Chapter Colin Adams
COLIN ADAMS
I wished Monday would hit like lightning—but damn, it took forever to arrive.
I needed to settle things with Isabelle, but I still had no idea how much what happened would affect us. And that us was already hanging by a thread.
When I saw her walk in, I noticed her differently. Don’t ask me why—I don’t even understand it myself.
It was your mistake bringing her as your date!
That voice in my head was right. Absolutely right. I should never have asked her. Hell, I shouldn’t have gone at all. I should’ve just retired from everything—stayed buried in my house, drowning in memories of what I’d lost. Because it was my fault.
“Colin… I’m sorry about that night.” Her eyes didn’t meet mine, and her face flushed almost instantly.
I didn’t want to talk about it. Not now. Not when she was standing so close. This was getting harder by the minute. That woman pushes me to my limit.
“We’re not talking about what happened,” I said flatly, my tone sharp enough to make her flinch.
“Colin, I—”
“Was I clear?” I snapped, raising my voice and stepping closer.
I needed to intimidate her somehow. She wasn’t in control of this situation.
I was. I had to be.
“It was wrong,” she whispered, eyes fixed on the floor.
“Extremely wrong.” I took another step.
What the hell am I doing?
“Very…” She stayed frozen, but I kept moving toward her. Closer. Closer.
“I need to get to work.” She glanced up, trying to sidestep me, and in that instant, I lost it.
“No!” I barked, pinning her against the wall before I even knew what I was doing. Her expression changed instantly—shock, disbelief. Isabelle stared at me like she couldn’t recognize the man in front of her.
And honestly… neither could I.
“Colin, what… what are you doing?” she whispered, her voice trembling, each word barely threading through the air between us.
“Don’t talk,” I said hoarsely, before reason had a chance to stop me.
And then it happened again.
That moment I’d tried so hard to erase came rushing back with the same intensity, the same weight, the same desperate need I’d sworn I’d buried.
Time hadn’t healed me. I realized that the second my lips touched hers. Everything I thought I’d overcome came roaring back—longing, guilt, desire. It all crashed through me like a wave I couldn’t fight.
Kissing her again was like ripping open an old wound I’d refused to let heal.
I pulled her into my arms without hesitation.
Her body tensed for a moment—shock, maybe resistance—but then something shifted. The air changed. She softened beneath my hands, and the shock melted into something that hit me like a punch to the gut: acceptance.
Her lips yielded to mine—first hesitant, then with a quiet surrender that tore down the last of my restraint. The kiss started uncertain, like we were feeling our way through forgotten territory, but it deepened fast—raw, hungry, desperate. It was both a reunion and a confession.
The warmth of her skin seeped through my shirt.
My heart pounded out of rhythm—I couldn’t tell if it was mine or hers.
Every movement, every breath, every brush of our lips carried the weight of all we’d lost…
and the force of everything still burning between us, no matter how many times I’d tried to kill it.
She tasted the same. Smelled the same.
And she still had that same devastating power to destroy me.
And me—the man who thought he could keep her at a distance—found myself sinking straight into what I feared most: the living memory of what we once were.
Her hands, once tense, slid up my shoulders, over my neck, and tangled in my hair. When she pulled me back to her, I realized I wasn’t the only one kissing anymore—she was meeting me halfway, with the same urgency, the same need.
The kiss deepened, gaining rhythm, hunger, soul.
Her breath burned against mine, the sound of our sighs filling the silence around us. It felt like the world had stopped, like nothing existed beyond that moment—two bodies trying to remember how to breathe together.
When I finally pulled my lips from hers, the air returned thick, too heavy to fit between us.
Isabelle—my Isabelle—kept her eyes closed, her lips still parted, as if she didn’t want to let the moment slip away.
And looking at her, I realized just how wrong everything inside me was. Because no matter how hard I tried to deny it, she was still my weakness.
And kissing her—God, kissing her—was the most inevitable mistake I’d ever made.
Isabelle!
“Colin… don’t start something you won’t finish.”
I don’t know why, but that line flipped a switch in my head. Maybe because she was right. No—she was right. I had no intention of giving this woman false hope, and she didn’t, either.
Isabelle worked for me, period. I couldn’t let my body make choices my mind already knew would explode in my face later.
I stopped the kiss abruptly—the same kiss I’d started.
I didn’t even know what I was feeling anymore. Was it anger? Or fear? Fear that this thing between us was already spinning toward something I wouldn’t be able to control.