Page 56 of The Exit Strategy
The wind starts first.
Not a gradual build, but a switch flipped, zero to tree-bending in under a minute. Rain follows in horizontal sheets that hit the glass like someone’s power washing the building.
I’m in the conference room when the lights flicker, hold, then flicker again just before everything goes dark.
My laptop screen is the only light in the room. And my battery’s at 2 percent. Excellent.
Cole appears in the doorway, and I know damn well he’sbeen waiting for this kind of emergency because emergencies are where he thrives—the bossiness, the control. It would be sexy if he were allowed to be sexy.
He’s not.
“Clubhouse,” he says. One word. He’s already in fix-it mode, securing windows and moving around me as though I’m an afterthought. It shouldn’t hurt after all this time, but it does.
His rain jacket leaves puddles in his wake. There’s a flashlight in his hand, and his boots appear to have survived three wars and a Home Depot clearance sale.
“Residents are meeting there.” He moves onto the next window, pulling down shutters I hadn’t noticed before. “Transformer blew. Stanley’s doing headcounts, and Nana Mae’s coordinating kitchen rations.”
The low timbre of his voice, the authority…he makes it freaking impossible to think of him as an ogre.
“I’ll grab my things and head over?—”
“You’re staying here.” The low, rolling growl of his words infects my limbs with his order.
Hovering above my chair, I blink. Slowly, intentionally, to get my shit together. “Excuse me?”
“Your apartment stairs aren’t safe in this wind. I’ve been meaning to update the railing, but—” He pulls a second flashlight from…somewhere. The man is a walking hardware store. He sets it on the table between us. “I’m not having you break your neck crossing the driveway or falling down the stairs. The generator is in the garage. I have to get the clubhouse running first, then I’ll come back and get ours online.”
“Ours,” I repeat. Of course the possessive pronoun is the thing my brain latches onto.
My thighs quiver because I’mstillhovering, so I dropinto my chair and reach for the flashlight, but he’s already gone. The door slams, and I jump, then I’m left alone in his dark house.
The flashlight flickers to life, catching on the fucking diamond I still can’t remove.
How pissed will Nana Mae be if I have someone cut it off?
Lightning sears the sky, as if warning me not to do it.
But at some point, this damn thing has to come off.
Right?
Ugh! Don’t be stupid, Juniper. The ring may be real, but the sentiment is not. Cole would never allow it.
Frustrated with the direction of my thoughts, I exit the conference room in search of candles. Nana Mae probably has them in the kitchen, so I head there first and find them in the third junk drawer down.
Matches are in the blue ceramic jar by the stove, and I try not to focus on how comfortable I am here as I light the candles.
The room shifts from dark to amber, and suddenly Cole’s kitchen feels less like the office I pretend it is and more like what it should be, a home. The candlelight softens the hard edges. The granite looks warm. The photos on the fridge that I’ve actively avoided all month are suddenly golden and intimate, and I really need to stop staring at them.
There’s one of Cole and Nolan at a Red Sox game—they’re younger and carefree here. It makes me believe it’s after my dad ran off but before my mom died and they inherited the burden of ensuring I made it through high school.
Beside that is one of all four guys. It must be Hudson’s law school graduation because Hudson is the only person Iknow who would wear a three-piece suit under his cap and gown.
I lift it with the tip of my finger, and the Palmetto magnet falls to the floor. I slam my palm to the door to keep all the photos from fluttering to the ground, and my gaze snags on…myself.
Something lodges in my throat.
I’m sitting on my porch in Boston, my knees pulled up to my chest, and I’m staring at something off camera, but it doesn’t hide the sadness, the sheer devastation in my expression.
