Chapter 31
Colt
Denver and I are still pressed together, my hand cradling the back of her head, the taste of her still on my lips.
My brother looks between us, his expression torn between bewilderment and disgust.
Fuck.
He shakes his head, his eyes wide. “What the fuck?”
Denver is frozen, her attention on him, her breathing picking up. She pulls from me. “I … need to go.”
I try to take her hand, but she snatches it back. “Denver—”
She grabs her coat from the couch and strides toward Wilder but stops when he doesn’t move aside. His mouth keeps opening and closing, and he scratches his neck.
“Move,” Denver whispers. “Or I will hurt you.”
He steps back and allows her to leave. I stride after her, taking her hand as she pulls the front door open and steps over the threshold. “Denver, just let me—”
“No.” She tugs her hand free from me. “This is why I couldn’t do this. This is why I …” She glances behind me. “I can’t do this, Colt. I’m sorry.”
This was my worst nightmare. Even before I fell for Denver, the idea of them meeting again kept me up at night. The worst-case scenario then was that she’d kill him. Now, it’s this. That I’ll lose even the fragments of time I have with her.
The cold bites into my skin as I follow her down the steps and onto the sidewalk. “Him existing doesn’t change how you feel about me, and it certainly doesn’t fucking change how I feel about you.”
She spins on her heel to face me. “Him existing changes everything! Do you know what it’s like to be blamed for someone’s death, Colt? To love someone and have their best friend look you in the eye and say this is your fault. Because I do. I know exactly how it feels, and it’s because of him.”
“I … I can’t change that, Del.”
There are no tears in her eyes. No sadness or despair.
Something darker, angrier, has taken over her expression.
The snow is heavier now, flakes twisting between us in the breeze that picks up a piece of her hair and blows it across her face.
“And I can’t change how much I want to walk back into that house and slit his throat for murdering people just because he could. ”
She turns and walks away, and I stare after her.
Everything in me wants me to follow her, but it’s useless when I don’t know what to say to fix it. It’s been nearly a year, and I still can’t fucking fix it.
One of my men across the street catches my eye and I nod at him, a silent command to make sure she gets home safe. I go back into the house. The door bangs closed behind me as I stride past my brother and into the living room.
“You’re fucking Ranger’s wife?”
“Get out, Wilder,” I say, running my hand down my face as I go to the mantle.
His laugh is one of disbelief. “Colt—”
“I’m not fucking her; I’m in love with her!” I bellow at him, and he stares at me like he doesn’t know me. The irony of that isn’t lost on me, because he’s felt like a stranger for years.
“Tell me you’re fucking kidding.” he says. “She wanted to kill me not long ago.”
It’s an effort not to tear through the furniture to get to him. “You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t carry the weight of your fuck-up every single day? You really think it hasn’t crossed my mind how fucking pointless this is?”
He stays in place, looking torn between apology and hate. “I—”
“What, Wilder? What? What do you want to say? You’re sorry?
You wish you could change it? You wish that the one woman I’ve loved since my wife died wasn’t being taken from me because you threw a tantrum and killed half a dozen people?
” I grip the coffee table and turn it over, candles and crayons and glasses scattering across the room.
“Tell me how fucking sorry you are, Wilder. For everything you did. For burning Finn’s routes, for nearly isolating the man who raised us because you couldn’t handle being told what to do.
For starting a war you had no idea how to fight. Tell me how sorry you are!”
“I am!” he screams. “I say it every day! I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry, but I was … I … I lost Marnie, I—”
“And I lost Callie. I lost Amy. And you know what I did? I punished myself, not everybody else!”
“My wife was stolen from me!” His eyes are glassy, his voice breaking.
“You have no idea what it’s like to know she’s still out there in pain, needing me, and I can’t do a fucking thing about it!
You know where Callie is. You know where Amy is.
Your family is gone, but at least they’re at peace!
What about Marnie? Where the fuck is she?
What are they doing to her?” He sobs out the final word.
“It fucking haunts me. I look at Holly and I see Marnie and how I’m doing nothing to get her back.
I’m in this house, or I’m at Mom’s, and I’m fucking dying inside. ”
My mind is torn apart by images. Of Denver walking away, of Marnie making coffee the day she was taken, of Callie in a delivery room, of Amy in a hospital bed.
Of so many people we’ve lost. Of grief that feels like smoke between us, climbing into our lungs and across our minds and clouding any happiness we have left.
I pull Wilder into a hug, and he sobs into my shoulder, clinging to me.
Denver is right. He will always be here. He will always be my brother. I can’t give up on him; I never will. I won’t let him fight alone, and maybe I’m setting myself up for failure by letting him rely on me, but I don’t know what else to do.
And as my brother cries in my arms, I realize I have to let Denver go.
She’ll never forgive him. I’ll never walk away.
I love them both, but I’ve made my choice.
And I choose my family.