Chapter 19
NINETEEN
VIOLET
OCTOBER | COLUMBUS, OHIO
COLT
alright so I finished it
got stuck in traffic on the bus into Newark
VIOLET
and?
COLTON
it’s safe for you.
VIOLET
thank you. and?
COLTON
I really liked it :)
the ending was cute
and who knew lobster trappers were so horny?
VIOLET
in a romance novel, anyone can be horny. it’s great.
COLTON
that’s the world I want to live in.
VIOLET
I’m going to finish it over lunch. we’ll have to compare notes
COLTON
I may have already started the billionaire one…
we might need to call the bookstore because I think these pages have illicit substances in them
VIOLET
lol you dork
“Hey, bestie!” Kitty whispered into the phone. I was calling her during a brain break before I started my evening work on our data set. “I’m on set but I want to talk to you anyway.”
“Oh, well, don’t let me ruin a scene,” I said. Kitty was a writer and actor in Hollywood, and for now, things were working with her husband, Guy, playing for the LA Princes. We weren’t allowed to say the “T” word (trade) lest we jinx their arrangement.
“I’m sneaking away, hang on.” A few seconds passed. “Alright, I’m good now. They don’t need me again for a while. How’s it going?”
My stomach fluttered. “Um, good, I think. I mean, work has been hell, but hopefully it’s leading to a good result. But, um, I saw Colton a few days ago.”
“Oh?” she asked. “And how is Colton Jones? Annoying as ever?”
I chuckled. Kitty was around for my first time dating Colton and was one of many people who pretended to buy my lie that he “got annoying.”
“He’s not. I may have been wrong about the annoying part,” I said. “Shoot. I guess I have a lot to tell you. Maybe you should call me when you get off work.”
“Everything okay?” she asked. “Don’t make me buy a parka and come out to Ohio.”
I laughed. “It’s not that cold yet. And anyway, Boston was way colder. But yes, I’m fine.”
“So what’s up with Colt?”
I winced. “How much time do you have?”
I caught her up on everything: my discovery in therapy, calling Colton, our couch sleepover, and now our book reading project.
After Kitty got finished cussing about Pete and how she was going to make Guy kill him, the interrogation began. “So, you and Colton are back on?”
“I . . . told him I just needed a friend. Because I don’t want to run out on him again, you know? He’s been so patient with me, and he deserves better than that.”
The line was silent.
“Kitty?”
“I’m going to say a lot of things you won’t like,” she warned me.
I chuckled. “I expect no different from you. If you started lying now, I’d be highly suspicious.”
She heaved a sigh. “I think Colton would let you break his heart four hundred times and still come back for more.”
“I know,” I said. “The man doesn’t have a self-preserving bone in his body. That’s why I’m keeping my distance.”
“By reading sexy, romantic books with him?” she guffawed. “Yeah, that definitely won’t have an impact on how you feel about each other.”
“Even if it does, this is how I need it to be right now. I don’t want to be vulnerable and latch onto him just because he’s here while I’m healing.
If we connect, I want it to be for the right reasons.
Not pity or guilt or obligation. And . .
. I haven’t been with anyone since him at your wedding.
I’m not sure entering a sexy relationship is the best idea. ”
Kitty hummed. “I hear you. On all of it. But of all people, Colt has your best interest at heart. If you’re going to do anything with anyone, he’d be the best candidate. He knows you. Knows your story. He’d never be mad at you.”
But the whole problem was tied up in that. Sure, he wouldn’t be mad at me, but he could still get hurt. Really hurt. If he has my best interest at heart, who’s watching out for him?
COLTON
cliche, but
u up?
VIOLET
:)
sadly yes
My phone rang in my hand with a video call request. I jumped to pull the covers above my armpits before answering. I was already in my bedclothes for the night, and thus, naked under the sheets.
“Hey,” I said.
Colt’s brow lifted and he chuckled. “Bad time to call? Got company?”
“Very funny.”
He grinned. “No, it’s cute. I love your bedclothes.”
A lump rose in my throat, because when he said things like that, the ways he’d absorbed everything I told him back then, it made all the good things flash back.
All the ways he supported my studies, whether it was with food or quietly working in the same room for a sense of camaraderie.
Waking me up with neck kisses and his signature nuzzles, even when I griped that I was still sleeping.
The time he came to one of my presentations and sat in the back row, completely rapt when I dared to see if he was watching.
I hated giving presentations, and I still thought of his almost embarrassingly eager smile when I had to give one.
And the fact that he remembered just as much as I did, if not more, made me want to simultaneously chuck the phone across the room and jump through it to hold him and never let go.
“I’ll get a shirt on,” I said, setting the phone to face the ceiling while I scrambled out of bed and to the dresser. I pulled out the shirt on top: the one he bought for me at the bookstore.
I came back on camera, fluffing my hair out of the shirt, a movement that Colt tracked with his lips hanging agape. He smirked. “Nice shirt, pretty girl. It’s swallowing you whole, though.”
“I like the boyfriend fit of t-shirts,” I said. “Even better if they’re broken in and smell like a boy.”
Colt’s smile became more vacant. “Good to know. Can’t sleep?”
“Ugh, no. We’re preparing a new study to go to the IRB.”
“Internal Revenue . . . Bervice?” Colt asked.
I laughed. “Institutional Review Board. Sorry. So many acronyms in research. They decide whether your study is clear to proceed as you’ve designed it. They’re pretty rigorous though. You have to prepare to get barbecued. It’s a lot of work.”
Colt listened to me with a knit brow. “That sounds tough.”
“Yeah. I’m just awake overanalyzing everything.”
“Sorry. You want to talk about books instead?”
I nestled into the sheets. “I want to hear about your experience reading smut on the team plane.”
He rolled his eyes and his cheeks flushed red. “Oh, you mean the part where they caught me with a hard-on and told me to take the book with me into the bathroom because they don’t put Playboy in the bathroom anymore?”
My jaw dropped. “No. No way. They noticed?”
“Noticed, discussed it at length.”
“Length.” I snorted. “Which scene made this happen?”
Colt dug the heel of his hand into his eye socket. “The dinner at the lobster trapper’s house. With the tequila.”
I sat back in the sheets and grabbed my water cup for a sip. “Oh yeah. That’s a good one.”
“Yeah. It reminded me of that time we were in that hotel room and your tits—” Colt stopped himself. “Anyway. Oh! I forgot to mention: my teammate’s wife loves that book. She likes to do buddy reads with her friends. Jeanine. You’d like her. She’s really nice. I’ll have to introduce you.”
I crossed my ankles in my lap and looked down at them. How the hell did he loosely dive into our last very messy encounter and then just rebound with “I found you a friend!”
“That’d be nice. I don’t know too many people out here.”
Colt’s smile was soft. “You have me.”
Warmth flooded through me. “It’s nice to have you back.”
Silence crackled between us, a thousand things I wanted to say hanging in the air. I was the problem. Me, exclusively. Colton was nothing but too forgiving. Kitty’s words haunted me: he’d let you break his heart four hundred times and still come back for more.
I was selfish, keeping him around while not knowing if I’d ever deserve the affection and kindness he rained down on me like confetti. While not knowing if I’d ever be what he needed sexually. But he interrupted my thoughts. “So, how do you want to talk about the books?”
I smirked. “I’ve never really done a book club or anything, but I guess we talk about our favorite parts?”
Red crept up Colt’s neck and he rubbed the back of it. “You mean overall, or the sexy parts?”
“Um, either,” I squeaked. “I think people call it spicy.”
“Right. Spicy.” Colt pinched his lips together and the camera jiggled where he lifted a hand to run it through his hair, his nervous habit again.
“I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable. We don’t have to talk about the spicy parts. I already went too far and grossed you out talking about touching myself.”
His jaw clicked forward and his voice dropped. “I got turned on, Violet. Not grossed out.”
My mouth turned into a desert. “Oh.”
Colton’s eyes passed over the screen, his voice husky. “I remember everything about you. You need to know that there is absolutely nothing about you that is gross.”
“O-okay. Thanks?”
“Sorry. Now I’m making it weird.” He rocked around in whatever chair he was sitting in.
His fingers pinched his hair, little sections sticking out like he was in a barber’s chair.
“I’m trying so hard not to cross the line with you, Vi.
I know you just want to be friends, and I completely respect that.
I want to give you the space you need and still be there for you.
I just got you back and I don’t want to lose you again because I screw something up. ”
“Do you not want to read together?” I asked. When did my voice get so dry and wispy?
“No, I do. I enjoy it, but it does make this kind of stuff come up. I don’t want to push you into anything you’re not ready for.”
I swallowed hard. “You’re not. Not at all. We should probably just address the elephant in the room. We’ve had sex. A lot. And it was good . . .”
Colt stared at the screen, eyes expressionless. “Until I hurt you.”
I licked and bit my lips. “I know you didn’t mean to. And I hurt you too.” Tears rose in me, unbidden, and I fought them with a pathetic sniffle. “I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t mean to hurt me either,” Colt said. “I know that.”
I nodded, still stuffing down a bigger crying spell. “I don’t want to be fragile.”
Colt’s eyes were soft, brows drawn. “You aren’t, baby. Someone hurt you.”
How? How could he still call me baby after everything? How could he still harbor any affection for me? But he did. He so clearly did.
I grabbed a tissue from my nightstand and honked my nose into it.
I coughed a humorless laugh. “You know what’s really stupid about all of this?
I miss sex. I read this stuff and it makes me crave that connection so badly.
” I looked up to find Colt listening, so I went on.
“I want to be that kind of woman, you know? One who can get bent over, and spanked, and can deepthroat, and get used in the best ways, but I want it to be my choice this time. I want the control and the power, but sex never goes according to plan. And I’m afraid if I start that up again, I’ll do exactly what I did before. ”
Colton nodded, looking pensive. He drew a deep breath. “What if there was a plan?”