Page 117 of The Exit Strategy

I’m staying.

In the small, unglamorous, dinner-at-seven sense of the word.

“Come sit on the porch with me.” I use the same tone I used when I told her to strip, and it has the desired effect.

But Junie wouldn’t be Junie without some of her fire melting through the haze.

“I’m wearing your clothes, Cole. Are you trying to get the gossips gossiping around here?”

“Gossip is only a negative thing when it’s untrue. Porch,” I say, lifting our coffees. “With me.”

The last thread of my sanity follows her out the door.

She sits on the top step instead of the rocking chairs. It’s a callback to our history. Maybe this is my chance to correct our future, so I sit on the step below her and watch the sky brighten the way it does in the first few days of summer. Everything’s blue and happy and hopeful.

The only sounds are of nature and the occasional slurping of coffee, but I don’t fill the silence because her brain is working a million miles an hour, and she’ll do it herself. When she’s ready.

“I meant what I said last night.” She didn’t take nearly as long as I thought she would.

“I know.”

“About not running anymore.”

“I understand.”

“And you just, what? Trust me?”

I nod, unsure of where she’s going.

“Because, just for the record, I don’t. I know myself, Cole. At some point, I’m going to want to run, to sabotage…this. And while I want to say it won’t happen, it will, and if we’re doing this.” She waves a hand in the minuscule space between our bodies. “Then when I do, I want you to—” She pauses to suck in a large mouthful of air, then allows her shoulders to droop. “I don’t know what I want you to do. I’m not good at this part.”

“When you’re ready to run, tell me.”

She glances down with a frown. “What?”

“When you want to run, tell me that’s what you’re doing. Don’t do it silently. Don’t do it like I did. Just—tell me, and then if you still want to run, we’ll figure the rest out.”

What I don’t say is that I’ll follow her. I know that about myself now. One taste of her will never be enough. I just don’t work without her. I probably never did.

Her eyes flicker with a million different thoughts that she’ll never say out loud.

Then her thumb presses against the engagement ring that has never felt so right. “That’s a high bar, Whittaker.”

“It’s really not. I just made the mistake so you don’t have to.”

She exhales through her nose, but my attention is stuck to her thumb as it pushes the diamond around her ring finger—it’s an automatic tell she probably doesn’t even notice.

“I’ll try.”

“Yeah?” This must be what hope feels like.

“Yeah. I’ll tell you.” She sips her coffee. “Just…for now, anyway.”

I don’t know what she means by for now, and I don’t ask because it sounds like something she’s testing out—asidebar to our conversation, an exit strategy if all hell breaks loose. And maybe that’s my fault. I haven’t given her much reason to trust me, and I know better than to poke at something she’s still working through in her head.

So we sit.

Side by side with the pulse of the ocean on one side of me, and the heartbeat of love on my other.