TWENTY-NINE
COLT
“And why, do you think, neither of you have initiated the conversation? Surely, it would be better to make sure you’re both on the same page?” Melissa asks, her voice tinny through the computer speaker.
I let out a sigh, leaning back against the headboard of my bed at the Big House.
It’s not that I don’t want Blair knowing I’m joining biweekly virtual therapy sessions, it’s that I don’t want Blair knowing how fucked up I am.
She only sees the Colt that’s busting his ass.
She doesn’t need to know the Colt that was on the roof the night she reached out. They’re not the same person.
“I don’t know,” I lie, but Melissa just cuts me a look. She called me out on trying to use my dimples to charm my way out of difficult conversations in the first session, so I don’t try to bullshit her anymore.
“Mmkay. Well, if you want to pay me to sit here for an hour and get nowhere, that’s your money to waste, I suppose.”
I snort. She’s not at all what I expected when I started looking for therapists shortly after finding out Blair was pregnant, but I like how she talks to me.
“I guess I’m just scared, maybe? That I’m just… convenient for her. She could have anyone she wants, but I knocked her up an d brought her out to live with me. I just don’t want her to feel trapped.”
Melissa hums and types, which I hate. I know I’ve said something particularly fucked up when she starts typing.
“Do you think it’s possible she may have similar fears?
That you’re the one that’s ‘trapped’ just because she got pregnant?
” she says. I open my mouth to argue and she puts her hand up.
“Don’t get defensive. I’m not saying you are or that getting pregnant was her fault or any of the numerous things I know will trigger that protective side of you when it comes to her.
I’m only asking you to consider that she might feel that she’s trapped you just as much as you feel you’ve trapped her. ”
“But she hasn’t trapped me. And I’ve told her that.”
“I know that,” Melissa tells me with a nod. “But that’s only because you and I have talked about how much Blair means to you.”
It’s a very pointed remark and I don’t appreciate the clarity it brings. I huff anyway.
“It’ll scare her away if she knows how big my feelings for her are already.” She starts typing again. “Dammit. Fine. I’ll tell her when I get home tonight.”
“I’m not rushing you to tell her, Colt,” she says, her tone gentler now. “Tell her on your own time. I’m just advocating the reasons why you should tell her. Not just about your feelings, but about the nights on roofs and your intentions for the future as well.”
“She’ll really be scared then,” I mumble, trying to make it sound like a joke even though it’s anything but.
Blair doesn’t need to know she saved me.
That’s so much pressure to put on someone.
She doesn’t need to know the man I was before her.
She just needs to know the man I’m becoming, the one that’s trying to be even a little bit good enough for her.
My phone’s alarm goes off and I sigh, silencing it. “Goodbye until next week?”
“Til next week, Colt,” Melissa says with a gentle smile.
The love of my life is reading on the couch when I get home from work that evening. I put my hand on the back and lean down to kiss her forehead, but she tilts her chin just enough that our lips meet instead.
“Good day?” she asks when I pull back, anxious eyes, like she’s somehow worried I didn’t want her to kiss me, even after yesterday.
“Much better day now,” I tell her with a small smile. “Gonna shower really quick, and then we need to talk.”
She sits up, as quickly as she possibly can with her stomach, using the back of the couch to help pull herself forward.
“What about?” she asks, nerves apparent in her voice.
“Nothing bad. I just need to shower first so I can sit down with you on the couch.”
“We can sit outside,” she replies, just as quickly as she sat up.
I grin. “Baby, the shower’s gonna take me ten minutes, tops.”
“I’ll sit on the toilet lid. We can talk while you’re in the shower.”
“No, we can’t.”
“Colt,” she whines. “You can’t just say we need to talk and then expect me to wait and not be anxious. That’s not how it works.”
I cup her cheeks in my filthy hands against my better judgment and look her straight in her beautiful, nervous eyes.
“It’s nothing bad. I’ll be ten minutes. Why don’t you get the next episode set up for us and order pizza? I bet I’m back down here not long after you’re finished.”
I try to make the shower quick, hating the thought of her worrying, but I’m honestly shitting a brick myself.
Pretty Blair with her pretty, green doe eyes and her long black hair and that swollen stomach with my kid inside.
She deserves the fucking world and I’m terrified that living on a ranch in Montana, an hour from the closest mall, and nowhere near the beach, will be too much for her. Or too little, maybe.
I pull on a pair of gray sweatpants, because I know she loves them on me and it can’t hurt to have that on my side. It’s the same reason I walk into the living room shirtless, towel-drying my hair as I go.
Blair’s sitting on the sofa with a back so straight you’d think it was strapped to a pole.
“Baby,” I chastise her gently, kissing her head as I round the sofa. “I told you it wasn’t anything bad.”
“Anxiety doesn’t work like that, unfortunately,” she snaps.
“What do you think I’m going to say?” I ask her, taking a seat on the sofa beside her. “I’m sure if you’re anxious, you’ve thought of a million things it could be. What’s got you all nervous like this?”
Blair bites her bottom lip, eyes making their rounds as they trace my face.
“You’re with someone else? Or you want to be?”
I choke out a laugh.
“No, pretty girl,” I tell her after she swats at me for laughing. “You’re the only girl for me. Well… you and baby bear. I promise.”
“Then what?”
With a sigh, I push her hair from her face. She’s so fucking beautiful it hurts sometimes. I hope our kid looks far more like her mother than she does me.
“Do you feel like I’ve trapped you here?” I ask her hesitantly, a whisper.
I watch her brows furrow, cataloging every movement. The way she jerks back a centimeter, the way her nostrils flare.
“What? No!” She sounds almost offended I even asked her that.
“I took you from California and brought you to this ranch, so far away from people and beaches and everything you probably loved there. Away from your friends.”
“I’m used to moving, Colt. I never get attached to one place for very long.”
I still, my hand falling from her head. That wasn’t something I’d considered.
I’d worried I trapped her, but I hadn’t considered that she could simply leave me any time she wanted to.
Right now, she didn’t have a job, but I’d bet she could find one pretty easily.
She had a college degree, after all. She could put it to use.
“Do you think you could become attached to Cedar Creek?” I whisper, terrified.
I’d follow her, is the thing. It was a shitty thing to think, and I’d never admit it out loud, but if she left… I wouldn’t let her get far. Especially knowing she had my kid with her.
“Colt,” she says back, just as quietly. She scoots closer on the sofa and I resist the urge to just tug her straight into my lap.
“At risk of sounding like a clingy psychopath, I’m here as long as you want me here.
Or, well… if you start acting like an outright jerk, I may leave, but I don’t see that happening. ”
“It won’t,” I’m quick to promise, sounding ridiculously desperate. “It won’t. I’ll take such good care of you, Blair. You and my babies.”
“Babies? You want more?” she asks, her smile growing wry. She slips into my lap of her own accord, and I think that’s even better than me dragging her here.
I hum, wrapping my arms around her middle.
“Definitely. And I want to get married, after she’s born. I’ll propose properly later, but just… I want to make it clear that you’re my forever.”
Her fingers thread through my hair.
“You’re my forever too, Colton Whittaker.”