Somehow, he had never entirely expected her to give up.
That night and the whole day after, Cole went about his usual routine with half an ear bent toward the stairs, anticipating the light falls of her footsteps ascending toward him, girding himself again and again. He’d said what he said for a reason, and though every moment without her was killing him, he’d stand by it. He wouldn’t let her in again.
There wasn’t anything for her to come in to.
A night and a day of icing his knee and recovering his strength and that same tightness in his lungs—that feeling of the walls closing in on him—was back, only times a thousand.
What had he been doing with his life before she stormed her way into it?
His papers were strewn all across his shoebox of an apartment. The ones he’d left behind at Serena’s place he had to re-create, but it wasn’t any difficulty to do so. He buried himself in the numbers and symbols and lines and lines of calculations the way he wished he could bury his bloody head somewhere deep beneath the earth.
She still didn’t come.
On the third day, he lost his damn mind. He packed up his laptop and took himself and his new mobility down the fire escape. His bones creaked with every step, but he was fine, he was fine. He still couldn’t run, but he was supposed to walk—he’d never get his strength back unless he did—and so he went until he was sore, for miles it seemed. At the doorway of a likely-looking café, he stumbled to a halt, panting until he got his breath back.
He went inside, and the girl behind the counter asked him what he’d like, and it was the first time anyone had spoken to him in days. He staggered against the sound of another human voice, his brain melting out his ears and his rib cage threatening to dissolve.
“Mister? Mister, are you all right?”
He opened his eyes, and it was just a girl. Any girl. With a tight smile, he gave her his order and stepped aside. When his tea came up, he retreated to a table in the corner.
And he wrote a paper.
He wrote another the next day and yet another the third. All these years’ worth of work scribbled in notebooks and him with nothing to do with any of it, and it was a fucking waste. Publishing his findings had always been his favorite part about his work. It meant getting his ideas out into the world—it was a way to teach without having to talk to bloody people. He sent the articles to a half-dozen journals, but he might as well be sending them off on the wind. Without a home institution, without credentials for these lost and wasted years, no one would listen to him.
And by then, the girl behind the register knew his order on sight. She knew his name, and it was too much. He couldn’t bring himself to go there another time.
So he was trapped in that apartment again. He couldn’t do anything. He tried to bake and he thought of slender fingers gripping the mixing bowl; he thought of soft lips and white teeth and that brief sliver of time when he’d had someone to share the things he’d made with, and it didn’t matter that he’d gone without before.
Serena had stormed her way into his life all right, and the lightning had left him blinded to the darkness. Her thunder had deafened his ears. He didn’t know how to go back.
He got the rejections for his first round of submissions within the week. They hadn’t even made it to review, and he stared at the letters on the screen.
Bracing his hands against his desk, he closed his eyes.
“This isn’t working.” He breathed it out into the silence.
He opened his eyes, and his vision blurred.
He couldn’t do this. Not alone.
And it was like slipping and falling, and tossing his bloody crutch down the stairs in a fit of rage, listening to it echo with every goddamn step it crashed against. Like giving up and sitting down right there on the floor, at the top of the landing, a full flight of stairs above him and yet another below, stuck in the middle with no way to stand and no hope.
Only to have a voice call out from the distance. The most beautiful voice in the world.
A voice he’d last heard crying, begging, asking him why, and he would never hear that voice again. Because he’d told her he didn’t need her, but he did. He needed her so fucking much.
When he’d lost Helen, it’d been like every star on the horizon going out. His wife had taught him how to love at all, and the next few years he lost in grief and rage and alcohol.
But he couldn’t do that again. He couldn’t face that emptiness, not after Serena had reminded him that there was more still in this life for him. If he couldn’t have her, he needed something. Work, a hobby, maybe a fucking dog.
But already he knew. None of that would ever take away the ache.
He swallowed hard, throat burning.
He needed help.
“So.” Penny pushed her hair back from her face, a ghost of a grin coloring her mouth. “I have news.”
There was life in her sister’s voice for the first time in so long, and it should have had Serena over the moon. As it was, she fought to muster any sort of a reaction at all. Not that it mattered much. Her mother looked excited enough for the both of them, smile positively radiant as she turned to Penny. “What’s that?”
It was Sunday dinner at her mother’s place, nominally Serena’s favorite day of the week, but she was too tired for any of this. She’d been too tired for most things recently. But she just kept on pushing on.
Penny glanced from her mom to Serena to Max and back. “You remember that job interview I had the other week?”
Serena’s fork skidded against the edge of her plate. The grating sound of it drew all eyes to her for a flash of a moment. “Sorry.” She set the fork aside and picked at the edge of her napkin.
Yeah. She remembered that interview all right. She remembered her sister calling in a favor and Serena doing everything she could to lend a hand. She remembered thinking she had one person she could depend on to help her out and have her back.
She remembered him pushing her away.
A quicksilver skitter of pain squeezed her chest, and she sucked in a breath, biting down on the inside of her lip.
Nearly two weeks had passed since then, and she hadn’t so much as seen him around their building. An emptiness opened up inside her heart. She’d thought he’d have something to say for himself. That he would miss her maybe. Or even that he would have to go down their shared stairs at some point or happen to check his mail or something, and their eyes would meet. He’d realize his mistake.
Maybe he really hadn’t needed her at all.
Unclenching her jaw, she exhaled long and slow. It was what it was, and pining and moping weren’t going to help her. She’d already decided not to push him anymore. Not to ask him for what he’d clearly decided he didn’t want to give. It was nobody’s fault that they hadn’t been on the same page after all. Definitely not her sister’s. Or at least that was what she kept trying to tell herself.
Across the table from her, Penny let her mouth curl even wider, her eyes bright. “I got the job!”
Serena’s mom clasped her hands in front of her. “That’s wonderful, baby. I’m so proud of you!” She glanced to Serena pointedly. “Isn’t that wonderful?”
Serena swallowed hard and forced a smile. “Yeah. It’s great. Congratulations.”
“Nice,” Max chimed in, though it was noncommittal. He glanced back and forth between Serena and her mom, always so perceptive when the two of them weren’t on quite the same page.
Their mom ignored it, plowing straight ahead. “What will you be doing? Do you know your hours yet? Tell us everything.”
It was just the encouragement Penny needed. Serena listened as she started in on all the details, but there was a ringing in her ears.
This was too familiar. They’d done this all before. Helped Penny through a crisis no matter the sacrifice it might require, applauding and showering praise on her when she got back to an even keel.
And her sister was ill. She was fighting a disease that claimed lives. She was so strong, and Serena loved her so much. She loved that she was happy.
But all she could see was the impending crash.
Penny got bad and then Penny got well, and then she left them. She went to college or she moved to New York, and they were left here standing in the ruins until the cycle started all over again, and Serena couldn’t do it. Not again.
“I mean, the hours will be a little wonky at first,” Penny said, “but, Serena, maybe we can work things out with Max’s schedule?” She waited for a response, but all Serena managed was a nod. Uncertainty crossed her face, but at their mother’s prodding, she continued on. “It has benefits, thank God. And I’m thinking, once I get a month or two under my belt, I’ll be able to get my own place, stop being underfoot all the time and let you guys get back to your lives again, and—”
And the ringing in Serena’s ears was deafening, everything else fading to static, the tableau of the perfect family spread out in front of her—the one she’d longed for all these years—flashing to white.
She was on her feet before she’d decided to so much as move. She was dizzy, her hands shaking, and she clenched them into fists, but it didn’t help.
“How.” No other words came out. She could barely breathe, could scarcely hear over the screaming pitch inside her head. “You.”
All the eyes on the table were really on her now. Someone said her name, and Penny’s whole face twisted up, those bright eyes that were so much like her own staring back at her, and something inside Serena cracked.
“You can’t,” she croaked. “You’re not ready. You can’t just go get your own place and—”
And push the people who loved her away.
Penny’s mouth dropped. “Rena...”
“Every single time. You come back here needing us, and we drop everything. You don’t even know.” The words were so unfair, and they’d been building inside her for so freaking long. “We put everything on hold because there’s always some...some crisis. We mop it all up, and then when you get better, you leave. You left us. You—” Her throat closed up, and her lungs were on fire. She tried to refocus, to make this about something other than herself. “You left Max. He needed you, you know. We all needed you, and you left, and now you’re back, and what do you think that does to him? What do you think that does to us?”
Penny had been flitting in and out of Serena’s life for literal decades, completely blind to the holes she left in her wake.
Ten years ago, she’d barely gotten checked out of the hospital before she’d been boarding a bus. She’d barely stopped home, barely visited until...
Until now. And two weeks ago, she’d left Max at Serena’s doorstep at a moment’s notice, and it had ruined the best damn thing to have happened to Serena in years. She’d made Serena push, and Serena had lost the one thing that had been just for her. The one person who’d taken the time to wrap Serena up and tell her she was worth everything, she deserved everything, deserved time and love and the chance to do the things she wanted to do.
He was gone.
She choked on her breath, airways seizing against the burn of time and history and words she’d never been able to say before.
“Max is amazing. He’s your kid and he deserves your time, and you can’t just toss him aside.” The shaking in her hands traveled up her arms until it was her whole body shuddering to pieces. “You can’t tell me I can’t see him for weeks and then as soon as you’re done with him, as soon as you decide you need something else in your life, you suddenly want us to be involved again? Life doesn’t work like that. Love doesn’t work like that.” And Serena loved. She loved so much.
Her mother looked like she’d seen a ghost. “Serena...”
But Serena wasn’t listening. Tunnel vision settled in, blacking out the rest of the world except her sister. “I don’t care if you don’t think you can give him what he needs. I don’t care if you think you’re not the right person for him. For us. You came here because you needed us, and now you need us to do things for you, and you assume we will, but then what? What happens when you have your life back and you don’t need us anymore?” Her fingers went numb. “When you decide to leave again, and I can’t. I can’t.”
“Rena.” Penny’s voice was so quiet it was deafening. “I left because you were better off without me.”
Everything went silent all at once. Penny’s expression was bereft, but she didn’t make as if to take it back.
Serena’s heart, already broken, cracked and shattered to the floor.
“Nothing,” she said, vision fogging, “is ever better when you’re not here.” She sucked in a shivering, shuddering breath. “We never asked you to leave. We never wanted you to go, and I missed you. Every goddamn day. But you left. You left me.” Her ribs ached. “We’ve been here all along. We care and we try and we do what we can to take care of the people we love, and you can’t just push us away when you’re done with us...You can’t...”
Hot tears spilled down her cheeks, and she couldn’t see anymore, and oh God. She wasn’t talking about her sister anymore, was she?
She loved so much. She cared and she tried and she did whatever she could to make people care about her, too, but it never mattered.
Her sister left. Cole left.
And here she was. With nothing of her own.
She staggered away from the table, scarcely able to see. Someone called after her, but she shook her head. By some miracle, she made it to the bathroom without bumping into anything or saying anything else she might regret. Locking the door behind her, she stumbled over to the sink and turned the tap on high. Cold water on her face did nothing to ease the hot flush of embarrassment and anger and all the other emotions she usually kept so tightly under wraps, especially around her family. Random breakdowns, screaming fits, running off without listening to anyone—that was Penny’s territory. Well, maybe it was hers now, too. Maybe it was time they saw she wasn’t some...some doormat, someone who was quiet and caring and did whatever anyone asked of her, expecting nothing in return.
A fresh sob tore its way out of her throat. Giving in, she braced her arms against the sink, letting the tears come. She was just so tired. She’d never felt so alone.
It took a while to cry herself out. When the pressure on her chest and behind her eyes finally started to ease, she pulled in a shuddering breath and raised her head. Ugh, she was such a mess, her eyes red and her cheeks all blotchy, her makeup smudged. Cupping water in her hands, she tossed a couple of splashes over her face. Getting herself more or less under control, she turned off the tap and grabbed a tissue to blow her nose.
Of course that was when someone had to knock on the door. Damn. Iron bands squeezed around her chest again, and her eyes misted right back up.
“Just a minute,” she called, voice breaking.
What was she going to do? She’d completely lost it on her family. They were going to look at her like she was a freak, or worse with pity, and she’d always tried to be so strong.
“Serena? Sweetie?”
And that was the end of that. What was it about her mom’s voice that made her crack right open inside, letting all the soft, vulnerable parts of her out?
Hiccuping, she took another swab at her face with a fresh tissue, then went ahead and flipped the lock.
Her mom eased the door open an inch at a time. Their gazes connected in the mirror, and Serena tried to smile, but it was a watery, shivering thing.
Bless her mom. There wasn’t any pity in her eyes at all. Just understanding, and whatever walls Serena had still been keeping up came crashing down.
“I’m sorry, Mom. I—” Whatever else she might’ve said got lodged in her throat behind another sob.
“Oh no, honey.” And then her mother was in there with her, closing the door behind her as she stepped into the room. She wrapped her arms around Serena, tugging her in and melting her resistance until her head rested against her shoulder. Murmuring quiet, soothing nonsense, she petted Serena’s head, and Serena shivered into it.
“I ruined dinner,” she said, getting her voice back.
Her mother laughed. “You just made it a little more interesting.”
“Sorry. Max—” She’d had to have her little breakdown in front of the kid and everything. She’d screamed at her sister, who was just trying to get her life together. “Penny...”
“Max and Penny both are fine.” She pulled away, cupping both sides of Serena’s face between her hands. “The person I’m worried about right now is you.”
Serena’s eyes brimmed over anew.
She didn’t think she’d ever heard her mother say that to her before.
How much time had they spent in therapists’ offices for Penny’s sake? There’d been little placards with different emotions on them, and they were supposed to talk in those sorts of words.
That exercise came back to her now. “I’m just...” Her mouth crumpled, making it hard to talk. “I’m just really sad right now.”
Her mother’s eyes went soft. “Then be sad. It’s okay.”
But it wasn’t. It never had been.
As if she could hear the voice of dissent in Serena’s mind, her mother pulled her close again, wrapping her in a hug and rocking her side to side. “Oh, my sweet little girl.” Even when Serena started to get it all back under control, she refused to let her pull away. “You know, they warn you about this kind of thing.”
Wetly, Serena asked, “What kind of thing?”
“When you have a child who has these kinds of problems, they remind you over and over again to never forget that the other one has needs, too. I listened, and I looked for them so hard. But you...you never seemed to need anything. You were my sweet, strong little trouper. Always chipping in, always helping out.”
“It was my job.”
“You were a child.” She drew away by a fraction, just enough to look her in the eye. “I put too much on you. And I’m sorry.” Her throat bobbed. “You’ve taken such good care of your sister and your nephew. Of me, even. Now will you please, please tell me how we can take care of you?” She shifted to rub her hands up and down Serena’s arms. “Serena, sweetie. I know you’re worried about your sister. But what’s this really about?”
The instinct was there to pretend it was nothing. She was just emotional or hormonal or something. Except that wasn’t it at all. Her lip wobbled, and God, why couldn’t she stop crying today? She sniffed, shaking her head and trying to turn away, but her mom caught her, one soft palm pressing gently to her cheek to keep her gaze on hers.
“Nothing,” she managed to creak out. “Just. Just a boy.”
And that was all it took. In fits and starts, the story of her whole affair with Cole poured out of her, how she’d found him sitting at the top of the stairs, barely able to walk and so darn stubborn he was still intent on taking the train. How she wouldn’t let him, and she’d convinced him to let her help him by making it out like he was doing her a favor, and he was. He spotted Max’s bullying and got him caught up on a year’s worth of math in a handful of weeks.
He’d been so beautiful and so broken, and he’d sucked her in from the very first moment. And when he touched her—when he told her about the pain that had shaped his life—she’d been helpless but to fall.
“And I knew,” she said, swiping furiously at her eyes, “he was terrified of kids. He knows he has a temper. But when Penny needed someone to take care of Max and I was stuck at work, I asked him to help, and he didn’t want to.” He’d told her as much, basically, hadn’t he? “I never should have asked him to.”
“That’s not your fault.” Her mother had guided them both to sit on the edge of the tub as Serena had rambled on and on, and she curled an arm around Serena’s shoulders, holding her pressed against her side.
“He’s so good with Max, though.” It was so easy to imagine him with a boy of his own, all dark hair and gangly limbs, snuggled up with him reading or learning how to ride a bike or who even knew.
No one would ever know, because it was an impossibility. It was the last argument he’d ever had with his wife; it was one he wouldn’t be willing to have again.
Her heart throbbed. Even if he did, it wouldn’t be with her.
“He got mad, and he left Max all alone. I think he thought he’d actually hurt him, and I know he’d...he’d never.”
Cole had a temper, sure, but he was the most protective, the most kind. Beneath all that gruffness, he was this lost, lonely man, loyal and true. He’d rather hurt himself than hurt anyone else.
And that was the problem.
“He thinks he’ll hurt me,” she said, voice cracking. “And he did. He said he didn’t need me anymore. He’s off his crutches, and...”
She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t say another word against the hole torn anew in her heart.
Her mother hesitated for a moment, as if waiting, but when Serena held her tongue, she let out a long sigh.
“And you believed him.”
Serena shook her head. She didn’t know what to believe.
Her mother squeezed her tighter, pressing their temples together. “It’s one lesson I never managed to get through to you, isn’t it?”
“What’s that?”
“You don’t need to do things for people for them to love you.” She said it fiercely, voice bright and crackling. “You don’t have to earn it. You don’t need to make people need you. They’ll love you for you. For the sweet, kind, generous girl that I love more than the entire world.”
It didn’t make any sense, how much it hurt to hear those words spoken aloud and in that tone. The brutal honesty of it pierced clear into the space between her ribs.
“You’ve done so much for us, Rena. For me and for Max and for your sister, and we appreciate it. But we love you for you. Don’t you dare accept anyone who gives you anything less than that.”
The pain of it pressed harder against her ribs, because all those times with Cole, in her bed and in his kitchen and crammed together at a pottery wheel, she’d thought he was giving her exactly that.
But maybe she’d been wrong.
They got another minute or so together there, huddled up in that tiny space, jockeying for room with her mother’s shaving cream and Max’s shampoo. But they couldn’t stay holed up like that forever.
The knock, when it came, was tentative. Max’s voice called out. “So did you guys fall in, or...?”
Serena laughed and swabbed at her eyes. “No. We’re fine.” Her heart still hurt, but she was closer to meaning it than she had been in weeks.
The door cracked open, and Penny’s and Max’s faces both appeared in the gap. “Can we come in?”
Before Serena could offer to come out instead, her mom waved them in. “Yes, yes, of course. The more the merrier, right?”
The next thing Serena knew, she was crowded in and surrounded by her family, her mom on one side and her sister on the other, Max hugging tightly to her legs, and a part of her wanted to wave them all away. There wasn’t any need to make a fuss over her.
But she’d been doing that for too long, hadn’t she? They were here, offering to buoy her up. To be here for her the way she was always there for them. And so she let them, soaking in all the love and support she’d kept at bay for so damn long.
Eventually, Max must have gotten bored, because he started rambling on about something he’d learned in science class about recycling and the water cycle. Serena’s mom encouraged him, maybe knowing they could use the distraction. Serena listened with half of her attention, but after a few minutes, the guilt gnawing at her stomach had her turning her head.
“Penny?”
Penny hooked her chin over Serena’s shoulder. “Yeah?”
“I really am happy for you. About your job. I’m sorry I blew up about it.”
“It’s okay.” Penny shrugged. “It was actually kind of nice that someone finally said what they were thinking for once instead of tiptoeing around.”
“I should’ve been more supportive, though. If you think you’re ready, then I believe you.”
“Thanks.”
And they could have left it at that, but although the words Penny had hurled at Serena might not have fully registered with her in the moment, they were sure as heck haunting her now. “You know we’re not really better off without you, right? Everything is better when you’re here.”
Penny hugged her tighter. “I might know it in my head, but believing it...”
“I know.”
“I’m trying, though. And, Rena?”
“Yeah.”
“I mean it. I’m staying this time. I’m not going anywhere.”
Serena wasn’t entirely sure she believed that, either, but it felt really, really good to hear. “Okay. I’m gonna hold you to that.”
She might not have everything she wanted, and the happiness in this tiny room might be too fragile for the wider world.
She might still miss Cole so much it hurt.
But this, right here...it was something. And at least for now, it was hers.
Three days in a row, Cole talked himself out of it. He made it as far as his back door and once all the way to the base of the fire escape before turning around. That he was even entertaining the idea was ridiculous. He was inviting disaster, setting himself up for failure and rejection and quite possibly a fistfight. But how much more of a disaster could he really become?
The fourth day, he put on his suit again and tied the tie that Helen had given him on their anniversary. Her voice in his head urged him on, but it wasn’t the only one. If he’d ever asked, Serena would have told him to do this, too. He straightened his tie, and grabbed his briefcase and his keys. At the door and at the base of the stairs, hollow pangs of dread made his stomach twist, but he kept his head held high. He kept walking.
It wasn’t until the train station loomed that he faltered.
A flickering phantom pain shot through his knee. The last time he’d been here, he’d tried to do something good, and he’d nearly done something terrible instead. He’d paid the price in any case—eight weeks of immobility and a heartache he didn’t think he’d ever recover from.
With his ribs tight and his leg dully aching, he passed through the turnstile and climbed the stairs. At the top of the platform, he had to close his eyes. All he could see was the place by the timetable where those men had stood, crowding around a boy who looked like easy prey. His whole body shook with the memory of getting his hands on one of them. For just a fraction of an instant, he’d let the angry, awful thing inside his chest have the chance to run free.
After, weak and crumpled on the ground, nearly sick with himself, he’d wished that it would stop, but it never did. He never changed.
But maybe he could. Not enough to deserve what he wanted, but enough to at least be able to bear the life he had left in her wake.
A train roared into the station, and he opened his eyes.
It was strange enough, just getting on the outbound train. He’d had so little occasion to go much of anywhere these past few years, his pilgrimages to the downtown library aside. The whole ride north, he kept his gaze on the window, watching the city churn past, all red brick and graffiti and newly blooming trees. Rehearsing what he was going to say—if he even managed to make it into the building.
One transfer and half an hour later, his stop came up, and he was this close to just standing there, letting the train carry him off to the end of the line. But he’d come this far. With his heart in his throat, he disembarked, melting into the crowd of people stalking off with purpose in their lives, his hand curled into a fist so tight his nails bit into his palm.
It was strange, really, how little the campus had changed. The twisted dread inside his gut grew stronger with every ivy-covered building he passed until he was standing before the one that once had been his second home. Inside, the halls were dimly lit, and every door was a memory. They threatened to swamp him, leaving him off balance and jittery. None of the students recognized him, of course, and he refused to make eye contact with the people in their offices. But stares burned into him, and he could almost hear the whispers that had followed him out as he had left this place in shame.
By the time he made it to Barry’s—Dean Meyers’s—office, Cole’s chest had constricted to the point where he could scarcely breathe. His legs felt like jelly, and the back of his neck was damp with sweat. Panic crashed over him. What was he thinking? He’d be laughed out of here; this was a disaster.
The door was open.
Barry had aged in the time since Cole had last seen him, but then again, Cole had, too. The reddish blond of his hair had gone white at the temples, and there were more fine lines around his mouth and eyes. He had a bit more of a paunch than he had had before. But at his essence, it was still him, and the family resemblance still brought Cole to his knees.
He looked so much like his sister. Like Helen.
Numb, the whole world tilting on its axis, Cole raised the claw of his fist and rapped his knuckles against the wood.
“Come in.” Barry’s gaze darted away from his computer for half a second, flitting toward Cole almost absently. Then he blinked, visibly startling. In a double take that would have been comical if Cole had air in him to laugh, he looked up again, eyes widening. “Cole.”
Everything inside Cole ached, regret and fear and a loss so deep it had derailed his entire life for years.
“Just tell me to go,” he ground out. He tightened his grip around the handle of his briefcase. “If you don’t want to see me. I won’t blame you. I won’t make a scene.” Unlike the last time.
“What?” Barry managed to look honestly confused. “Jesus Christ. No. What are you saying? Come in.” He rose to his feet, and there was nothing doubtful in his expression at all. Cole didn’t deserve this.
He crossed the space, held together with spit and glue, like with every step he was set to fly apart at the seams.
Barry moved out from behind his desk, raising a hand, and for a fleeting moment, Cole braced himself for a blow he probably deserved. Instead, his brother-in-law reached out, clasping Cole by the hand and holding on, and the warmth of his smile was almost too much.
“God, Cole, what has it been? Years.”
“Too many,” Cole agreed.
“I tried to call.” He had. So many times, but...
“I never picked up.” Cole’s throat bobbed. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t ready.”
He wasn’t sure he was ready now either, but what choice did he have? The irony made him want to laugh or cry or fall into a bottle again, but none of those were on the table right now. Losing Helen had driven him off the rails, and gaining Serena—having to let Serena go—it had led him here. Back to the place he’d fled so long ago.
Serena had opened his life again after Helen’s death had slammed it closed. And so he was here. Now. Not ready, necessarily, but he had to try.
Too fervently, Barry grasped Cole’s hand in both of his. “Damn, you’re a sight for sore eyes.”
The sheer generosity of it made Cole’s head spin. “I thought you’d never want to see me again.”
After everything he’d done. After Helen, after he’d made a mockery of his career and of the department—of the university itself. After he’d forced his own brother-in-law to show him the door.
But Barry just shook his head. “You don’t know how many times we’ve thought of you over the years.”
Cole’s attempt to smile came out wobbly and awful, but it was the closest he’d come in weeks.
Their handshake had dragged on for ages now. With one last squeeze, Barry let go, then held his hand out toward the chair in front of his desk. “Sit. Please. Stay. Tell me how you’ve been.”
As Barry retreated to his own seat on the other side of the desk, Cole dropped into the one Barry had pointed to, arranging himself. He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Shite. I don’t know where to start. You saw...”
Barry had seen the worst of it, honestly. He’d seen Cole a mangled mess and a wreck of a man.
He nodded gravely, folding his hands together in front of him. “I wanted to help. I wish I could have done more.”
“There was nothing anyone could have done.” All Cole’s will had been bent on destroying himself back then, and no one could have talked him out of it.
In all that time, no one had. Except Serena. His heart clenched hard at the thought.
An uncomfortable moment of silence passed before Cole cleared his throat. “And you? The kids? Jan?”
“All great.” Barry ticked off children, half grown now. Told Cole about his life and his job and his wife.
“I’m happy for you,” Cole said, and he meant it.
“You should come round for dinner sometime. Everyone would love to see you. The kids still ask about their uncle all the time.”
Nodding, Cole managed, “I’d like that.”
Barry’s face went serious. “But you didn’t just come here to ask me about my family.”
“No. I didn’t.” He forced his fingers to unclench. His pride was a white-hot force inside him that he had to push away. Because he’d never asked for this before. He’d been offered it—had been all but forced to accept it by kind, beautiful women who’d had his best interests at heart. But he’d never asked. “Barry—Dean Meyers—I—” He cut himself off. Took a breath and licked his lips, but his throat was a desert. His life was.
How many times had he told Serena that she had the right to request things for herself? How sweetly had she tried to show him that he had that same right?
“Please,” he rasped out. “I need help.”
The words hung on the air, heavy and impossible.
And the instant they made it out of his mouth, Barry leaned forward. “Anything. If it’s in my power...”
The rest of it came so easily.
“I need a job. I know I fucked up here. I burned my bridges, and I’ll take my lumps, but if you have anything, or if you’ve heard of anything.” He fumbled with the clasp of his briefcase, pulling out the papers he’d brought and handing them over. “I’ve been working. Three articles written and ready to go out, but no one will look at them without an institution next to my name, and I...” Fuck, this hurt. “I want to teach again.”
Barry accepted the papers Cole passed over and began flipping through them, his brows rising higher with every page. But at that last bit, the space between his eyes scrunched up, and he jerked his gaze away from the lines of figures. “I thought you didn’t care for teaching.”
“No, I just...I didn’t know how to do it back then.” He couldn’t pretend he was that much better now, but his afternoons with Max had reminded him of why it was worth it to try. Serena—all those times she talked about her profession with this warmth in her voice. It had reignited a spark in him he’d thought had died.
All these empty years had passed him by, and he wanted his life to be different now. He wanted to be worthy of the love he’d been given and that he’d had no choice but to throw away.
“But I’ve changed,” Cole said. Serena had changed him. She’d woken him from his stupor. She’d made him better, with just a word. With the softest of touches of her hand. “I’ve been working at it.” He grasped at the closest available straw. “Tutoring. Conferring with other teachers.” One other teacher, but it wasn’t a lie. “I’m willing to give it my all this time. Just let me try, and I’ll prove it to you.”
Frowning, Barry returned his attention to the pages Cole had pushed at him, and for hollow minutes, Cole sat there, waiting. Finally, when he wasn’t sure he could take it anymore, Barry looked up. “This is solid work.”
“You know the work was never my problem.”
“No. It never was.” Barry set the papers down. “This isn’t a simple thing you’re asking for, you know.”
Cole’s heart sank. “I know.”
“You forced our hand. After Helen...”
“I was a disaster.” He swallowed hard. “I still am. But I swear. If you give me another chance, I won’t waste it.”
For a long, long time, Barry studied him. Then he sat back in his chair, picking up a pen and twirling it between his fingers. “It just so happens that our Introduction to Mathematics adjunct pulled out for the summer term.”
Pulse quickening, Cole sat straighter in his chair. “I’ll take it.”
God. If Helen could see him now. It was the worst course on their schedule, no real content, and only non-majors took it. A few years ago, he would have tried like mad to switch to anything else. But he’d spent eight weeks teaching fractions and decimals to a ten-year-old. He could do this.
“Not so fast. You’d still need to go to counseling, Cole.”
Cole’s throat tightened. That had been the stipulation the last time around, too, and he had laughed in their faces.
But Barry was still talking. “The board would demand it if...if I brought this appointment before them. But as your friend...Honestly, don’t you think you need it?”
Maybe he did.
Maybe if he’d ended up on a therapist’s couch the first time around, he could have avoided so much pain.
Maybe it wasn’t too late. “I don’t know. But I’ll try it.”
Just like that, the stoicism on Barry’s face melted. “Really?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“You always have a choice. But I think this is the right one. Hell, I’ll give you the job right here and now if it means you’ll get some help.”
Help. It was what he’d come here for, if not necessarily in this form.
“I thought you had to bring it up before the board,” he said weakly, head spinning.
“You know they’ll do whatever I tell them to.”
“And you’ll tell them...”
“To hire you.” The way Barry said it was all conviction, and he looked so goddamn much like Helen. Like he believed in him.
Cole’s chest ached. “Thank you.”
“Thank you for coming to me.” Something in his brother-in-law’s expression broke, and all at once, it wasn’t a conversation between colleagues. It was a conversation with family, and that was a feeling Cole hadn’t had in a very long while. “You know none of us blame you. For what happened.”
Cole huffed a hollow echo of a laugh. “I blame myself enough for all of us.”
“Yeah. You do. So do me a favor, will you?”
“Anything.”
“Stop that. She wouldn’t want this for you.” No, she wouldn’t have. “It killed me to lose her. Killed me. But, Cole. I didn’t think it meant I’d have to lose you, too.”
The heat behind Cole’s eyes came out of nowhere, and he shook his head to try to keep the tide of feeling in. “I’m sorry.” No one knew how sorry he was.
“And I forgive you.”
They were just words. But the acceptance in them, this gift of another chance...
One thread of the knot that had tied Cole up in loss and grief for all these years...it came unwound.
And it was just this tiny, tiny bit easier to breathe.