"Mine was simple. Don't need anybody too much."
Emily watched him.
"Motorcycles were easier. A bike does not wake up one morning and tell you it is leaving. It does not get sick and disappear. It does not decide you are too difficult. It breaks and you fix it. If you take care of it, it usually tells you what is wrong."
A faint smile moved across her face.
"You sound like me."
"That is what scared me."
The smile disappeared.
Cole continued. "I got very good at being respected. Very good at being needed. That is not the same thing as letting people know you."
He looked directly at her.
"Then you came along."
Emily went still.
"You touched the one thing in my life I thought nobody had a right to touch. I should have stayed angry. Instead, I watched you hit the floor and something got through the wall before I could stop it."
His voice roughened.
"That scared me more than you fixing the bike."
Emily had never heard him admit fear.
"Why?"
"Because once somebody matters, you can lose them."
The apartment seemed to grow quieter.
"So why let anybody matter?" she asked.
Cole gave a tired laugh.
"Because the other way is lonely as hell."
Emily looked at him.
"I did safe and alone for most of sixty years. It works. Nobody gets close enough to break you. You also wake up one day and realize nobody is close enough to know you. That is a terrible bargain."
He leaned forward.
"You do not get the staying without the risk, Emily. There is no arrangement where people matter and you stay invulnerable. The price of being loved is that something can hurt you."
Her throat tightened.
"I don't know how to trust it won't be taken away."
"Then don't."
She frowned.
"You don't have to trust forever. Trust today."
Cole pointed at the mug in front of her.
"Today there is coffee. Today your knee is healing. Today the idiots downstairs are going to argue about whether Cody's carburetor tune is legal in civilized society. Today your job is waiting. Let today be good."
"And tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow you do it again."
"That's your philosophy?"
"Don't sound so disappointed."
She laughed through the tears.
Cole smiled.
"One good day. Then another. Eventually you look back and realize you stopped bracing."
Emily did not transform that morning.
Real people rarely do.
But she started.
The next time Cody reached for her toolbox, her body tensed automatically.
Then she stopped herself.