Page 100 of The Exit Strategy

The screen door opens behind me, and Cole exits with two mugs. He doesn’t ask if I want one. He just sits on the step below mine—the same geometry we’ve always had—and hands mine up to me.

Mango tea scents the air around us as I take it.

The ocean does its thing. The lanterns behind us do theirs.

Everything here has a place, a responsibility, a purpose—even its residents. Perhaps even me.

“I’m not trying to hide things from you,” he says, alluding to what he said last night. Kind of feels as though he’s warning me away while begging me to give him achance. “I didn’t know that we were an option, Junie, so I’ve never really searched for a solution. But now that I know, I want to fix things and tell you everything. I just need a little time.”

He’s asking me to trust him—knowing he’s broken my trust so thoroughly in the past.

It’s a big ask.

It’s also a big reward—and that’s the reason I agree to his terms.

“Okay.”

He angles his face toward mine and offers the shy smile of our youth. The one that says I can trust him. The one that says he’ll always be in my corner. The one that says he’ll always be mine.

Somewhere inside my ribcage, behind all the spite and the armor and the six years of careful distance, something that’s been holding its breath since kindergarten finally, quietly exhales.

And tonight, that’s my whole story.

20

EXIT WOUNDS

COLE

There’sa specific kind of quiet that descends on a house after people you care about leave.

Not empty. Empty is neutral. It’s…something else. The silence feels heavier when a house that was full isn’t anymore, and the home knows the difference. I think it’s the way the hush seems to reverberate around every corner and bounce off every door—lonely, and it’s about to happen again.

Fen leaves first because he’s headed to Los Angeles to meet with a client. Fenway Jones treats goodbyes the way he treats arrivals—at volume, with copious amounts of physical contact, and in a way that leaves the room feeling disorganized after he’s gone.

But it’s the hug he gives Junie that grates on my last nerve. Or more accurately, it’s the look he gives me over her head—it says seventeen things, none of which I’m prepared to hear.

Finally, he lets her fucking go.

“You know where I am,” he says with a smirk that’s even more irritating than his voice. “There’s a pause in Grace’smanipulation right now, so we wait. It probably means she’s getting desperate and all we need is one more big lie from her to put all the pieces into play.”

“Fine,” Junie says. Patience isn’t a virtue she comes by naturally, but she’s lasted much longer than any of us thought she would.

Then he places one hand on my shoulder, and his playful expression vanishes. There’s no performance here, just Fen, stripped back to the person underneath his facade of chaos.

He’s letting me know he’s serious. That he’ll be here when I’m ready. When I need him. When my life potentially crashes and burns.

“I know.” It’s the best I can do with the boulder he just shoved down my throat.

He nods, and then he’s gone. The house is already ten frequencies lower.

Hudson leaves an hour after Fen. He pulls me in and claps me on the back hard enough to land like punctuation. “Don’t make me come back here for the wrong reasons.”

Our entire brotherhood knows that things are changing, but no one knows exactly where we’ll all fall after the explosion happens.

“I won’t.”

He holds my gaze, making sure I mean it. Then he loads his rental car and drives through The Haven’s gate while Stanley narrates the departures into his walkie-talkie for the benefit of no one.