“For saying it the way I did.”
“You mean for saying I don’t know Vanessa wouldn’t hurt me.”
His jaw shifts. “Yes.”
I look past him into the cottage. “Do you take it back?”
“No.”
Of course he doesn’t. That should make me angrier than it does.
“I didn’t think so.”
“I’m sorry for the hit,” he says. “Not for keeping her in the circle.”
The circle — such a clean word for something so ugly. I step back from the door, and after half a second, he understands the invitation and comes in. He leaves the door open behind him. I notice that too. He keeps giving me ways out, even when his whole body looks built to block every exit from danger.
“I don’t want her to be part of this,” I say.
“I know.”
“She’s been there for me.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t. You know pieces. You know facts. You know timelines and texts and whatever Sloane and Rafi are digging up.” I press my fingers to my forehead. “You don’t know what it was like to be twenty-three and have everyone looking at me like I might be lying, careless, or unstable. Vanessa didn’t do that. She never did that.”
Cole says nothing. His silence is terrible.
“I loved her for that,” I whisper.
His expression changes. I don’t know why that is the sentence that hurts most, but it is. Maybe becauselovedis tooclose to past tense. Maybe because some part of me has already stepped back from the friendship to look at it from a distance.
Cole’s phone buzzes from the living room. Neither of us moves. Then it buzzes again.
His eyes shift over my shoulder toward the sound, then back to me. “I need to show you something.”
My stomach drops. “No.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want one more thing.”
“I know.”
But he waits. He does not go get the phone. He does not force the moment into my hands. He waits like myyesmatters even when danger does not care about permission. I breathe once … then again.
“Show me.”
He leaves and returns with the phone. His thumb moves over the screen before he turns it toward me, and I realize he has probably already filtered out whatever he can. Protecting me even from the shape of the blow.
The message is from Vanessa.
Is he making you ignore me?
The words are small on the screen. They do not feel small. I read them once. Twice. A third time, even though they do not change.
“She’s scared,” I say.
