ago when something happened in culinary school.”
“What happened?”
I keep my eyes on the marina. “I was doing well. Really well. Rave reviews from instructors. Good placements. Competitions. I thought I knew where my life was going.”
“And then?”
“Then things started going wrong.”
The words come out simpler than the memories feel.
“Ingredients missing from my station. Salt swapped for sugar once before a practical. Oven temperature changed during a pastry exam. Anonymous complaints that I was cheating or stealing recipes. Little things at first. Then bigger ones. Enough that people started looking at me differently.”
Cole says nothing. This somehow makes it easier to continue.
“No one ever proved anything. I started doubting myself because everyone else did. Maybe I’d forgotten.
Maybe I’d mislabeled something. Maybe I was careless.
Maybe I was too stressed.” I glance down at my hands, curled around the railing.
“Dr. Vale helped me after that. Not because he solved it. Because he helped me stop thinking I was crazy for knowing something was wrong even when I couldn’t prove it. ”
The bell on the mast keeps ringing softly.
Cole’s voice is quiet when he answers. “Who was close to you then?”
The question lands strangely.
“My classmates. Instructors. Vanessa.”
“Vanessa was there?”
“Yes. She was in the program too.” I look over at him. “She was the only one who believed me.”
Cole’s expression doesn’t change, but something behind his eyes does.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
“Cole.”
“I’m listening.”
“That’s not nothing.”
“No,” he says. “It’s not. But I don’t have enough to make it something.”
“You think it could be connected?” I ask.
“I think patterns matter.”
A breeze moves over us, lifting my hair against my cheek. Patterns. That word has followed me since he said it in the kitchen. The place isn’t the problem. The pattern is.
I look back toward High Tide Pavilion, toward the bright boardwalk and the ordinary people moving through the day with ordinary worries.
Then I look at Cole, this man who was a stranger yesterday morning and now stands close enough that when a family squeezes past us on the narrow walkway, his hand hovers near the small of my back without touching.
My body notices the almost-touch more than it should.
I know this is temporary. Forty-eight hours. A safety measure. A professional arrangement.
But when Cole steps closer to let the family pass, when his heat brushes the air beside me and my body forgets to be afraid for three whole seconds, the word temporary loses its edges. And that scares me in a completely different way.