Without moving from behind the wheel, he studied her, furrows in his forehead. “You mean that.”
“Of course I do.”
He gave a little shrug. “Then maybe I’ll go to the bank right now. Set up an account. I didn’t want you to have to sit there and wait.”
“Feel free.” Erin smiled, hopped out and walked toward the house, wishing he had wanted her there, waiting for him.
* * *
BEHIND THE WHEEL, unsupervised, Cole would have liked to feel pure triumph, the way he had when he was seventeen and finally able to drive on his own for the first time. Then, he’d felt like the king of the road. Totally cool. Girls would turn their heads, take him seriously. The guys he hung out with would, too.
Increasingly, he was discovering that nothing was as simple anymore. Maybe he would’ve already known that if he hadn’t spent the last ten years in cold storage. Blink of the eye, you wake up to find yourself in the future. Except coming from cold storage, presumably you’d be unchanged, and that wasn’t true for Cole. The shock of the arrest, the greater shock of the conviction. Figuring out how to defend himself in prison, to acquire allies even as he learned never to trust anyone at all. Hopelessness, mixed with the stubbornness that kept him confined those extra years because he still refused to say “I did it, and I’m sorry” to a parole board.
Now, there was Erin. Plus the debt he owed her, along with the disturbing realization that he did trust her. She might hurt herself but never him, and not because she’d made him into some kind of project. If he’d ever believed that, he no longer did.
It did feel good to open the checking and savings accounts. The banker who helped him didn’t look at him askance once.
When he got back, he rang Erin’s doorbell and handed over the keys. She smiled, said, “Hope it wasn’t a hassle,” and closed the door without inviting him to dinner.
He ate alone that evening, uneasiness heavy in his stomach. There’d been something off with her today. And just now? She’d said the right things, her lips had curved, but her eyes had been blank.
Tonight, he thought. She hadn’t gone out in a while, but she would tonight. Cole wanted to stop her again, but what good would that do? He wouldn’t always be here to protect her from herself.
But he wouldn’t sleep tonight until she was home, safe.
* * *
ERIN LINGERED OVER her coffee in the morning until she felt certain Cole would have left to work at the Zatlokas’. She pushed herself to her feet, feeling as slow and old as Nanna must have in her latter years.
Well, she wasn’t going back to bed, which meant she had to do something useful. She needed to paint the ceilings upstairs, but it made her dizzy even to think about that, so she’d do the walls in one of the extra bedrooms instead. She just had to get her supplies and the right can of paint from the garage.
She opened the front door, started across the porch…and saw Cole standing at the bottom of the steps. His feet were planted apart, his arms were crossed and his expression was both formidable and furious.
Erin froze.
His eyebrows climbed as he surveyed her. “You look like something the cat dragged in,” he said scathingly.
Part of her was startled to hear such an old-fashioned insult coming from him. The rest of her… She peeked down at herself, as much to hide her flushed cheeks as anything. Paint-spattered jeans and shirt. Ragged, also paint-smeared canvas tennis shoes.
She shrugged. “Seems appropriate.”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“You heard me leave,” she blurted.
“And come home,” Cole bit off. “Two hours later.”
He made it sound like a sin. And maybe tempting fate the way she did was wrong.
Suddenly shaky, she stumbled to a seat on the top step. “You didn’t try to stop me.”
“I can’t stop you forever.”
Because he wouldn’t be here. She was the one who should’ve been mad. What was with him, pretending to be scared for her, to care, when he had no intention of hanging around? Only…things had changed last night. She didn’t have anyone else to tell.
“I almost hit something last night,” she said in a thin voice.