Chapter 3 Waiting
Isla clocked out a little after two, the silver set traded for jeans and a hoodie, her mind still half back in that VIP booth with a man who’d paid for quiet and gotten something else instead.
The lot behind the club was never fully empty this late, a handful of cars belonging to dancers who hadn’t left yet, a delivery truck idling near the dumpsters, the streetlight over the back door flickering in that half-dead way it had for months without anyone bothering to fix it. Isla usually liked the walk to her car.
Tonight something about the quiet felt different, thinner, like the air was holding its breath along with her.
She almost didn’t see Cole leaning against the brick wall by the back exit, arms crossed, like he’d been standing there long enough to grow roots.
“You’re late,” he said, like they had an appointment.
“We don’t have plans, Cole.”
“We used to.”
“We had one night. Months ago. That’s not plans, that’s a mistake I made once.”
He pushed off the wall, closing the distance she hadn’t permitted him to close, and Isla planted her feet instead of stepping back, because stepping back had never once made Cole understand anything faster.
“You don’t mean that.”
“I mean it every single time I say it.”
Up close, in the flat orange wash of the parking lot lights, he looked tired in a way she almost, almost felt sorry for. Almost. She’d learned a long time ago that Cole’s tired face was a costume too, just like everything else about him, put on whenever soft worked better than persistent.
She remembered the night itself less clearly than she remembered the weeks after it, the texts that started reasonable and turned strange, the way he’d shown up outside her apartment twice claiming he’d just been in the neighborhood, the way he’d started referring to that single night like it had been the start of something instead of the end of one. She’d met plenty of men who wanted more than she was offering. Cole was the first one who’d decided her answer didn’t actually count.
“I’ve been thinking about you,” he said. “A lot. I know that probably sounds…”
“Exhausting? Because it is.”
“I’m trying to be honest with you.”
“You’re trying to wear me down. There’s a difference.”
Something flickered across his face, quick, ugly, gone before he smoothed it back into the face he liked people to see. Isla had catalogued that flicker months ago, the same night she’d made the mistake in the first place, and she’d been waiting for it to finally scare her enough to stop answering his texts at all.
“You block my number,” he said, “and then what, you think I just disappear? I know you feel something. I know what that night meant.”
“It meant I was tired and you were there. That’s the whole story, Cole.”
“That’s not the whole story and you know it.”
Isla felt her jaw tighten, the same tell she’d learned to spot in other people, betraying her now instead. “I don’t owe you a prettier account of that night just because you didn’t like the true one.”
“I just want to talk. Somewhere that isn’t a parking lot at two in the morning.”
“I don’t want to talk anywhere with you. That’s not a location problem.”
He laughed, short and humorless, and the sound of it landed wrong, some edge underneath it she hadn’t heard from him before tonight. “You know, for someone who dances for a living, you’re awfully particular about who gets to look at you outside of work.”
“That’s not the same thing and you know it.”
“Isn’t it? I paid too, once. Same as any of them.”
The comment landed exactly where he meant it to, and Isla felt something in her go very still and very cold, the way it always did right before she stopped being patient with someone.
“You need to leave,” she said. “Now.”
“Or what?”
“Or I go back inside and get Denny, and you get walked to your car by someone twice your size who doesn’t care how many texts you’ve sent me.”
Cole studied her for a long moment, some calculation running behind his eyes that she didn’t love the look of, and then, finally, stepped back, hands raised in mock surrender.
“Fine. I’ll go.” He started backing toward the lot, still watching her the whole way, like leaving was something he was choosing to do for her benefit rather than because she’d made him. “You’re different lately, you know that? Distracted. I used to be able to tell what you were thinking. Not anymore.”
“Maybe I’m just tired of this conversation.”
“Maybe.” He didn’t sound like he believed it. “Or maybe there’s something you’re not telling me.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“Sure.” He said it the way people say things they’ve already decided not to believe. “I’ll see you around, Isla.”
He turned and walked off into the dark before she could answer, leaving her standing alone by the back exit with her pulse climbing and a side of Cole she hadn’t seen before still hanging in the air behind him.
She hadn’t told him anything. There was nothing yet to tell, not really, not beyond one strange, electric hour in a private room with a man whose face she’d only ever seen in photographs before tonight.
Isla stood there longer than she meant to, arms wrapped around herself against the cold, replaying the whole conversation, trying to decide how much he’d actually guessed versus how much he was just fishing the way he always did.
There’d been no reason to think he knew anything. Cole had always been good at making nothing sound like something, just to watch her react.
She made herself walk to her own car eventually, keys gripped tighter than necessary, checking the empty lot twice before she got in and locked the doors. It was a small thing, checking twice.
She told herself it was nothing, the same way she’d been telling herself Cole was nothing for months now, and the lie sat about as well as it always did.
Driving home with the radio off, Isla kept checking the rearview mirror even after the streets emptied. Cole had always been bad at hearing the word no. Tonight, for the first time, she wondered how much worse he could get.
