I look back toward High Tide Pavilion, toward the bright boardwalk and the ordinary people moving through the day with ordinary worries. Then I look at Cole, this man who was a stranger yesterday morning and now stands close enough that when a family squeezes past us on the narrow walkway, his hand hovers near the small of my back without touching. My body notices the almost-touch more than it should.
I know this is temporary. Forty-eight hours. A safety measure. A professional arrangement.
But when Cole steps closer to let the family pass, when his heat brushes the air beside me and my body forgets to be afraid for three whole seconds, the word temporary loses its edges. And that scares me in a completely different way.
Chapter 11
Cole
Patterns matter. I say it to Kara because it is true. I keep thinking it after we leave the marina because it is inconvenient.
Kara walks beside me through the boardwalk crowd, red hair bright in the sun, sunglasses hiding her eyes again. She looks calmer than she did this morning, but calm is not the same as safe. Calm is a temporary state. Safety is a structure, and hers has more cracks than I like.
Somebody sabotaged her in culinary school. Nobody was caught. Now somebody breaks into her home, touches private things, steals her knife, and sends her a photo of it withMiss Youwritten beside it like a lover’s note from hell.
That is a pattern. Maybe not a legal one yet. But I’ve stayed alive by respecting the shape of things before other people were ready to name them.
Kara thinks the therapist is part of the old story. Maybe he is. Maybe he’s nothing more than a man who helped a scared young woman rebuild her footing after someone tried to knock it out from under her.
I still don’t like him. That is not professional. I accept that and keep walking.
“Do you want to head back?” I ask.
She glances toward me. “Do you?”
“No.”
That surprises her. “Really?”
“You’re better out here than you were inside.”
“I am?”
“Yes.”
She looks down the boardwalk, considering that. “I feel like I’m waiting for the world to jump out from behind something.”
“That may take a while. The world is large.”
Kara smiles and I love seeing her reaction.
“Was that supposed to be comforting?”
“No.”
“Good. Because it was terrible.”
I almost smile.
We pass Sandbar & Sips on the way back toward the parking lot. The dockside tiki bar is already open even though it isn’t yet noon, ceiling fans turning lazily beneath a thatched roof while a bartender stacks limes behind the counter. A chalkboard advertises rum slushies, blackened grouper bites, and something called a Category Four Margarita, which sounds like a liability issue pretending to be a beverage.
“Is that place good?” Kara asks.
“For drinks or information?”
Her sunglasses turn toward me. “That is not usually how restaurants are reviewed.”
“It’s where half the island talks too much.”
