Chapter 5 [Wren's POV]

Reading to him became a routine, though not one I'd chosen.

Cole could read perfectly well on his own, but he refused to do it. He'd shove a book into my hands and order me to read aloud, as if I were some kind of talking machine he'd installed for his convenience.

I complained to Mom once. Once was enough.

"Silly girl, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Those books of his—you're basically reading them all for him. Think of it as getting paid. He wants you to read? You read. What's so hard about that?"

What made it worse was that even after all the coaxing and threatening it took to get me started, Cole acted like he wasn't even listening. He'd hang upside down from his pull-up bar, or wander off to play with something else.

I felt like I was talking to empty air. The moment I stopped, though, he'd juggle that tennis ball of his and—thud—it would hit the floor. His face would darken instantly.

"Keep reading. I'll tell you when to stop."

I gave in. I've never been good at arguments. My backbone has all the rigidity of wet toast.

Sometimes I'd stop on purpose, just to see if he was actually paying attention.

Nine times out of ten, he noticed. The ball would drop with a sharp smack, and his expression would harden. "Who told you to stop?"

But once or twice, he didn't notice. Because he'd fallen asleep.

Cole asleep looked nothing like Cole awake. His brow would smooth out, his lips would part slightly, and his lashes would cast small shadows beneath his eyes. The fierce Cole disappeared, leaving behind just... an ordinary kid. A kid who got tired.

On those occasions, I'd lower my voice to barely a whisper and keep reading. Not for him—for the quiet room itself.

I never told anyone about this. It was my secret alone.

Days passed like this.

Sometimes weeks would go by without Mom getting scheduled to clean at the Ashford house, and I wouldn't see Cole at all. Strangely, during those weeks, reading felt like something was missing.

I refused to admit I missed him. Missing someone who treated me like an audiobook would've been pathetic.

But as I turned the pages, my ears kept waiting for a sound. Waiting for that irritable "keep reading."

I realized Cole had no friends.

It wasn't that no one wanted to play with him. It was that he didn't think anyone was worth his time. Other kids his age were either too loud, too stupid, or too prone to crying. He stood among them like a small mountain no one could climb.

At a school birthday party once, a room full of children shrieked and bounced around a cake. Cole stood alone by the window, not even glancing their way. One brave kid called out to him to join them. Cole's response—"Not interested"—ensured that child never approached him again.

I watched from a corner and felt, unexpectedly, a pang of sympathy.

Strange, wasn't it? I was so afraid of him. But seeing him stand there alone made my heart feel both soft and sour.

I was the only exception. Not because I was special. I was quiet enough, obedient enough, unobtrusive enough—like a character in one of his books. Something to open when needed, to close when not.

I should have been sad about that. The odd thing was, I wasn't.

Because I had no friends either.

The two of us—one perched high above, one pressed into the dust, with an entire world between us. Yet in the matter of having "no one," we were identical.

He had no friends because he was selective. I had no friends because I was afraid. One too high, one too low, both unable to reach the ordinary, laughing kids in the middle.

Maybe that's why we ended up together. Two people standing on the edges of the crowd, recognizing each other from across the distance.

I never told him this theory. He would've called me ridiculous.

That autumn, Cole was going to play his first youth division match.

The day before the match, he summoned me to the glass conservatory on the roof. It was our place—ours alone—with glass walls opening onto the entire New York skyline.

His mother's flowers filled the space. Outside the glass, the sun was sinking behind the buildings, staining the sky a burnt orange.

Cole sat in a wicker chair, his feet kicking rhythmically against the floor.

This was unusual. Normal Cole never stopped moving—swinging from bars, hurling tennis balls against walls. Sitting still and kicking like this—I'd never seen it before.

I stood in the doorway, afraid to enter, afraid to leave.

"You're coming tomorrow," he said suddenly, apropos of nothing.

"Coming where?"

"To the match." The words seemed to cost him effort, squeezed out through clenched teeth.

"You called me up here just to say that?"

He ignored my question. He stared at his sneakers for a long time before speaking again. His voice was so small I almost missed it.

"I'm scared I'll lose."

I froze.

Cole Ashford—Cole, who would climb that monkey bar a hundred times no matter how many times he fell, Cole who treated the entire game room like his personal kingdom—he was saying he was scared.

In that instant, something inside me shifted with an audible click.

So he could be afraid too. So even at the top of that unclimbable mountain, cold winds blew.

I'd always thought Cole feared nothing. He didn't fear falling from monkey bars a hundred times. He didn't fear taking things from others. He didn't care about anyone's opinion.

But here he sat, an eight-year-old boy, his face flushed as he told me he was afraid of losing.

Suddenly, I felt less afraid of him.

Someone who could be afraid wasn't so frightening anymore.

I didn't know what to say. I've never been good at comfort. I rummaged through my mind, searching all those books I'd read for the right words.

I couldn't find a single one.

So I did something instead. To this day, I can't explain where I found the courage.

I walked over and pulled from my pocket a tiny silver sugar pearl—the kind that had decorated my birthday cake. I'd kept it like a treasure.

Before pressing it into his palm, I hesitated for half a second. Too foolish, wasn't it? A sugar pearl couldn't possibly help. He'd definitely laugh at me.

I pressed it into his hand anyway.

"Here," I said, my voice shrinking with each word. "This is lucky. Hold onto it and you won't lose."

Cole looked down at the small silver sphere in his palm, then up at me. Something flickered in those blue eyes that I'd never seen before.

Not contempt. Not irritation.

Relief.

"Really?" he asked.

"Really." I nodded hard, though my confidence was paper-thin. "I read about it in a book. Lucky charms always work."

He closed his fist around the sugar pearl, gripping it tightly. As if afraid it might fly away.

"Then you have to come tomorrow," he said. "If you don't come, it won't work."

I wanted to protest that this made no sense. The sugar pearl was the sugar pearl, and whether I attended was a separate matter entirely.

But looking at how serious he was—those gray-blue eyes fixed on me as if my word was law—I swallowed my objection and nodded.

"I'll come."

Only then did he relax, shoving his fist with the pearl into his pocket and turning to leave. Two steps away, he stopped.

"Hey," he said without turning around.

"Yeah?"

"...Thanks."

He said it quickly, quietly, as if afraid of being overheard. Then he ran down the stairs without another second's pause.

I stood alone in the conservatory, staring at the direction he'd gone, stunned for a long moment.

Cole Ashford had thanked me.

Cole—who'd stolen my swing, who'd pushed me into a hospital visit, who'd used me as an audiobook—had said "thank you."

I touched my face. It was burning.

I didn't know what to call the feeling. Happiness? Tenderness? Something else I couldn't yet name?

I only knew that from that day forward, the phrase "lucky charm" took up permanent residence between Cole and me.

The next day, he won his first match.

After that, he wanted me at every game. Before each one started, he'd find me and show me the sugar pearl, as if to say: See? Still here.

Many years later, the sugar pearl had long since dissolved and disappeared. But the "lucky charm" remained. It only changed form—from a sugar pearl to a kiss from me.

I was too young then to understand.

I thought I'd only given away a sugar decoration from a cake.

I didn't realize that from that day on, I'd been giving away pieces of myself, bit by bit. By the time I noticed, it was already too late to take them back.