“Okay.” She nodded. “I’m pressing charges, before you ask. I lay there half the night getting angry all over again. My own sister.” She shook her head. “And Aunt Ping would disown me if I didn’t.”
“Good.” He reached for a clean cup. “Sit down. I’ll make you a coffee.” He glanced toward the window. “It’s snowing.”
“Really?” She crossed to the window and stood beside him, looking out at the yard gone white and quiet. “I love snow.”
“Sure, you do. You don’t have to go out in it.”
She put her hands on her hips. “I go out in it plenty.”
“Right. All the way down those stairs and across the parking lot to the diner door.” He shook his head with a smirk. “Brutal.”
She laughed. “It can be a very long walk in the cold. Though I suppose I could knock on the back door and Owen would let me in.”
Cole handed her the cup and leaned back against the counter, arms folded.
“So.” He kept his voice even. “When are you heading back to Colorado?”
She looked at her cup. “Soon, I suppose.”
He nodded. He didn’t want her to go. But asking her to stay felt like standing at the edge of somethinghe’d already fallen off once before, and he didn’t trust his footing. He pushed off the counter and reached for his coat.
“I’ll go start the truck and clear the snow. Come out when you’re ready.”
“Alright.” She looked at him and he looked at her and neither of them said what was sitting in the room with them.
He opened the door and stepped out onto the porch and let the cold hit him. He stood there a moment and blew out a long breath that clouded and disappeared. Then he grabbed the broom leaning against the house, swept the steps clear, and walked to the truck.
He got the engine running, turned on the wipers, and brushed snow from the hood with slow, deliberate strokes. The yard was quiet except for the soft sound of it still falling. He loved her. He knew it the same way he knew everything else that was true and solid in his life, without having to think about it. And he was going to watch her drive away anyway, because he was too damn scared to say so.
****
Aftyn stood at the window and watched him move around the truck in the snow and felt the tear on her cheek before she realized she was crying.
She didn’t want to leave. She didn’t want any part of leaving. But she knew he’d never ask her to stay, not after what Callie had put him through, and she couldn’t blame him for that. She just wished it didn’t hurt quite so much.
She wasn’t Callie. She loved this town, these people, this life she’d stumbled into. But most of allshe loved him, and it had happened fast and it had happened completely and it was never supposed to. No strings, they’d said. Just fun.
She pressed her hand flat against the cold glass.
“I wish I’d never met you, Cole Harrison,” she said quietly to the window. “But I will never stop loving you. And since you don’t want that, I’ll go. And I’ll take this with me.”
She finished her coffee, set the cup in the sink, and went to get dressed. When she came back to the kitchen she had her case in her hand and the weight of it felt like something final. God, this was killing her.
The door opened and Cole came in, snow on the brim of his hat and the shoulders of his coat.
“Getting worse out there. We should head out.”
She pulled her coat on, and he picked up her case and held the door. The wind hit her the moment she stepped onto the porch.
“Holy hell.”
“It’s picking up. Come on.” He took her hand and they went down the steps to the truck.
He got her door, loaded her case, and came around to his side. The engine turned over and he pulled down the drive toward the road.
“Can you get through this alright?”
“Four-wheel drive. As long as it doesn’t ice over we’re fine.” He glanced at her. “Don’t worry about it.”
