Chapter 5
Five
Ky
I twist the knob and turn up the song, listening to John Fogerty sing about rain on a sunny day.
It’s beautiful and simple, promising me that the storm will pass and beauty will come in its place.
Though, I can’t help but think of the song’s original meaning.
Of an impending storm, of conflict battling with joy, of ties fracturing.
My body ping-pongs between those two sensations—hope and terror, fear to step out of the shadows and a yearning to move forward. To be free. To find solace in the rainbows that come after the storm.
I just don’t know what side I’ll land on.
Standing in the rain, chilled through to the bone.
Or the water on my skin unnoticed because the rainbows are all I see.
The sounds of the guitar fade and I get ready for my playlist to throw something else at me—it could be anything from more seventies rock to a popular ballad inundating my social feeds, talking about being the man I need. Or eighties hair bands. Or nineties alt rock. Or current R&B divas.
It has a good beat and lyrics I can get lost in?
I’m down.
Because I love music—the escape it gives me, the stories I can live without leaving my house, my car, my—
“Oh no,” I whisper when the chime goes.
My eyes flick to the dash, to the little light that’s appeared on the screen.
A light I’ve seen far too often over the last months.
I turn the corner, pull into the turnout. Our turnout.
And I wait.
Not long—not long at all—for the headlights to flash in my rearview, for the car to pull to a stop behind me.
I wait until I’m sure it’s him before I open my door and climb out.
Normally, I wait for him to speak, to approach, to bridge the gap, ease the edges of my fear so I can talk to him without feeling like an idiot…or like a woman.
One of those is scarier than the other.
Any guesses which?
Because the thought of being a woman again—not a little sister, not a friend, not a teacher…a woman.
That’s scary, a role I haven’t been able to accept.
But something changed tonight.
Maybe it’s that I’m tired, that I don’t want to be here on the side of the road.
Maybe it’s that I touched him.
My pulse speeds at the memory of how the roughness of the bristles on his jaw felt on my fingertips, how the heat in his eyes both rubbed over my skin like sandpaper and set every nerve on fire, making me yearn for so much more.
How, for a second there, I was a woman again.
So maybe…it’s that I walked away from him hoping I would find myself in this exact spot.
With him.
Not knowing—okay, or maybe not wanting to accept—which is the truth has me forgetting to be nervous.
I plunk my hands on my hips and scowl at Colt as he walks over to me. “I’m not stupid, you know.”
His steps hitch but he recovers quickly. “Car trouble?” he asks, ignoring the assertion.
Or at least I think he’s going to.
But instead of going to the trunk, waiting for me to pop it because he knows exactly where I keep my spare tire, he pauses a couple of feet away. “And I don’t think you’re stupid, baby.”
Heat and fear.
Need and terror.
He doesn’t touch me, doesn’t box me in.
But he does keep looking at me and here, under the star-filled sky, the safety of the shadows, the quiet of the darkened world, I find I can look at him right back.
At least until something ripples through his expression, a devastation that’s so complete, so vast, it feels like a knife has been plunged into my stomach and yanked up, tearing me wide open.
Or maybe that’s his quiet words.
“You’re scared of me.”
Not a question.
A fact.
“Yes.”
More devastation that wounds me as much as I’ve just wounded him.
“I would never hurt you.”
My throat gets tight. “I know.”
He takes a step toward me then immediately freezes. “Then why?” he rasps.
I should lie.
But I can’t, not here, not in our place. “Because I’m scared of what you make me feel.”
His eyes close.
Another should—as in I should leave it there, leave it alone.
Let this fade away.
If I asked, I know Colt would disappear from my life.
I just…part of me can’t let him go.
“You played well tonight,” I murmur.
His eyes fly open and the warmth in them, even partially hidden by the night is…about the furthest thing from scary as I’ve ever experienced. “Thanks.”
We stand there for a moment, gazes locked.
Then I blurt, “Hot dogs?”
He starts and I swear if it wasn’t so dark, I think I would have seen his cheeks going red. “There’s a new place in town,” he says as he moves to the back of my car and opens the hatch. “I thought we could try it.”
I still.
I see that he’s gone still.
Then I breathe.
Live.
“If I agree to try it will you stop with the tires?”
He straightens so quickly he hits his head on the open trunk. “Fuck,” he mutters, shifting out from beneath it. “What did you say?”
I just lift my brows. “Tires, Colt.” Then add when his face goes blank, “Like I said, I’m not stupid.”
He’s still, but only for a moment.
Then he comes close again, slow and steady…and still not blocking my exit route.
Maybe that care should make me mad—wasn’t I just thinking I don’t want to be a burden, an object to be looked after? I certainly don’t want this man to see me as a fragile, limp dishrag of a human.
But…I’m not mad.
Instead, I’m…touched.
That he’s looked closely enough to see through my walls, to understand that, though I may want to be free of my past, it lingers.
And so, he takes care with me.
So yeah, not mad. Touched.
And it gives me the strength to move closer.
Near enough to feel the heat of his body, to smell the spicy hint of his cologne, to see the small scar he has beneath his bottom lip.
To search his eyes and find no hint of a monster within.
“Like I said,” he murmurs, staying in place as I get close, as I find myself lifting my hand to his face again, brushing my fingers along his jaw.
Even raspier than before.
Stubble that won’t take much to turn into a full beard.
“Like you said what?” I press when he doesn’t go on.
“You’re not stupid.”
He shifts, just slightly, bending so he’s leaning into my touch, and it’s not fear I’m feeling.
Our bodies are close, but our lips even closer.
If I rose on tiptoe, just an inch, maybe two, I could kiss him.
And that…
I find that I want that a lot.
But even as I’m working up the courage to do precisely that, he turns his head, lips gliding oh so lightly over my palm.
I gasp, but he’s slipping away, going back to the trunk, and pulling out my spare.
In less than a minute, he’s positioning the jack. “Kylie?” he calls.
I shake myself. “Yeah?”
“What’s going on with that show of yours?”
My lips twitch. “The best show in the history of all shows?”
He laughs as he starts cranking, lifting the car, drawing my focus to his strength, his competence. “If you say so.”
“I think you said so, considering you asked about it.”
“I’ll neither confirm or deny,” he says as he loosens the lug nuts and makes short work of changing the tire.
But as he falls quiet, I fill the silence.
With talk about the awesome show.
And more.
Because when he asks, I tell him about my terrible crochet projects (I’m working on a turtle that looks very much…
not like a turtle), about my kids and the shenanigans they get up to, about the new games Damon and Joey want to try out next Game Night, about the little hiking trail near my apartment where I like to clear my mind.
Eventually, he finishes with the tire and stores it in the trunk—where I know it will just need air and to be swapped back out for the spare.
Then he comes back over to me, mouth hitched up on one side. “All set.”
“No more tires,” I murmur.
His half smile turns into a full…and it’s so beautiful my heart skips a beat. “Goodnight, Kylie,” he murmurs back before getting into his car.
But he doesn’t drive away.
And I know it’s because he’s waiting for me to go first.
Same as I know he’ll follow me all the way back to my apartment and watch until I let myself inside.
I know all that…
But it doesn’t occur to me until I’m winding through the darkened roads—
That he didn’t promise about the tires.