Page 56 of What Remains of Grace

Silence stretched between them. Cole immediately wondered if he had said too much. He usually preferred to carry his grief quietly. But he knew that Jenna understood, and he wanted her to know that she wasn’t alone.

Cole rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, thoughtful now. “I watched my dad grieve the version of himself he used to be, too. Before my mom died, he was this . . . loving, ridiculous husband who brought home flowers for no reason and acted like thirty years together still wasn’t enough time with her.”

His voice thinned slightly at the memory.

“I miss that guy,” he admitted. “The one who came home smiling because his favorite person was waiting there.”

Jenna looked down at her hands.

“I think death takes more than the person,” he said softly. “It takes whole versions of people with it. Versions of the rest of us, I mean. And sometimes we’re so busy mourning who died that we don’t even notice all the other things that got ripped away at the same time.”

He imagined she was thinking about all the versions of people she had lost alongside her siblings. The parents who had been weathered by more grief than anyone should have to bear. The orphaned niece who was shaped by loss after loss.

The changes were impossible to ignore, and so people found themselves grieving the living alongside the dead.

And not just the people, but the days themselves. Entire seasons altered. Holidays and birthdays permanently changed. The loss of easy joy, forever shadowed by melancholy.

Cole didn’t interrupt the silence that followed. He just sat beside her, steady as the tide, giving her room to finally see the shape of the wound.

* * *

Two eagle rays glided beneath their boards on the paddle back, wings sweeping through the water like silk drifting in slow motion. It was rare to see them on this side of the island, rarer still for them to come this close.

“They’re beautiful,” she whispered. Cole looked at the rays for half a second. Then he watched her instead.

The angle of her jaw tipped toward the sun. The way her mouth softened when she was wonderstruck. The faint flush on her cheeks from the paddle back. He wanted to memorize everything about her in this moment.

“So are you,” he said, too soft, too honest, the words barely more than the breath behind them.

Jenna didn’t react.

Of course, she didn’t. She hadn’t heard him. Or maybe her mind was somewhere else entirely, caught up in the moment rather than the man sharing it with her.

And God, he was grateful for that.

Because earlier, twice, she had heard him. When he’d slipped and told her the house looked good, and then couldn’t catch himself. When he’d gone too far this morning about owing her a credit, both times, he’d watched her whole body tense like she’d been jolted with a live wire. Jenna Hart didn’t take compliments lightly. She absorbed them like they were dangerous.

He needed to be smarter.

If he wanted time with her, real time, not stolen edges of it, he had to keep a careful balance. Push too hard, and she’d retreat into work, into routine, into that distant, unreachable space people like her used to protect themselves.

Avoidants didn’t run at full speed. They vanished gradually, one “maybe later” at a time. He couldn’t risk that. Not with her.

He’d spent thirty-six years not knowing what it felt like to want someone this much. To want their company, their quiet, their laugh. To want the curve of someone’s mouth when they said his name. And now that he’d had even a glimpse of it, even a day of paddling beside her, talking in the sun, watching her loosen in places she didn’t realize were tight, he couldn’t find enough oxygen in her absence.

He paddled beside her, matching her pace without thinking.

“Ready to head in?” he asked, voice steady, controlled, like he hadn’t almost given himself away.

She smiled, bright, unguarded, sun-warm. “Yeah,” she said. “Let’s go.”

And he fell in behind her, letting her lead the way back to shore, the ache in his chest tightening with every stroke of the paddle.

* * *

By the time they pulled the boards onto the Causeway, she was sun-warmed and glowing, hair wild from salt and wind.

He wanted to ask her to dinner. He wanted to keep her a little longer. He wanted—