10. Chapter 10
Mara
Not gradually. One minute it's overcast, the next it's that deep, ugly purple-gray that means business. The kind of sky that makes you feel like the weather is personally annoyed with you.
I'm on the porch with a mug of coffee when Cole appears beside me, already scanning the tree line like he's running threat assessments on the clouds.
"Storm's moving faster than they said." He sets down a box of supplies without looking at me. "We have maybe two hours."
"Two hours until what?"
"Until we can't leave."
He says it the way he says everything. Like being trapped is just another line item.
He moves fast after that. I watch him pull the pre-cut, pre-labeled boards out to finish the last three windows, boarding a farmhouse in October like the coast is coming for it, when the worst this storm will really do is take the power and the road.
The line of his forearm where the sleeve has come up over the elbow. The flex of it when he lifts a board. I have been making myself not notice his hands since I got here, and the not-noticing has accomplished nothing.
Owen trails him with a flashlight, clicking it on and off.
"Is the storm gonna be big?" Owen asks.
"Medium." Cole doesn't break stride.
"Bigger than a dog?"
"Bigger than a dog."
Owen clicks the flashlight twice, processing. "Bigger than our car?"
"Owen." Cole sets down the board he's carrying. Crouches. Looks him square in the eye. "We're going to be fine. Okay? That's why we're getting ready now."
Owen studies him a long moment, then nods. "Okay."
Just like that. An eight-year-old deciding to trust takes about two seconds. Cole waits for the small nod before he stands back up. I don't know why that lodges in me the way it does.
He finds me in the kitchen twenty minutes later and hands me a sheet. Actual handwriting. Three columns.
"Water jugs by the back door, test the flashlights, check we've got enough candles," he says.
I stare at the page. "You could ask. Instead of issuing assignments."
His eyebrows lift, just barely. Not annoyance. Surprise. Like it had not occurred to him.
"Mara." A beat. "Would you mind checking the candles?"
It's stilted. Barely a question. But it's an attempt.
"Sure," I say. "I can do that."
He looks almost relieved. He'd never admit it.
I find the water jugs by the back door, already full, lined up like soldiers.
I test the flashlights one by one in the dim mudroom light.
All four work. I think about the pantry shelf upstairs, the gummy bears with the green ones gone, the headlamp, the cards still in the wrapper, and I don't need to check it again to know it's still exactly where Cole left it.
Owen decides the storm prep is a scavenger hunt. I don't correct him. He carries flashlights to me one by one, announces the battery status like a tiny field reporter. I test each one while he watches with the focus of a surgeon.
"Do you think the sky gets scared of itself?" he asks, perched on the counter.
"That's a really good question."
"I think maybe it does. The thunder is just the sky being loud because it's nervous." He clicks a flashlight at the ceiling. "Dad always comes when I'm scared. So, it's okay."
My throat feels tight for no reason I want to examine. Dad always comes. Like it's the most reliable law of the universe. Like gravity. Like sunrise.
Cole comes in through the mudroom with rain already starting to spot his shoulders. He goes to the cabinet, fills a glass at the sink, and walks it over to me where I'm bent over the inventory sheet.
"You haven't had water in two hours," he says.
I didn't know he was counting.
He noticed. That's the thing. He was boarding windows and running perimeter checks and managing Owen and he noticed I hadn't had water. I don't know what to do with a man who notices things like that and says nothing about noticing them.
I reach for the glass. His hand is still around it. My fingers close over his thumb instead of the rim, and for a second neither of us adjusts. He doesn't pull back. I don't either.
His thumb is warm under mine. I can feel his pulse through it, steady and a little too fast for someone who's just been carrying boards. I should let go. I should take the glass and step back and write the next item on the list.
I count, without meaning to. One. Two. Three.
Then his thumb shifts. Not away. Across. One slow drag against the side of my finger before he releases the glass into my hand and steps back.
"Drink it," he says. Voice low.
He turns toward the door before I can answer. I look down at the glass. My hand is shaking enough to ripple the surface.
I drink it.
By the time the wind picks up for real, the windows are covered, the pantry's logged, and Owen is wrapped in a blanket on the couch with his comics and a bowl of popcorn. Cole's idea, announced as efficient use of the stovetop before we lose power. Practical. Sure.
Owen calls it a party. Cole doesn't correct him.
The first real gust hits and the boards over the windows groan. Owen's head pops up.
"That was a big one."
"That was a medium one," Cole says, walking through with towels for the back door. "The big ones come later."
"Cool." Owen settles back in. Cool. He calls it cool, and so it is.
I sit down on the far end of the couch and Owen at once scoots over until he's pressed against my hip, comic open across both our laps.
"Mara, listen to this part. This part is the best part."
He starts reading aloud. Slowly, sounding out interdimensional like he's defusing it, looking up at me after each tough one to check he got it right. I nod. He grins and keeps going.
Cole comes back through the room and stops. I don't look up, but I can feel him stop. The shift in the air, the pause in his footsteps. He's watching us. Owen reading. Me listening. His son curled against my side like he's been doing it his whole life.
Cole crosses behind the couch. Slow. He stops directly behind me. And then his hand settles on the back of the couch. Just behind my neck. Not on me. Near me. His knuckles are maybe an inch from my skin and I can feel the warmth of them in the small hairs at my nape.
Owen reads on, oblivious. I keep my eyes on the page.
Cole's fingertip moves.
Since the kitchen, and the window, and in all that time he has built a private language out of almost. The inch he won't close. The hand that hovers. A man who has decided something and keeps deciding it again, in front of his son, where neither of us can do anything about it.
Then his finger comes down. One finger. Index. It comes off the couch and touches the back of my neck, right at the top of my spine, where my hair parts.
I don't move. I cannot move.
I think about the green gummy bears. The water glass. A man who has been this careful about everything, now putting one fingertip on the back of my neck while his son reads about superheroes three inches away.
This is not an accident. None of it has been an accident.
He traces, slow, down the line of my spine.
Just one vertebra at a time. The pad of his finger barely there, barely pressure, and that's worse, that's so much worse than if he'd just put his whole hand on me.
He's making me feel every inch of it. Every notch.
Down to the collar of my shirt and then under it, one knuckle, no further, before he stops.
I have stopped breathing.
Owen turns the page. "This is the part where the bad guy comes," he announces. "Dad, this is the part."
"I see it, buddy," Cole says. Voice perfectly even. Like his hand isn't doing what it's doing. Like he isn't ruining me from the back of the couch.
His finger stays where it is. The knuckle just inside my collar. Not moving now. Just resting there. A weight I can feel in my throat and lower, much lower, between my hips where I am suddenly and humiliatingly aware of my own heartbeat.
I will my breathing to stay level. In. Out.
Owen is reading and I am listening and I am not going to give us away over a single fingertip.
But my whole spine has gone liquid. He has reduced me to one inch of skin under one knuckle and I would let him do anything, right now, in this room, if Owen weren't close by with a comic book.
Cole's hand lifts. Back to the couch. Knuckles an inch from my neck again. Like the touch never happened. Like he didn't just brand me with a fingertip in front of his son.
The wind howls. Something heavy hits the side of the house. Owen jumps a little and Cole's other hand comes down on his shoulder, instant, steady. "Just the wind, bud."
"I know." Owen settles back in against me. "I wasn't even scared."
I am shaking. Quietly. From the inside.
"Keep reading," I manage. "I want to know what the bad guy does."
Owen reads. Cole's hand stays on the couch behind my neck. He does not move it. He just leaves it there, the heat of him a constant against my hairline, the message clear. I am here. I am not done. We're going to finish this.
The lights flicker. Once. A long, slow dim, and then back.
Owen pauses. Looks up at his dad. "Is it gonna go out?"
"Probably," Cole says.
"Okay." Owen finds his place again.
The lights flicker a second time. Longer.
The house holds its breath. From the garage, somewhere under the wind, I hear the generator cough and catch and hum.
Cole's hand does not move. His fingers curl, very slightly, against the back of the couch.
Not toward me. Just a closing. A grip. The way a man holds onto something to keep from reaching for something else.
The wind comes down on the house like a fist. Every board pulls tight.
Owen reads on, sounding out catastrophe, and Cole's knuckles stay an inch from my neck, and I sit very still inside my body and understand, with a clarity that feels almost like relief: whatever this has been, whatever we have been pretending not to do, I can feel it the way I can feel the storm.
Not the thing itself yet, just the pressure of it, the air going wrong in a way that means something is coming whether you're ready or not.
I am not ready. I don't think that's going to matter.
The lights flicker a third time. Cole's hand opens against the couch behind me.
And the power goes out.
In the dark his hand is still there. Still on the couch behind my neck. He didn't move it when the lights went. I don't move either.
Owen breathes beside me, already most of the way asleep, and outside the storm does what storms do, and in the dark Cole Grayson keeps his hand exactly where it is.
I let him.