Page 87 of What Remains of Grace

“Cole, why are you here?” she asked, arms folding without her permission. “Didn’t you get what you wanted?”

He blinked. “Excuse me?”

“You got to sleep with me,” she said, the words tasting like metal on her tongue. “Congrats. Mission accomplished. Isn’t that what this was?”

He stared at her like she’d slapped him. “Fuck, Jenna. Is that what you think?”

“That’s what you’ve been buttering me up for all summer, isn’t it?” The heat in her chest had nowhere to go; it spilled out as accusation. “Bike rides and beach mornings and stupid twenty-dollar champagne. You got your night, right?”

His jaw tightened. “If that’s all I wanted, I could’ve done that weeks ago,” he said, voice low now, anger threading under the control. “Back when you were practically begging me to come inside every time it rained. You know that’s not all this is.”

“If you’d done it then,” she shot back, “you would’ve had to face me the next day. Waiting until the end gave you a clean exit strategy.”

He let out a sharp, humorless breath. “That’s rich,” he said. “Classic projection. I’m here, Jenna. I’m on your porch. You’re the one who left. You’re the one ignoring my texts. Which one of us is trying to disappear?”

“Projection?” She barked out a short, disbelieving laugh. “What are you now, a therapist?”

“No,” he said, and now the hurt showed, thin and raw around the edges of his words. “I’m not. And it’s a shame, because you desperately need one. I can make some local recommendations if you’d like, since you’ve been gone so long.”

The words landed like a punch.

For half a second, everything went too bright. The porch. The street. The way he was looking at her, equal parts regret and frustration and something that scared her more than both.

She could have taken a breath. Could have stayed. Could have said the truth: I’m terrified. I like you too much. I am one more loss away from crumbling.

Instead, she did what she’d gotten so good at. She retreated.

Jenna turned on her heel, stepped back into the house, and shut the door harder than she meant to. The sound jolted through the frame. From outside, she heard his voice.

“Jenna, wait—”

She clicked the deadbolt and pressed her back to the wood, chest heaving. Silence closed in, dense and unmoving.

“What did you just do?” she whispered to the empty hallway.

She replayed it, line by line, every word she’d flung like a weapon because it was easier to be angry than afraid. Easier to act like he was any other man than to admit he’d climbed under her skin in a way she didn’t know how to undo.

The worst part was how much of what he’d said was simply true.

He was the one on her porch. He was the one who’d texted all week. He was the one who kept stepping toward her even when she gave him nothing but mixed signals and brick walls.

And she did need a therapist. God, did she need one.

She slid down the door until she sat on the floor, knees pulled up, hands pressing into her hair.

The shame stung almost as sharply as the grief.

* * *

The Bridge was already loud when Cole walked in, dim lighting, a slightly offbeat sound system, someone on stage two beats behind the track murdering an old Garth Brooks song.

Normally, he loved the noise, the laughing, the way his crew turned everything into a competition, including who could butcher a ballad the loudest.

Tonight, he felt like he was moving underwater.

Travis spotted him from a high-top by the bar and raised two fingers for the bartender. “Boss!” he called. “You’re late. We were about to assume you’d been kidnapped by building inspectors.”

Cole tried to pull something resembling a smile onto his face as he slid onto the stool. “Got held up.”