Page 194 of The Exit Strategy

On his other side, Nolan’s nodding, silently encouraging me to take this chance, but his eyes tell me he’s on standby if I need him.

“Okay,” I say, and Cole’s entire face changes. He doesn’t smile per se, but his shoulders straighten and some of the exhaustion is replaced by…something else.

Papa’s fishinghole is a clearing at the back of The Haven’s property where the marsh opens to the inlet and the cordgrass goes gold in the late afternoon light. I’ve walked by here multiple times, but I’ve never ventured far into the overgrown grass driveway sheltered by an arch of trees.

We make our way deeper down the drive in silence. When the trees open up again, it’s to an old wooden dock that’s probably been there as long as Cole’s been alive.

The light hits the water at an angle that makes the surface look like it’s been hammered by hand. And unlike the rest of The Haven, there’s no one else here. Cole’s kept this private, untouched and unsullied by the community he created.

At the end of the dock, there’s a small folding table with a sheet draped over it.

Cole walks me toward it, directing me over a piece of wood that looks like it needs to be replaced, but he doesn’t touch me. His hand doesn’t find the small of my back, and he doesn’t perform any of the choreography we’ve learned about each other over the last couple of months.

I find I miss it more than I thought I would.

We’re standing shoulder to shoulder at the end of the dock. Mere inches separate us, but they feel like miles.

Cole removes the sheet.

It takes me a moment to process what I’m seeing. Then the corner of my lips twitch without permission. It’s a really rough version of a small house, similar to the ones he used to make at my table in Boston. There’s a plywood foundation, balsa walls primed but not painted. The roofline is sloped one way, and not the other. It’s a Lowcountry detail Cole would never get wrong.

It shocks me how much I remember about this process.

You can tell the other guys helped because it’s kind of a mess and not the strict attention to detail Cole demands. This was built with love by all the guys who stand in my corner.

And the more details I take in, the more…personal it feels.

It’s the footprint of a house someone could live and be comfortable in even if the walls are dripping glue and the table wobbles with the waves beneath the dock.

There’s a porch facing the water, and a cutout where I hope a window will go. Along one wall is a long room with two desks set perpendicular to each other under a shared cork wall. The desks have crooked joints, and a good strong wind would probably knock them over, but I get the gist.

Two desks.

Light from two directions.

One office.

“What is this?” I finally ask.

“This,” he gestures toward the model. “Is us, in structure form.” He speaks so quietly I lean in to hear him. Then, he lays a roll of blueprints next to the model. “These are designs I’ve been working on for six years.”

Six. Years.

“I’ve been designing a house for the teenage version of you I knew. Every time I missed you, I worked on a new room. Every time the guys would mention you in a text, I’d perfect another corner. I was building a museum for the person I lost.”

At some point, my gaze shifted so I’m looking up at him and not out at the water.

“But then,” he clears his throat. “You made that video. And I understood who you’d become, and in real time, the dream home I was designing for you became…wrong. I knew I didn’t have a lot of time, so I asked the guys for help. We’ve been in that garage every hour Nana Mae hasn’t dragged us home to sleep. We did our best, but it’s not perfect, and it’s not even close to finished.”

He tugs on the back of his neck. “We kind of had to rush it over here when Marley told us you parked at the clubhouse.”

My gaze slides from him to the model. Everyone had a hand in this.

“It’s not for me,” I say, reading the rooms like my favorite book.

“No.” He shakes his head. “It’s not.”

“It’s—”