Page 44 of The Exit Strategy

“It doesn’t have legs.”

“It doesn’t need legs to be a dog.”

The kid frowns, then glances up at a smiling Frank before facing off with Cole again. “Yeah, it does.”

Cole holds up the balloon and draws a smiley face on it. “It’s a dog. Take it or leave it.”

The little boy only deliberates for half a second before he’s clutching a bright red hotdog-shaped balloon to his chest and shaking it at Frank.

Cole watches it all with an expression that’s 90 percent irritation and 10 percent something he’d rather die than admit.

This is who he became after he left me behind. A man who guards everything good about himself like a secret that will destroy the world if it ever came to light.

And I hate—genuinely, actively hate—how attractive he is. It’s not just the Henley that appears to be painted on or the forearms that truly make me question my sanity. It’s the competence. It’s watching someone be exactly who they’re supposed to be and do it so well that everyone around them is a little better for it.

Everyone except me.

I never fit into his equation.

And now I’m stuck wearing a diamond ring with a sexy vixen named Lola shooting laser beams at my backside.

Cole lifts his head and catches me staring.

I stick my tongue out at him because I am a mature, professional woman with an advanced degree who doesn’t know how to handle the emotional minefield exploding in my chest.

The corner of his mouth lifts. Just the right side. Just a fraction. It’s the same look he’d give me when he’d catch me recording him for my vlog when I was a teenager. Quiet. Just for me.

And another crack crumbles in my wall, but he’s already striding toward me. His long legs eat up the distance before I can choose where to run.

“He got that smile from his grandfather, you know,”Nana Mae says, scaring the shit out of me. “Arthur only ever used it on me.”

“Nana. Junie.” Cole’s greeting is choppy at best.

My mouth opens and closes, but no sound comes out. My entire body is on fire, and my head is muddled with too many questions, emotions, and irrational thoughts that I do the only thing I can think of.

I lift my left hand, palm facing me, and thrust the ring into his line of vision.

His crooked smile freezes into place, his gaze darting from the ring to my face and back again.

“What. The. Fuck. Is. That?” I’ve never heard Cole sound angrier.

“Now, Cole. It just happened.” Nana Mae attempts to step between us, but Cole grips my hand like a vise and drags me behind a tree—as if that will keep the prying eyes of The Haven off us.

“Explain. Now.”

A choked, wet sound gurgles in my throat.

“You see.” Nana Mae stands to the side, worrying her hands in front of herself. “Paula, she just… And then Lola, well, she’s one pregnancy scare away from trapping you. And. Well.”

Cole’s dark gaze never leaves mine. “Well, what?”

“I—It’s stuck. I can’t get it off.” Panic is settling between my shoulder blades, and it hurts to breathe. This ring is cutting off circulation not only to my finger but also my brain.

Cole turns my hand over in his while his thumb and forefinger work the band stuck to my finger.

“It’s just water weight,” Nana Mae says. “From the heat and all that ramen she’s hoarding in her apartment. A few homemade meals and it’ll slip right off.”

Is that supposed to make me feel better?