11. A Storm with a Grudge #2
He works the corroded breaker loose, and his elbow draws back into my breast. My inhale is loud, and he freezes. My nipples could cut glass, and when his swallow is an audible gulp, I know he can feel it, grazing his skin like a needle into a vein.
His bicep flexes, forcing my arm to press more tightly into his side, which also presses my chest more firmly into him. My flashlight is now aimed at absolutely nothing useful because my arm has given up on professionalism entirely.
“Got it.” God, his words are hypnotically thick.
They coat my skin like a long lick from his tongue.
The breaker clicks. Nothing happens because the generator isn’t online yet, but something in the air shifts.
It has nothing to do with electricity and everything to do with the fact that he turned his head and now I can feel his hot breath against my collarbone.
Don’t look up, Juniper. Please, do not look up.
I look up just as his gaze drops to my lips—a trick of the light. To my chest—shadows dancing surely. To my eyes—I drop the flashlight and flee.
“Fuck.”
The word is a long, drawn-out groan and plea for…something as I retreat, but I don’t stop until I’m safely back in the kitchen, common ground, even footing.
My fantasies have gotten me into trouble before, so I no longer fuck around with fairy tales.
He enters the kitchen right after me, opens his mouth, snaps it shut, then heads back out into the rain, across the driveway, and into the garage.
Cole storms back into the house an hour later, but I haven’t moved. I just stand in the candlelight, staring into the storm because my flashlight died and I didn’t notice.
“It’s flooded,” he says, wiping his hands on the towel I gave him earlier. “Water got into the intake. I drained it, but it needs to dry out before I can restart it. It’ll take a couple of hours.”
The wind chooses that moment to rattle the windows, even sheltered behind the wooden shutters.
“So we’re stuck?”
“We’re not stuck. We’re waiting.”
“We’re stuck, Cole.”
“Waiting implies a plan. Stuck implies helplessness. I have a plan.”
“Your plan is to wait.”
“Exactly.”
Let it go, Junie.
A rational, emotionally regulated adult would let this go, would light another candle, pick up a book, and ride out the storm like a person who hasn’t been slow-cooking in unresolved tension for weeks.
Unfortunately for the both of us, I’m not that adult. I never have been. And something about the dark, and the rain, and the way he said “ours” earlier has loosened the fight in my chest that I’ve been keeping in a chokehold.
Too many pictures and memories and half-truths lubricate my inhibitions.
“You know what your problem is?”
“Enlighten me.” He pours himself a bourbon but doesn’t offer me one. No, to him I’m still the kid sister of his best friend. Classic fucking Cole. He’ll make me a grilled cheese unprompted but won’t pour me a drink.
So I take his. He watches. Studies me as I bring the glass to my lips. Heat flares in his features as I remove the glass and lick my bottom lip. That I know I’m not imagining, so I do it again just to see his irises dance like the flicker of the candles.
“You think fixing things is the same as dealing with them.” I take another sip. It burns in a way that feels productive. “You fixed the breaker, and Marley’s porchlight, and every goddamn thing in this community that even wiggles funny. Hell, you probably even fixed my stairs, but you won’t—”
I take another sip. Anchoring myself to the burn so I don’t say something I can’t take back.
“Won’t.” He leans into my space. I’m still standing too close. “What?”
“You won’t handle the actual problem.”
There’s two feet of space between him and the island I’m pressed against, but as he takes a step toward me, that space evaporates.
He hitches at the waist, bringing our eyes in line with each other. “Which is?”
“You.” The word lands between us. I watch it hit him—the recognition that flickers behind his eyes, the way his arms snap out to cage me in on either side. But he doesn’t fire back. He simply…stares and clenches his jaw so hard I can hear his molars grinding.
“You hide behind the repairs and clipboard and the grumpy mayor routine, and it works. It does. On everyone else. But it doesn’t work on me.
I stood in your office and saw you light up when speaking about your work for the first time since I’ve been here.
That was the Cole I recognized. Then I had the audacity to ask one question about one photo, and you shut down so quickly, I got whiplash. ”
Real pain flashes in his expression. “Junie—”
“Tell me that wasn’t the real you up there. What am I supposed to do, Cole, huh? Stand here and pretend I don’t see it? That I don’t see you?”
My voice cracks on the last word—a despicable weakness. I hate that he can hear the fracture. I hate that I’m standing here, fighting with him while wearing his grandmother’s ring, forcing him into honesty when I can’t be honest with myself about why any of this matters so goddamn much.
“You see what I want you to see,” he says. Low. Rough. The voice he uses when he’s one sentence from walking away or breaking open.
“That’s the problem.” The words rip from my chest with years’ worth of pain. “You decide what I get to know, how I get to feel. What about what I decide? Huh? I’m sick of being managed by a man who can’t even—”