Chapter Nineteen #2
Shame burned Colt’s face and neck, settled into a lump of ice in the pit of his stomach. He tensed his gut, like waiting for a punch, although the fist to his jaw had never come.
“Nothing wrong between us.” Bile coated the roof of his mouth. He wouldn’t lie. “It’s just the way things are. I broke his trust, and we stay out of each other’s way.”
Lord, he couldn’t handle Louise looking at him like that, brown eyes full of love and sympathy, accepting him the way D had when he finally owned up to what he’d done.
And Gene just watching him, steady and even.
He jerked a thumb toward the door. “Can we go?”
His voice fucking cracked.
Swallowing hard, clamping his jaw tight, he tried again. “Don’t want you to miss your tee time if we have to pick him up.”
Gene nodded, still eying him, and Colt suffered through another tight hug from Louise, although this one turned his stomach, made his skin crawl. Mouth set, he strode to the driver’s side of his truck, eyes dead ahead of him.
He couldn’t look at Grandaddy.
With Gene safely belted in, he backed out, assuming the caution he always did when he had precious cargo. If he white-knuckled the wheel, fine. His jaw hurt from the pressure there, too.
From the corner of his eye, he caught Gene circling a finger over his knee. Huh. D did that sometimes, too. Colt had caught himself drawing that same circle a time or two. Funny how that worked.
“You broke his trust.” Gene’s quiet statement functioned like a question as well as a sledgehammer to his chest.
“I ain’t talking about it.” The AP-classes, college-educated diction could go. He wasn’t the one with a master’s degree or the professional career. How he spoke in the cab of this truck didn’t matter.
In actuality . . . nothing he did mattered.
Familiar weight settled in the center of his chest.
“No point in me talking about it.” He kept his voice even, matching Grandaddy’s tone.
Opening himself up to D was one thing — that was his daddy and he’d needed to be vulnerable, needed to create enough space so he could hold the looming pain of seeing Tick and being shut out, being less than invisible.
Tick was Gene’s boy. Grandaddy had stepped in for him when Uncle Lamar died. Colt knew Grandaddy loved him — but they didn’t operate the same.
“I did wrong, and he has a right to the way he feels about me.” His knuckles ground like gears under pressure. “I live with what I did and try to do better. Every fucking day.”
Gene’s head whipped in his direction. Colt got it. They had an unspoken rule about what kind of cussing they could do in his presence, and he’d crossed the line. What did it matter anyway?
He wasn’t the man Grandaddy thought he was, never had been.
Setting his jaw helped him resist the urge to cry. No point in that – his little interlude with D aside, crying never solved anything.
“Colton.” Grandaddy laid a heavy hand on his knee.
“Don’t call me that.” He jerked his leg to one side, away from that weighted touch, but kept the truck steady as he took the right hand at the fork north on Georgia 3. He swallowed, his mouth impossibly dry. “Please.”
“Sure.” His tone even, Grandaddy pulled his hand back. Colt didn’t lift his from the wheel, thankful for the console between them, the restoration of a boundary, even as a new, fresh grief unfolded in his heart, twining with the old rancid one to choke him.
All that bullshit he read online advised him to acknowledge how he couldn’t change the past, not to dwell on the mistakes he’d made there. The problem with that?
The past lived and breathed every day, four states and hundreds of miles away.
And now, in the cab of his truck.
How Holly wanted him, didn’t see what he was every time she looked at him, he didn’t know.
Instead of slamming his palm against the wheel, he flicked on his blinker for the turn to Long Lonesome Road. No car behind him needed the signal, but a guy had to follow the rules. All of them.
Suddenly everybody around him but Tick wanted to break the unspoken ones, and how was he supposed to function?
Quiet blanketed the cab, broken only by the hushed hum of tires on pavement and the low crooning of The Beach Boys because he had a channel designated for Gene on his satellite radio.
He was good with quiet. Despair lived there, but he knew how to handle that.
He might just live in quiet the rest of his earthly years.
This must be how Dimmesdale felt at the end of The Scarlet Letter, scarred and beaten, exposed to the world. That scene was supposed to be about freedom and triumph, but Colt had always figured the guy just felt defeated and relieved because he didn’t have to fight anymore.
Didn’t have to self-flagellate anymore because, damn, that shit exhausted a man.
He slowed for the drive to the house that had once been one of his favorite places to be.
The original cracked concrete was long gone, replaced when Tick had had the place redone earlier in the year.
A fence guarded the river — guarded Eleanor, really, from the river — and the vintage black Jeep waited in the drive.
Colt pulled to a stop beside it, catching sight of Red Dog parked under the back shed.
The square body Ford held memories, but he was too wiped out to think about those, good or bad.
And it was only eight-thirty.
He put the truck in park, left the motor running. Grandaddy opened his door and stepped out, glancing back with a quirked eyebrow. “Come on.”
Colt bristled. “No.”
Resting his arm along the open door, Gene studied him, one hip cocked. “Son, did I stutter?”
Staring at him, Colt fought down a multitude of responses — slamming his hand into the wheel after all, flat out refusing to comply, leaving the old man here and letting Tick drive him to the course. All held a certain appeal, but men didn’t act like that, not in his world.
Jaw tight as a pipe wrench, he shut off the engine and opened his door. Fuck it but being raised right was a bitch sometimes.
He followed Gene up the brick walk to the porch, setting his gaze on the back of Grandaddy’s head, refusing to catalogue any changes to the house. He didn’t belong here, and Gene made a huge mistake in dragging him through this.
Tick didn’t come to the door when Grandaddy knocked, so Gene being Gene, he punched in a code on the back door lock and swung it open. Stepping aside, he laid a hand between Colt’s shoulders and ushered him inside. “Boy?”
“Grabbing my shoes, Grandaddy.” Tick’s voice, hoarse and a little ragged, carried from what used to be Louise and Gene’s bedroom. The door had been in a different place, though.
Colt paused, two strides into the kitchen. Everything old was gone, except the piece of trim where Louise had measured her boys as they grew. The house felt . . . weird, maybe, bearing Aunt Lenora and Deanne’s touch and not quite enough of Tick and Caitlin’s yet to feel like a home.
This was more a pretty vacation rental.
“Lamar, get a move on, boy.” Gene raised the authority level of his voice. “I ain’t aiming to be late and lose our tee time.”
“I’m coming.”
He stared at the tile mosaic over the chef-worthy gas stove. Tick was about a sandwich or pizza, but maybe she cooked. Maybe it was for show.
Hell if Colt would ever know.
She hadn’t seemed flashy. She’d seemed genuine, a little nervous and shy under that old-money polish, and Colt had actually enjoyed talking movies with her. But what did he know? Maybe she was as much a chameleon as—
He wasn’t going there.
Why he was standing here, thinking about asinine shit that didn’t matter was beyond him. He should have stayed his ass in the truck, or better yet, stayed his ass at home. Wasn’t like he hadn’t figured golf would involve Tick if he was in town.
Murmured voices preceded the thump of bare feet on the hardwoods, a familiar stride close to Colt’s own.
A handful of steps into the living room, Tick skidded to a stop, a pale line about his mouth, every muscle in his body fired up like he faced down a threat.
Colt refused to let his shoulders slump, but yeah.
In the circumstances, having him in the house they’d been in and out of as kids probably hit like a threat.
He didn’t say anything, barely let his gaze skim over Tick, staying out of his way as much as possible. Definitely should have stayed his ass in the truck.
Gene snickered, and Colt darted a look at their grandfather. He thought this was funny–
But the old man’s gaze wasn’t on him, but on Tick, whose cheekbones flushed a dull red. Colt frowned. What was that all about, anyway? He swung his gaze back in Tick’s direction.
Oh. Got it.
The collar of Lamar’s sweater, over an undershirt, half-covered the bruise, but that was definitely a lovemark where his neck met his shoulder.
Colt hitched his thumbs in his pockets. Geez, hadn’t Tick learned that lesson ten years ago?
Back then, she’d left a deliberate hickey on his neck, had laughed about it in front of them.
Aunt Lenora had hit the ceiling, and Tick had groused for days about being made to sit at the kitchen table and fit a condom on a banana.
The whole incident had bothered Colt to no end at the time.
He was careful with Jada, and she was careful with him, not that they’d gotten up to near what Tick had been doing with her.
They liked each other, were okay kissing and making out a little, but they’d just gotten to the point where she’d let him put his hand under her shirt. No hickeys in his world.
Her little showout of putting one on Tick and stirring up trouble for him at home? Yeah. That had bothered him.
Maybe that mark was deliberate, too. Maybe his cousin had a type, women who didn’t get the idea of boundaries.
Hell if Colt would ever know that, too.
Running his fingers through his ruffled hair – like he’d already been tousling it – Tick dropped on the upholstered ottoman to pull on his socks and shoes.