30. Chapter 30
Cold.
Fucking cold.
Water slipped over Colt's head and into his ears, and he opened his eyes. Bubbles flared up around his flailing arms and legs.
Beau had—
He'd really tossed him in the goddamn pool.
Another body slid up beside him, and Beau's sleep shirt floated up around his ribs, showing dark hair trailing down his stomach to the hem of his soaking basketball shorts. Then those hands slipped into the water, hooked beneath Colt’s arms, and dragged him to the surface.
When his head broke the top of the water, Colt gasped, taking in a long, damp breath.
The fight drained out of him as his skin kicked up goosebumps from the breeze hitting the moisture on it.
He looked down at his legs, distorted in the water, then up to Beau’s chest, but couldn't bring himself to look in Beau in the eyes.
Beau hooked his arm around Colt’s waist and kicked his feet, and they treaded water while a chorus of crickets screeched somewhere behind them. A pack of coyotes yipped and howled, Beau’s chest rising and falling against his side.
“Let's get you dry,” Beau rumbled.
As much as Colt wanted to say he could swim himself to the steps, he kind of couldn't. His legs were jelly, his head was spinning, and there was a tired so deep it was in his goddamn bones. He allowed himself to be towed, clinging to Beau’s arm as they hit the steps and climbed out.
Toast ran at them as they walked into the house, but he stopped in his tracks when he saw them dripping and hopped backward with an annoyed meow.
“The water,” Colt protested as the puddle formed under them. “I can—”
“It's just water.” Beau put his hand on the back of Colt’s neck and urged him forward. “Robot vacuum mops at five anyway.”
“Okay,” Colt mumbled as he followed Beau's urging through the living room and down the hallway.
They stopped in front of a door that had always been shut, and Beau pushed it open and guided Colt inside. The room was huge, the same wood floors as the rest of the house, a king size bed covered with a plush, dark green comforter and a bunch of pillows.
A towel dropped onto his head, and Beau scrubbed at his hair with it before letting it go.
Colt finished, rubbing his face and neck.
He wrapped it around his shoulders and shivered in the freezing AC.
Beau's bedroom fan was on just like every other person's here in the summer, and Colt’s toes felt like they were being frozen.
“Here.” Beau handed him a stack of clothes and pointed toward another door at the side of the room. “Bathroom's over there.”
Colt held the clothes away from his body as Beau turned his back. Colt’s throat tightened. “Beau, I—”
“Go get changed.” His voice wasn't unkind, but it was definitely tired as Beau dug in his dresser, dripping all over his bedroom floor. “Then we'll talk.”
Beau started peeling off his soaking shirt, and Colt turned around to head into the bathroom so he didn’t stare.
He stripped and hung the wet clothes over the edge of the—enormous, wow—soaking tub.
Once he'd dried himself off, he pulled on the shorts he'd been given and cinched them as tight as they'd go. He had to, or else they’d slip right off.
The shirt smelled like Beau, kind of. Clean, warm like whatever fancy laundry detergent Beau used. Colt brought the collar to his nose for one second before feeling like a huge creep and letting it drop.
Beau was dressed in sweats and a clean shirt, just finishing up running a towel along the wet spots on the floor, but he looked up when the floorboards creaked under Colt’s feet.
Colt stared at his own stomach and twisted his hand in the hem of his shirt.
Which made him look ridiculous—God. He crossed his arms instead.
“Look at me,” Beau said.
Colt didn't. He looked at Beau's feet instead, big and brown with the second toe just slightly longer than the big toe. “Beau. I'm really sorry.”
Shame was pressing down between his shoulder blades now that he'd come down from whatever-the-fuck spiral he'd woken up at two-thirty in the morning already in.
He'd just acted like a fucking psycho in front of the one person he was constantly trying to prove himself to.
In front of the man whose praise made him melt into a Colt-shaped puddle, made him feel alive and good and—
“Colt.” A hand slid onto his shoulder and squeezed. “Look at me.”
He couldn't resist that tone. It was Pavlovian at this point, like he'd trained it into himself. Beau watched him raise his eyes, and held his gaze, and Colt chewed his inner lip.
“You lost yesterday,” Beau said without a hint of accusation. Just a fact. The sky is blue, the cicadas scream in summer, and Colt had lost.
“I know,” Colt whispered.
“But that's not what’s got you like this, is it?” Beau’s hand squeezed Colt’s shoulder, his fingers spreading across his trap. “The loss. It's not about the loss itself. It's not about you thinking I'm disappointed. Is it?”
“Of course it is.” Colt's eyes flicked toward the wall behind Beau, and he scowled. “I dragged you out of a peaceful retirement, made you spend all your time training me, and then fucked up my first race. You're disappointed. And I feel shitty about it.”
The hand on his shoulder squeezed again, and Colt chanced a glance back at Beau, who was watching him with steady eyes. “Already told you that you were wrong about what I was thinking, didn't I?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Colt, come on now.”
“Beau, I just—”
“Colt.” The hand on his shoulder shifted to the back of his neck. “Losing that race doesn't mean you failed Connor.”
The words hit him like blows, and Colt wrapped an arm around his stomach, the other hand shot up to grasp the wasp through his shirt. “That's not—you're wrong.”
Beau placed his free hand on top of Colt's, right over the wasp he'd made into a necklace himself. He squeezed and ducked his head to catch Colt’s eye again.
“Connor wanted you to race. I guarantee you it wasn't about winning to him.
He wanted to see you doing something you love, and that's all there is to it.”
Tears burned behind Colt’s eyes, his throat thick. “You can't know that.”
“Yeah, I can.” Beau stepped closer, warmth from his body seeping into Colt's. “I didn't know Connor, but I know what a man'll do to see his person happy. And I know he didn't give a shit about you winning so long as you smiled while you did it.”
“Beau, I sold his car,” Colt choked, squeezing his eyes shut. “I sold his car, the last bit of him I had, to chase my dreams. And I fucking failed. What was the point? What—what am I doing?”
Beau tugged the back of Colt’s neck and pressed their foreheads together. A lock of wavy dark hair tickled Colt’s nose.
“You didn't fail.” Between them, Beau's voice was rough and low, the hand at the back of his neck tight but not painful. “You learned something. And Connor would have been proud as hell of you for it.”
Colt choked on a sob, and the tears that had been threatening flooded his eyes and spilled over. He reached out blindly and wrapped his hand in Beau's shirt, the other around his back. Grief burned through him like a backdraft, sharp and hot and loud.
Connor was in everything. All of Colt’s best memories.
The first time he'd held a wrench.
The first time he'd been pushed around a track in a motorless box car they'd built themselves from a radio wagon and cardboard.
His first kart.
His first win.
Even his first street race, revving next to Connor in the car Colt had bought with his winnings from the karting season.
Connor’s fingerprints were on every part of Colt’s dreams, and Colt hadn’t realized he’d been racing next to him still until he’d lost.
He sobbed harder, and Beau wrapped both arms around him to pull him close, pressing Colt’s face into his chest and resting his chin on top of Colt’s head. Beau murmured something soothing that Colt didn’t think was supposed to mean anything other than ‘I’ve got you.’
Exhaustion tugged at him as he fell apart, and his legs shook.
Beau guided him backward and sat on the bed before tugging Colt with him, and Colt climbed into his lap, where he pressed his face into Beau’s neck and drowned.
Beau let him fall to pieces and held them all together with an arm around Colt’s back, a hand running up and down his spine.
By the time Colt had cried himself out, he was nothing but a limp mess in Beau’s lap.
His eyes were closed, and he had one arm around Beau’s shoulders and the other fisted in the front of his shirt.
***
Colt was half-asleep in his lap, Beau’s shirt collar was soaked with tears, and Beau still wasn’t letting go.
But he couldn’t sit here with a hundred-and-sixty pounds of man in his lap all night, so when Colt’s breaths against his neck evened out, he shifted.
With one hand behind Colt’s neck and the other under his knees, he laid him out on the bed and covered him up.
As the sheets slid along Colt’s arms, Colt’s brow wrinkled. Then he sighed and burrowed into the covers until all that was visible of him was his wet hair. Beau sat on the edge of the bed, his thigh pressing into Colt’s stomach, and watched him sleep.
That bright, sunshine boy had so much grief buried in him. The same kind as Beau had—the kind that threatened to swallow you whole.
Colt’s hair shrank and spiraled into a mess on top of his head as it dried. One curl was stuck to his eyebrow, so Beau brushed it back into the others. The skin on Colt’s cheek was soft under Beau’s thumb as he ran it along the constellation of freckles across his cheekbone.
Colt sighed in his sleep, and Beau froze. What was he doing? There was nothing appropriate about this—his athlete in Beau’s clothes, Beau’s bed, with Beau’s hand on his face.
Christ.
What the hell was he thinking?
God, I fucking want him.
Swallowing, Beau pulled his hand back and stood. He made sure Colt’s feet were covered and made himself walk straight to the door, pausing and tipping his head back when he started to turn the handle. Do not look back. Don’t.
He did it anyway, drinking in the sight of the wild creature in his bed.
Then he slipped out of the room and shut the door behind him. Toast mrr’d at him from across the hall, his tail flicking.
“Don’t even start,” Beau sighed.
The cat gave Beau a silent meow and padded across the hall to rub against Beau’s calves.
“We’re in trouble, huh, boy?” Beau murmured as he bent over so he could scratch behind Toast’s huge, tufted ears.
Toast’s whiskers twitched as he chittered.
Was Colt going to be okay alone? There was a chair in the corner of Beau’s room. Maybe Beau could—
“Hell.” Beau stood, running his hand over his mustache and down his chin.
Colt was a grown man. He’d had a breakdown, but he’d be fine come morning. Certainly didn’t need Beau there in case he woke up disoriented or upset.
Beau cracked the door and nudged Toast’s rear with his foot. “Go on. Go take care of him.”
Toast was already purring as he sprinted into the room, and Beau shut the door behind him.