Page 77 of The Murder Between Us
“Of course I can.”
“And…” Noah took a slow, deep breath. “I want to make this work.” He took Cole’s hand, pressed it to his chest, over his heart. “This.Us. Whatever this is between us. I don’t want to hide from it anymore. I don’t want to be afraid of it. I almost lost…” The haunted, terrified sheen passed over Noah’s eyes again before he blinked fast and squeezed Cole’s hand. “I almost lost everything. Katie… And I almost lost the chance to build a life with you. I don’t want to spend another moment without you, if you still want me, after what I said and did.”
Cole pulled Noah into his arms. Noah folded into him, almost collapsing, his injured arms between them. Cole kissed his cheek, his temple, his hair. “Of course I want you.”
“I know I can be difficult,” Noah said. “I want to apologize in advance for that.” Cole chuckled. “And I’m sorry for saying we were only fuck buddies. We’ve always been more than that. Even from the first night in Vegas.”
“I know.” Cole kissed him again, ran his hands over Noah’s back. “I fell hard for you, Noah. Right from the beginning.”
Noah pulled back, just enough to look Cole in the eyes. “You saved me,” he whispered. “Yousavedme.”
Cole kissed him on the lips, in front of the nurses’ station, the doctors and orderlies in the halls, in front of Katie’s window and Lilly and Bray inside her room. In front ofeveryone.
Noah kissed him back. And smiled.
Bray and Lilly slipped out of Katie’s room when Noah and Cole came back, Bray saying something about taking Lilly to the cafeteria and putting food in her. Noah clambered onto Katie’s bed, taking her in his arms and holding her, fitting back into the depression he’d already made in the mattress and pillow behind his daughter. Cole dragged one of the visitor chairs to the bedside, facing Noah with Katie between them. Noah held out his hand. Cole took the bandaged fingers in his own. Kissed the tips, and then set their hands down on Katie’s blankets.
Exhaustion seemed to tear through them both simultaneously, adrenaline leaching out of their last nerves now that they were together again, and safe, and finally able to be still. Cole’s eyelids were boulders, dropping hard until he jerked himself awake again and again. Noah, too, seemed to try to stay awake, but it was a losing battle, and he fell asleep with his cheek pillowed on Katie’s head and his hand resting on Cole’s upturned palm.
Cole lay his head down beside their hands. Right before he fell asleep, he felt a smaller, unbandaged hand lay across the back of his head.Katie. He smiled.
* * *
He woke before the sun,his back, his legs, his shoulders screaming. He bit his lip as he untwisted himself, standing and rolling his shoulders, trying to unkink muscles that had seized overnight. Across Katie’s hospital room, Lilly slept on the couch, curled up under a hospital blanket. Noah and Katie were in the bed, Noah still holding her in his protective embrace. They both were snoring.
He ducked out to the hall and tried to walk off the stiffness, checking his phone as he rolled his neck. It wasn’t even six yet, and he had three missed calls from his boss. Not good. He called him directly, skipping the voicemail.
“Kennedy, thank God,” his boss said, instead of hello. “How soon can you get out to Boston? There’s an emergency hearing on the Ripper case, and they need you there ASAP. Today.”
“Sir, I…” He turned back toward Katie’s room, down the long hallway painted in bright, cheerful pediatric colors. “I’m not finished here yet.”
“They need you in Boston. They could lose the hearing without your testimony, and that could set the Ripper up on a path to getting out. You need to be there.”
Damn it. He squeezed his eyes shut. He didn’t want to go. Fuck, he did not want to leave, ever. But he’d known he would have to. Wasn’t that why he had been looking at flights? At long distance? At coming back to Des Moines as often as he could?
He just hadn’t thought long distance would start so soon, so suddenly.
“Yeah, I can get there today,” he croaked. “I’ll book a flight as soon as we hang up.”
“Excellent. Then get back down here. We’ve got things piling up, and I need my best.”
“Sir, when I get back, we need to talk.”
“Shit. What about?”
“I need to pull way back, sir. I can’t keep this up. This pace, this much travel. I need to get my feet underneath me, have more stability. We have to start farming out these travel gigs to some of the others. Snyder and Ramos and Dominguez.”
His boss sighed, a long, crackling exhale. “We’ll talk, Kennedy. If cases need the best, there’s only one agent I can send, you know? Like Des Moines. They asked for my best, and look what happened. You caught the guy. Actually, you caught them both.”
“It wasn’t all me, sir.”
“It wasn’t not you, either.” A pause. “Get to Boston. Then come home. We’ll talk.” The line cut.
Cole paced for another five minutes before calling to book his flight. Nine thirty out of Des Moines, connecting in Chicago. He had to get back to his hotel, check out, get to the airport. He had to say goodbye to Noah and to Katie.
They were still asleep when he tiptoed back in. Lilly was gone, the couch empty, her purse still on the floor. Cole stood at Katie’s bedside and watched them both sleep.
Each of their inhales, each of their exhales made his heart shatter, then reform larger, fuller than a moment before… and then shatter again. He could watch them sleep for hours. Keep watch over them all day. And longer. Maybe for the rest of his life.
