Free Cole in My Stocking by Jessi Gage Page B

thought I heard his teeth grinding. “You stay in touch with any of your friends?”
    I shook my head. My “friends” had all written me off after that party. Part of the fault lay with me. I became way less fun after my assault. Part of the fault lay with the way my reputation had gone from questionable to outright bad after I’d been seen leaving a party drunk and with three grown men. Several of my friends admitted their parents forbade me from coming to their houses anymore.
    “You haven’t been in touch with anyone from Newburgh since you left?”
    “Not until the letter Max sent letting me know Dad had died. Why?”
    Cole cursed.
    “What?”
    He shook his head.
    I stared at him, willing him to say whatever his stony expression refused to reveal. My stomach shrank into a prune. Something bad was growing between us. “What don’t I know, Cole?”
    “Later, honey. I’ll tell you later.”
    Cole Plankitt just called me honey.
    I couldn’t read his face, but I could read his voice. Regret. Surprise. Anger. It was all there. I wished I knew why.
    The tension rolling off him made me dread whatever we would be talking about later, but the promise of a “later” with Cole gave me a thrill. A thrill I resented. Why couldn’t my body be on board with the friends plan?
    As Cole pulled into the blacktop parking lot of Hansen’s Funeral Home, I analyzed that honey. Had it been honey as in, I still think of you as my buddy’s kid, so I give you a child’s endearment, or had that been honey as in, I notice the woman you’ve become, and I want to get to know that woman better?
    I could make a case either way, but secretly, foolishly, I hoped it meant he was into me. I thought back to that moment we’d had in Dad’s kitchen. I thought I’d glimpsed vulnerability in him, like he was searching for something and maybe that something was me.
    “Here we are.” Cole parked the truck in a space close to the awning-covered double doors. White Christmas lights and potted poinsettias added a festive air to the green-trimmed, white Victorian house with its somber black doors.
    I should have been thinking of my dad. Instead, I was obsessing about a hot cop I had no business obsessing about. Mentally shaking my head at myself, I jumped down from the truck. Cole and I walked to the main entrance, hands buried in our pockets.
    Based on Cole’s truck being the only vehicle in the lot, I expected to find the doors locked, but when Cole trotted up the steps and tried the handle, the right-hand door swung open to a dim foyer with an empty coatrack.
    He held the door so I could go in first. Once we were in the warm foyer, his hands found my shoulders and eased my coat down my arms. I shivered.
    I wanted to ask why we were here so early, but my tongue was glued to the roof of my mouth.
    A tall, gray-haired man in a black suit came up a set of stairs. Gregory Hansen, the owner and operator of the funeral home. He held his hand out to Cole. “Officer Plankitt. Good to see you. Good to see you.” The men shook, and then he faced me, hand outstretched. “Mandy. How are you this morning?”
    “Fine, thanks.” I shook his hand, wondering why he had greeted Cole first. Maybe they knew each other outside the context of Dad’s funeral.
    “Everything ready?” Cole asked. He’d left the Oakleys in the truck. His eyes were intense but cordial.
    “Of course.” Mr. Hansen turned to me with a warm smile. “I placed your father in the visitation room. You may take all the time you need.”
    I blinked, unsure what we were talking about. “For what?”
    “To say goodbye.” He opened one of the double doors leading into the main reposing room, which resembled a chapel with rows of chairs and a raised platform with a wreath-adorned podium at the front. The white and red carnations I’d picked because Dad’s truck had been red and his Harley had been white, lined the platform and surrounded the podium. The spot where the coffin should be