TWENTY-ONE
COLT
“Colt.”
Her whisper drags me out of the deepest sleep of my life, probably. I jack-knife up in bed, slapping at the nightstand to find my phone, my mind not putting the pieces of reality together yet.
“Colt!” she whisper-yells again, calming me only slightly.
“What’s the matter?” I ask at full volume, my eyes finally starting to adjust to see her silhouette and that of the lamp on my bedside table. She shushes me as I flick it on, wincing at the light. My eyes rake over her, immediately registering how pale she is.
“Can I sleep with you tonight?”
Normally, I’d make a joke, but I can tell something is seriously wrong. A few hours ago, she wanted nothing to do with me.
“Blair, what’s wrong? Are you okay? Is it the baby?” I ask her, scooting over and lifting the covers. She slips in beside me and it’s only then that I register it’s raining outside. No wonder I’d been sleeping so well.
Blair, it seems, feels the opposite about rain. Thunder booms, and she flinches .
Nothing’s wrong , I realize with a relieved sigh. She’s just scared.
I can handle scared. I can’t handle something being wrong with her or the baby.
I pull her closer, maneuver her so her head rests on my shoulder. “Shh, it’s okay, mama. Just a summer storm.”
“Summer storms happen in the afternoon,” she argues, pressing her face against my neck. I rub her back gently. She’s clammy. I wonder how long she lay in her bedroom, terrified, before coming to me.
“Not always. At least not here. We get them overnight a couple of times a year.”
“Great.” The petulant tone of her voice is cute, but I feel guilty for thinking it.
Still, I have to chuckle quietly.
“There’s lots of other perks to Montana that make up for it,” I promise her, hoping she thinks so too. “Is it okay for me to turn the light back off?”
Blair nods, so I reach across her to do so, mindful of her stomach. “I’m surprised you didn’t take advantage of my sleeping state to cut my dick off.”
I feel like I’ve won the lottery when she snorts. “Thought about it. I’m still mad at you. This means nothing.”
“Sure, darlin’.”
“Don’t sure, darlin’ me. You guys don’t even say that here. It was just a ploy to get me in bed.”
“If I remember right, you were the one so insistent on knocking boots, pretty girl. I wanted to take you out for dinner.”
“To knock boots afterward.”
“Well, yeah, but?—”
“Well, we’re never going to do it again, so I hope you can charm your hand into taking care of you instead. You didn’t have to scandalize my poor doctor by asking questions about your penis.”
I press my lips together, grateful it’s dark so she can’t see my smile.
She’s a bold-faced liar. I saw how she looked at me in the arena the other night.
Whether it’s pregnancy hormones or the raw chemistry we both know already exists between us in the bedroom, I know something will have her coming back.
“I think the astronomy girlies call it manifesting,” I finally say.
She pulls her head away from my chest to stare at me, and lightning flashes at the perfect time for me to see the incredulity on her face. “Astrology.”
“Same thing.”
“It really isn’t.”
“Stars and shit.”
She opens her mouth to argue, but thunder booms and she flinches again, hiding her face against my neck.
“You want me to eat your pussy and wear you out so you can fall back asleep?”
“Colton!”
“I fucking love it when you say my name like that. All scandalized and shit, like I’ve never eaten your pussy before, never made you scream as you fell apart on my tongue,” I whisper in the night.
Her breath hitches. “Colt,” she says, quieter.
I want to beg her to let me take care of her, but I also don’t want her to feel like my bed isn’t a safe space for her when she’s scared, like she can’t come here without worrying about being harassed.
“Or we can watch something instead. Do you have a favorite show we can watch together?”
The change of subject confuses her. I can tell by how long she stays quiet. Maybe she’s deciding which road to take, as though both won’t always be available to her. In the end, she sits up, turning the lamp back on while I grab my laptop.
I spend the rest of July falling in love with my child’s mother while watching a show about a group of spoiled rich kids that live in New York until she falls asleep on my chest every evening.
I wouldn’t say it beats eating Blair’s pussy, but it’s up there.
I’ve busted my ass on this ranch every day since Maddox said I could come home.
Even on days he gave me an out, like he had today, I didn’t take it.
I didn’t know if he was testing me or not, but I wanted to prove to myself even more than I wanted to prove to him that I could do this.
I could work hard. I could be serious. I could make an honest living for Blair and our baby.
Plus, I knew I’d probably miss a lot of days for appointments and when she gave birth, so missing days in between didn’t feel right. As far as I know, Maddox has never missed a day in his life.
Which is why I found it strange, when I finally pulled myself out of the house and out for morning chores, that Maddox wasn’t there. Jamie was doing Maddox’s work on top of his own, so I slipped in and picked up some of Jamie’s tasks.
“Thanks,” he says with a grateful grin when I start breaking up the hay he’s dumping out for the cattle.
“Is Maddie okay?”
Jameson’s grin grows. “Yeah, I’d say he’s probably right as rain. Getting a really good sleep, if I had to guess.”
I look at him like he’s crazy, but he doesn’t elaborate. It’s Tyler, who trudges over through the gate in the fence between our properties, that finally clues me in.
“Is that Austin’s pickup at Maddie’s place again? When did she get back?”
“Yesterday afternoon. The truck hasn’t moved since.”
“Oh, hell,” I say, understanding why Jamie’s in such a good mood now .
The boss getting laid regularly meant a universal truth on any job site: Work was about to get a helluva lot easier.
“Thank god,” Tyler bemoans, heading toward the chicken coop.