Page 30 of Slow Burn
“It’s a report about the day my mama died.”
As he’d figured. “So what’s got you twisted up about it?”
She didn’t answer right then, just stirred her milkshake, spoon clinking against the glass.
“I got all night, Darlin’,” Cole drawled, keeping his tone lazy even while the words knotted his gut because that was an image. “You wanna talk it out, I’ll listen.”
Her lips pressed together, then she flipped the folder open, ruffled a few pages, shut it again. “I was comparing it to the other one I’d gotten. This copy came from the fire station. I thought maybe it’d have something new.”
The disappointment weighed heavy in her words, thick and hard to shake.
“But it didn’t,” he guessed.
She shook her head. “Chief Ward mentioned something this morning. Said Mama was found on the floor between her bed and dresser.”
Cole grimaced. He didn’t have to guess what kind of picture that put in her head. “But?”
Her eyes found his, dark and sharp. “That detail wasn’t in the report I had.”
He jerked his chin toward the folder. “In this one?”
Her lips flattened. “No. It’s the same. Word for word. I don’t even know why I bothered.”
Anger edged her voice, but she didn’t slam the table like he might’ve. She held it in, all that heat just simmering under the surface. She jabbed the spoon into her milkshake.
“I’m sorry,” he said, quieter. “Hell of a setback.”
“It is what it is.” She shrugged, gaze slipping away as she let it sit.
But he could tell she wasn’t done, and he waited her out.
“It just bugs me,” she finally said. “Her wine glass was there, by the window. That was always weird enough. But after what Ward said…” Her jaw clenched. “Why was it there if she was drunk and passed out over by the bed?”
“Don’t add up,” he agreed.
His sincerity pulled her focus back to him, and then she dropped her eyes to her hands. “Thanks for listening, Cole.”
Well, damn. His stomach dropped, then something else flared hot through his chest, moving all the way to his fingertips. He curled his hands into fists slow, steady.
“My pleasure, Darlin’.”
Her head lifted, a faint smile tugging at her mouth. “Why do you call me that?”
“What? ‘Darlin’?” He shrugged. “Just instinct, I guess.” He couldn’t explain it, not even to himself. Some part of her pulled it out of him.
“My mama called me ‘honeybee’ when I was little.”
The sound of it made him picture her that way—small, tender, untouched by all the hard years between then and now. It was rage that had burned that image into his memory back then, but it wasn’t anger pulling it up now.
“My mama called me ‘Tug,’” he said, mouth twisting.
Jocelyn tilted her head. “Why?”
He gave a short laugh. “Like tug-o-war. I was always pulling against her. Never made it easy.”
“She did say you were hard to reel in.” Jocelyn folded her arms, studying him. “But she’s proud of what you built.” Her hand swept toward the restaurant. “Maybe pulling against the current isn’t always wrong.”
The words sank deeper than they should’ve. Pride, clear in her voice. Like she had some kind of claim in the life he’d built. Truth was, she probably did. She’d known his mama most of her life now—long enough to understand more than most.
