Dio, I hate how much I need this.
The resistance drains out of me, and I cry into his shirt. Twelve years of grief and eight years of fear and all the moments in between when I had to be strong because there was no one else.
His hand moves to my hair, gentle despite the tension I can feel running through his muscles.
"I've got you, firefly."
The medal presses between us, my father's protection and Cole's, layered together. His arms don't loosen.
I don't know what to do with a man who stays.
But his breathing has gone shallow and controlled, the way it does when he's working through something.
And I realize I'm not the only one who's been holding something in.
sixteen
Cole
The tears stopped ten minutes ago, but she hasn't moved.
Her weight presses into my chest, warm and solid, her breath finally evening out against my shirt. The damp spot from her crying spreads across the fabric over my heart. I keep my hand in her hair, stroking the same path through the strands again and again.
There's nowhere else I need to be. No contingency plan for this moment. No strategic framework that applies.
I never saw this coming, her trusting me with the truth.
Tissues litter the coffee table where she grabbed them. Mascara smudges under her eyes, and the lamp throws shadows across her face, softening the sharp lines of Judge Castellano into someone younger. Vulnerable in a way she never allows herself to be.
This is not the woman who sentences criminals without flinching. This is Angelina. The one I left twelve years ago, the one who just showed me every scar she carries and waited to see if I'd flinch.
I didn't
"You're still here." Her voice comes out muffled against my chest.
"Where else would I be?"
She pulls back and looks at me with those brown eyes searching my face, gold flecks catching the lamplight. Her gaze moves over my features like she is reading me for tells.
I let her look. Let her see whatever she needs to see. I have nothing to hide from her. Not anymore.
"Most men would have run by now." Her throat works. "I have a lot of baggage, Cole. A daughter. An ex-husband who—" She stops, jaw tightening.
"Everyone has baggage." I keep my voice pragmatic. "Different shapes, different sizes. Some people are lucky enough to find someone willing to help carry it."
"And you think you're that person?" Her expression flickers, not quite a smile, but close. Something wry and disbelieving. "No. You're worse. You watched me for seven years."
"I did." I hold her gaze without wavering. "And I'm not running now."
She studies me for a long moment. I don't look away. Don't try to hide whatever she is finding in my face. The guilt, the rage, the desperate need to go back in time and kill Adrian before he ever touched her.
Seven years of watching through screens, thinking I was protecting her by keeping my distance, and the whole time, she was carrying this alone.
Whatever she was searching for, she finds it.
She kisses me, soft and testing.
Different from every other time we have touched. This isn't anger or fear or desperation driving her forward.