I waited for him to agree, or argue. But he did neither. Instead, he put both hands on my neck, gently stroked the hollow of my throat. I looked around to make sure no one was watching. I shivered. His fingers sought out the most vulnerable spot on my throat in a way that didn’t feel tender or romantic, as it could have. It seemed calculated, the way he touched me, as if he were doing research. I took a step back.

“It’s cute,” he said.

“What’s cute?”

“The way you think you have control over things. It’s innocent. Like a child.”

“What do you mean?”

He shrugged. His fingers explored the ridges of my clavicle, and electricity coursed outward from that place like a star, like a sun. “I mean it will happen again, because it’s bigger than you, or me. It’s bigger than your will, or my will.”

“I don’t think so,” I said, uneasy, afraid. “I don’t even think I like you. In the end.”

“The thing between us has nothing to do with what you like or don’t like,” he said. “The thing between us is already decided. It’s written in the stars.”

“I don’t believe in that.”

“Really?” he said. “I don’t see how you can be your mother’s child and not believe that.”

“Leave her out of it.”

He moved closer to me. “You know what she believed? She believed in tides. She believed that forces push and pull all of us the way the sun and the moon pull the tides. Low tide has nothing to do with the desires of the ocean. You must agree with that? And the forces that control us have nothing to do with our desires, not really. As for me, I can’t wait to see how this ends. I’m breathless.”

My thoughts were muddy and roiled, my body tense as a spring: stomach, diaphragm clutched. I didn’t believe that the sun and the moon and forces bigger than me were pulling this way and that on the tides of my body, but what else explained the warm effervescence in my belly, my thighs, that sea foam of sensation?

“I’ll see you tonight,” Cole said, backing away from me. “I’ll make a nice dinner.”

After he walked away, I went straight to the Martha Day Memorial Library. Cole seemed to be gaining power and speed like a weather front, and I wanted to arm myself with the only thing I knew how to gather: information.