Chapter Twenty-One
The text waited for him when he woke. Holding his phone above his head, Colt blinked at the screen, at the name attached to the missive, a name he hadn’t seen in his messages for nearly ten years.
Thank you
His brows screwed together in a painful scowl. His arm itched to sling his phone at the wall, an irrational impulse he’d never give into.
Thank you? What did that even mean? And what was he supposed to do with that?
Did he even want to do anything?
Acknowledgement wasn’t an olive branch, wasn’t forgiveness or even connection.
He’d lived with the loss for years, so he knew how to do that, how to live without Tick.
At the beginning, he’d thought it would kill him, as surely as a misfired shotgun had killed Will.
Confronted with the consequences of his own actions — and being drunk wasn’t an excuse — he’d wanted to die, had thought about what that would be like, the pain and separation swallowed up in peace and nothingness.
In the church, two pews behind Tick, he’d trained his gaze anywhere but the bowed line of his cousin’s neck and shoulders. He’d looked at the silver coffin, at the flowers, even at the profile of Aunt Lenora’s ravaged face.
And he’d known dying as a form of escape wasn’t an option.
He would never do that to his mama.
So he’d learned to live with the loss, like an amputee who’d severed his own limb but suffered phantom pain every damn day.
So when he’d been offered a chance, he leapt from a crumbling rock face, laid himself out there with an admission of how wrong he’d been, how he hated what he’d done to Tick. He’d suffered Lamar walking away, gritted his teeth, accepted they really were done.
Thank you
The words didn’t mean much of anything. Wasn’t like they were an open door or a smile coupled with a backslapping hug or an I miss you, too or even an I forgive you.
Definitely not I still love you.
Or I’ll always love you.
His chest tight, he stared at the text, the screen dimming while he worked through what he felt.
Alone, even with Holly curled up warm along his side.
Abandoned, maybe, even though, yeah, what he’d done amounted to the worst thing. He probably deserved that one.
Angry, even though he didn’t want to admit it, because it was a selfish, self-serving anger. He didn’t deserve to feel that.
And accepting because hope never did anything but hurt him. Acceptance couldn’t quite live in the same space as hope, at least not when it came to him and Tick.
He touched a fingertip to the screen so it came to life again, the text still there, taunting him.
He held his finger down on the words, on Tick’s name, swiped to the left when the red square appeared. The text vanished, Tick and Thank you swallowed up by Andy’s meme-laden text thread about marriage and parenting. He reached to lay his phone on the nightstand.
Yeah, he didn’t need that. He’d already accepted the reality, the loss, and he had a hope he could live with, misty little visions of a life with the woman sleeping beside him.
That was enough for now.