Page 40 of The Grave Between Us
Cole laughed quietly beside him, leaning his shoulder into Noah’s as they perched on the edge of Katie’s bathtub. When she was done with her makeup, Katie asked Cole to help with her hair, and they gossiped about what Pria and Evelyn were going to be wearing that night and whether Trevor was coming to the dance. Noah glowered as Katie and Cole found each other’s gazes in the mirror and giggled. They loved to gang up on him. Luckily neither had a poker face when it came to teasing him, it seemed, and they usually broke into laughs almost before he realized they were poking fun at him.
He’d play indignant all evening long, though, if it meant Cole laughed like that, or put that smile on Katie’s face. She tipped her head back and closed her eyes as Cole brushed her hair and gathered it between his fingers. Where had Cole learned to French braid? He’d never asked. Noah had been a master of the ponytail back when Katie was young enough to let him do her hair. Once she learned Noah’s skills ended at scrunchies, she’d done her own hair. Until Cole and his French braids.
Cole’s gaze found his eyes in Katie’s mirror. Noah smiled, blew his lover a silent kiss. Cole blew him a kiss back.
It was almost—almost—enough to distract Noah from the dark smudges beneath Cole’s eyes or the ragged skin circling his fingernails.
Cole was there and not. Near and far. Holding Noah’s gaze and holding his hand and holding up his end of the conversation. He hadn’t left Noah’s side since they’d gotten home from the hospital. He whispered “I love you” in Noah’s ear and wrapped his arms around Noah’s waist and held him every night until Noah fell asleep. And every morning the bags beneath his eyes were larger, the skin around his nails picked raw and bleeding.
After last year and what happened to Katie, Noah had had his share of nightmares, both waking and overnight. He’d wrestled with his own memories, relived the washes of terror and horror and certainty that this was it. He’d needed time after that to find his way. Time, but not space, and he’d clung to Cole like Cole was his security blanket.
The way Cole looked at him this week, maybe Cole was holding on to him the same way.
It was the waiting that had been the worst, last year. Waiting. Watching. Watching Katie. Her every breath, every moment, suspended in time. Watching the tears slide down her cheek in slow motion as the rope creaked. Those twenty minutes had felt like ten lifetimes to him.
Noah didn’t remember anything from his and Jacob’s shooting or the crash. He’d traveled through time, it seemed. One moment he and Jacob were driving, and the next, he woke up to Cole’s tear-soaked face and gut-wrenching sobs. He’d been unconscious for almost three days, Cole had said.
What had three days felt like to Cole? The relativity of anguish, the time dilation of unknown nightmares.
He didn’t know if he should give Cole space or rush in, arms open. Uncertainty stilled him, made him hesitate to open his mouth and ask. Cole was near and far at the same time, present with his touch and distant with his gaze, looking somewhere far beyond their living room wall, the few times Noah caught him staring at the middle distance.
He’d felt like this before: frozen across the room from Lilly, not knowing how to overcome the glacial divide between them. Not knowing what to say or how to say it, and she’d spun farther and farther into her own orbit until they were distant planets circling Katie. Eventually, resentment had been the only gravity holding them together.
Was this the first step down a road that led tothe end? Was this how it began? He couldn’t remember how it had started with Lilly. The fluttering in his chest had shriveled, and then one day curdled and died, and he hadn’t felt alive again until his first date with Cole.
Were he and Cole swinging apart? Beginning the arc that would take them away from the closeness they had now? He never wanted to know what life was like without Cole at his side, in his life in such an immutable way. But how did he stop Cole from drifting if he’d already started? How did he arrest the slide? Inertia had been too powerful a force to stand against in the past. He was afraid of getting bulldozed if he stood in the way.
He needed to do something for Cole. Some gesture, some sign, some statement that he was all in. Something that was bigger than his fumbling words, greater than the sum of his fears. Something that felt like forever.
After they dropped Katie off at the dance, Cole kissed his hand and told him he had a surprise for him, then drove Noah out to one of his favorite hole-in-the-wall dives. It was a Cajun place, the owner transplanted from the bayou, a tiny sliver of a counter-service restaurant tucked in the middle of a strip mall. The lighting was dim, the floor was sticky with sweet tea, and the spice was so strong the air burned the inside of Noah’s sinuses. He loved it, and he loved Cole for taking him there so unexpectedly. Maybe they weren’t swinging apart.
He and Cole shared hush puppies and étouffée and a sweet tea. Cole sat next to him in a cramped booth against the wall, one hand laced through Noah’s as they ate. His head was on a swivel for almost the entire meal, his eyes bouncing from Noah to the front door to the kitchen entrance and then back to Noah. Darting again to the front door whenever someone walked in. Flicking to the back whenever a server walked out from there.
Katie texted and asked to be picked up early so they could hang out, just the three of them, for the rest of the night. As they left the restaurant, Cole searched the shadows and the puddles of darkness beyond the streetlights, his hand a vice around Noah’s, nostrils flared, eyes cold and hard as he scanned the parking lot. He didn’t exhale until he was back in the driver’s seat beside Noah.
“Hey.” Noah reached across the center dash and squeezed Cole’s knee. “I’m with you. I’m safe.”
Cole flinched. Noah frowned—
Cole turned to him, his smile big and bright, and leaned in to kiss him softly. Threaded his fingers through the short strands of Noah’s hair. “I’m going to keep you safe,” Cole whispered against his lips. “I promise.”
“I know,” he whispered back. “You do.”
Cole’s gaze slid away. He cleared his throat as he started the SUV.
Noah had no idea what to say. Cole was near and far.
They picked Katie up and made it home uneventfully. Noah let Cole precede them into the house, let him flick on the lights and check the corners, search the upstairs and the bedrooms. Katie washed her face and changed into her sweats, and then she tromped back downstairs and herded them onto the couch while she made milkshakes and pulled up Netflix.
Noah fell asleep before the end of the movie, nestled on Cole’s chest, the steady beat of Cole’s heart pulsing against his cheek.
The next thing he was aware of was Cole’s arms around him and a feeling of weightlessness, and then the soft embrace of their bed. He heard Cole’s exhale, felt his deep breaths. Had Cole carried him upstairs? Sure, Cole was stronger than he looked, but carrying Noah from the bathroom to the bed in the heat of passion was different than lugging him all the way up the stairs. Noah nuzzled into the blankets, pushed his cheek against the pillow that smelled like Cole. He was awake, but only barely, clinging to consciousness until Cole sank onto the mattress beside him. He wanted to fall asleep with his lover’s heartbeat beneath his cheek again. Wanted Cole’s arms around him when he cratered back into sleep.
But Cole was turning away. Noah reached blindly behind him, grabbing onto Cole’s jeans and the back of his knee. “Stay with me,” he whispered. “Please.”
His heart was in his throat as the seconds dragged, but then Cole climbed into their bed and curled around Noah, burying his face in the back of Noah’s neck. His breath trembled, and his lips were wet when he kissed Noah’s skin. “I love you,” Cole breathed. His voice was so soft Noah barely heard it, barely felt the short hairs Cole was nestled against shift. “I love you so much, Noah.”
Chapter Twelve
