His gaze comes to me. That was not what I meant to ask. Or maybe it was.
“You,” he says, “are the reason for the system.”
Oh.
Heat moves through me quick. I feel myself blushing as I turn back toward the water before my face gives me away.
For a while, neither of us speaks. The silence should feel awkward, but it doesn’t. Cole is good at silence. Maybe becausehe doesn’t seem to need to fill every empty space with proof of himself.
Eventually, I hear my own voice say, “Dr. Vale helped me years ago when something happened in culinary school.”
“What happened?”
I keep my eyes on the marina. “I was doing well. Really well. Rave reviews from instructors. Good placements. Competitions. I thought I knew where my life was going.”
“And then?”
“Then things started going wrong.”
The words come out simpler than the memories feel.
“Ingredients missing from my station. Salt swapped for sugar once before a practical. Oven temperature changed during a pastry exam. Anonymous complaints that I was cheating or stealing recipes. Little things at first. Then bigger ones. Enough that people started looking at me differently.”
Cole says nothing. This somehow makes it easier to continue.
“No one ever proved anything. I started doubting myself because everyone else did. Maybe I’d forgotten. Maybe I’d mislabeled something. Maybe I was careless. Maybe I was too stressed.” I glance down at my hands, curled around the railing. “Dr. Vale helped me after that. Not because he solved it. Because he helped me stop thinking I was crazy for knowing something was wrong even when I couldn’t prove it.”
The bell on the mast keeps ringing softly.
Cole’s voice is quiet when he answers. “Who was close to you then?”
The question lands strangely.
“My classmates. Instructors. Vanessa.”
“Vanessa was there?”
“Yes. She was in the program too.” I look over at him. “She was the only one who believed me.”
Cole’s expression doesn’t change, but something behind his eyes does.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
“Cole.”
“I’m listening.”
“That’s not nothing.”
“No,” he says. “It’s not. But I don’t have enough to make it something.”
“You think it could be connected?” I ask.
“I think patterns matter.”
A breeze moves over us, lifting my hair against my cheek. Patterns. That word has followed me since he said it in the kitchen.The place isn’t the problem. The pattern is.
