CHAPTER 30 #2
A wave of fury slammed into me, sudden and hot, and I whirled to face him.
The Ferris wheel car creaked under the shift of weight, and I could feel the air charge between us, static and dangerous.
All around us, the carnival blurred into a glow of spinning lights and voices and music, but inside the little metal cage, there were only the two of us and the thousand things we’d never said.
“I shouldn’t have fucked you.” The laugh ripped out of me, harsh and ugly. “You agreed to keep things casual. You agreed not to do this.” I said it because it felt safer to deny the truth, and I motioned between us, my hand trembling so badly I had to clench it into a fist.
His eyes darkened as he clenched his jaw. “So what, you’re just going to keep running? That’s your answer for everything?”
“Don’t.” I raised a hand, palm out, hating how it shook.
I wanted to slap him. I wanted to kiss him.
I wanted to forget this moment ever happened and go back to the safety we’d pretended to have before—the kind where this was just sex, not the wreckage of who we used to be.
“Don’t act like you know me, not after all this time. ”
He reached for me then, his hand wrapping around the back of my neck. His touch burned through me, and I hated myself for leaning into it, for craving it. “Blaire, I never stopped knowing you. I never stopped thinking about you, not for a single day.”
There was none of the cocky confidence in his eyes. There was just longing, raw and unsheltered, a mirror to the ache I’d carried for years.
For a moment, neither of us spoke. The Ferris wheel reached its apex and the car rocked gently, suspended in a hush so complete it was as if the whole world was holding its breath, waiting for us to fuck up again.
“You don’t get to do this,” I whispered, my voice cracking. “You don’t get to fuck everything up then say shit like that.” The words tasted like poison. “When I left, I swore I would never fall for anyone the way I fell for you. Never let myself be that vulnerable again.”
Colt stilled, but something inside me had broken open and I couldn’t stop the flood.
“My dad made sure I went to Duke, then he put me on his staff, exactly where he wanted me.” I was coming apart at the seams. “Look who I became with Grant.”
He didn’t move, but his eyes never left mine, watching me unravel with an intensity that made me want to scream.
“I thought Grant loved me, but he loved the idea of me. He’d dress me up in clothes that cost more money than I’d ever seen, parade me around parties and dinners for his wealthy friends, and I—” My throat closed around the words.
“I let him. I smiled and nodded and became this hollow thing because I thought if I became what he wanted, what my father wanted, I’d be enough for once. ”
Colt’s free hand curled into a fist so tight I could see the tendons straining beneath his skin. Something flashed in his eyes, rage or pain, I couldn’t tell which, but I couldn’t stop.
“When I found out he’d been fucking his assistant for the last year of our relationship, I was relieved.” The confession slammed into me. “I stormed into his office anyway. But it wasn’t even about him, it was about me. I was so fucking angry at myself.”
Colt’s breathing had gone shallow, his face carved from stone.
“I got back to our condo, and my key wouldn’t work.
” My laugh sounded so sad. “I lived there for two years, and he’d changed the locks within minutes.
I’d spent three days at my dad’s before Grant finally let me in to get my stuff, and he stood there and watched me pack my bags with this smirk on his face I’ll never forget, like he was waiting for me to break down and beg. ”
I finally met Colt’s gaze, and I wished I hadn’t.
Rage flicked across his face, and the intensity of it made my stomach drop, as if the Ferris wheel had suddenly plummeted twenty feet.
I felt naked and exposed in front of him, like every flaw and weakness I’d tried to hide was suddenly lit up for him to see.
“I had nowhere to go, no one except my father, who wanted me to look past Grant’s little mistake, and I hated him more than I could ever hate Grant. And when I called June, and I heard her voice, I wanted to die from shame.”
Colt shook his head, a muscle twitching in his jaw. “You have nothing to be ashamed of.”
The words tumbled between us in the rattling Ferris wheel car, and I opened my mouth to tell him how wrong he was, but the gentle fire in his eyes stopped me.
I pressed my lips together and stared over the edge of the chipped metal seat, watching the world drift by in slow, dizzying circles.
“I do, though,” I whispered. “I thought I had it all planned out. I thought I was—someone. But here I am, a twenty-eight-year-old woman who owns nothing and lives with her grandma—” I cut myself off, a bitter laugh ripping free.
“Or should I say, living with my high school boyfriend because he felt sorry for me? And now I’m—” My stomach churned.
“Now I’m spreading my legs for him like he hadn’t already broken my heart once before. ”
I could feel myself sabotaging this, trying to break it before he could ever break me, and I didn’t know how to stop it.
Colt’s hand tightened on my neck, pulling me forward. “Blaire.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” I looked anywhere but at his eyes, and every bit of me shook as the ride slowed to a stop.
“Look at me.” His thumb slid beneath my jaw and forced my gaze to his. “You don’t get to do that,” he growled, and his fingertips dug into me. “You don’t get to talk about yourself that way, not to me.”
I tried to twist away as my chest tightened. “Stop?—”
He released my jaw, his thumb ghosting over my bottom lip, rough and merciless.
The wheel creaked back into motion, but I was paralyzed by the heat of him, the urgency in his stare.
“You’ve always been enough, Blaire. Always.
Look at how you are with Ruby. Look at what you’re doing for June’s farm. ”
He leaned so close I tasted his frustration. “You weren’t the only one destroyed when you left. I was a kid. A fucking idiot who made mistakes.” His voice shook. “I have a daughter now. I have everything I’d always thought I wanted, and still, I have searched for pieces of you in everyone I met.”
His fingers on my neck became rougher, more desperate, as he held on to me.
“You asked me before about Ruby’s mom. I was too much of a fucking coward to tell you that the real reason she left.
She wasn’t ready to be a mother, but she’d been willing to try for me.
But no matter what I did, I couldn’t make myself love her.
I couldn’t make it work. It never worked, because she wasn’t you. ”
Each admission seemed to cost him, like he was skinning himself alive before me.
I tried to summon anger. I tried to remind myself of all the ways he’d hurt me, all the nights I’d spent cursing his name and every lie he’d ever told. But I felt hollowed out, a canyon of want and regret.
“What?” The word was as raw as I felt.
His next words slammed into me, one after another. “She. Wasn’t. You.”
I made a noise that was almost a sob, and his mouth crashed against mine. His lips claimed me with raw hunger, yet his fingers shook as they cradled my face like something sacred.
Each stroke of his tongue was reverent; each breath we shared a communion. I could feel him worshipping every inch he touched, as if kissing me was both my salvation and damnation.
We devoured each other with such desperation that the idea that this could have ever been casual seemed like madness now. We’d been fools thinking we could ever be anything other than this.
This burning, consuming thing between us.
He tasted of lemonade and something darker, something uniquely him that made me dizzy with need.
His body pressed against mine, hard and wanting, his heartbeat thundering against my chest. I clawed at his hair, pulling him impossibly closer, my body arching into his as if trying to melt into him completely.
I wanted to erase every second we’d spent apart, to burn away every touch that wasn’t his.
His groan vibrated through me as his hands slid down to grip my hips, fingers digging in with a possession that made heat pool low in my belly.
There was just me and him, his mouth on mine, and his hands branding my skin.
Every part of me screamed his name as we kissed each other, the taste of him drowning out a decade of regret.
I didn’t feel the descent, didn’t hear the machinery groaning, until the Ferris wheel slammed to a halt, jerking us apart as we reached the bottom.
His fingers dug deeper into my hips, bruising promises into my skin.
My chest heaved against his, our foreheads pressed together, both of us gasping like we’d been drowning and finally found air.
His pupils swallowed the blue of his eyes, leaving only a thin ring of color around the bottomless want that matched the molten need coursing through me.
“Well, well, well.” McCoy’s voice sliced through the moment, and I jerked back, heat flooding my cheeks as reality crashed in.
McCoy, Hunter, and Ruby stood watching us by the exit, their grins wide and knowing.
Ruby’s eyes shined with such naked hope it made my throat close.
The weight of it crushed against my chest, and panic and longing surged through me.
I wanted to make her happy. I wanted to be the one who gave her everything she ever wanted.
I was desperate to show Ruby that my love didn’t come with stipulations, and I was scared to death that I would prove myself wrong.
My fingers remained twisted in Colt’s shirt, the heat of his skin burning through the fabric against my knuckles. I couldn’t let go. I wouldn’t. Hunter’s smirk followed us as Colt’s grip loosened with visible reluctance, his rough fingertips dragging fire across my hipbone.
“It’s about damn time.”