NOVA
The second the SUV door closed behind us, I exhaled like I had been holding my breath for three hours.
Because I had. Three hours of perfect posture and careful laughter and thirty pairs of eyes evaluating the new woman on the captain’s arm. Three hours of Cole’s knee pressed against mine under the table, a constant point of contact that I could still feel like a phantom limb now that we were sitting on opposite sides of the back seat.
The partition was up. The city slid past the tinted windows in smears of amber and white. Cole loosened his bow tie with one sharp tug, letting it hang undone around his collar, and leaned his head back against the leather headrest.
Neither of us spoke.
The silence should have been a relief. I had spent the entire evening performing, constructing a
