14. Chapter 14
Caroline
I was beginning to understand that my perception of Colt had been fundamentally incomplete.
The women connected to the Serpent Sinners became my inadvertent teachers.
Not in an official capacity—I was still navigating professional boundaries carefully.
But because I'd started attending more of Lena's events, more of the community fundraisers, I'd become part of the extended circle that surrounded the club.
And the circle talked.
Sweet's wife, Jemma, found me helping with silent auction setup at a community center event. She was pregnant—maybe five months along—and she moved with the careful deliberation of someone carrying new life.
"I wanted to thank you," she said. "For what you did for Colt."
"I was doing my job as his therapist."
"No. You were doing something more. You cared enough to push him toward healing instead of enabling his self-destruction.
" She settled into a chair beside me. "When he first came back from the black-site, he was broken in ways I didn't think could be fixed.
But you... you made him believe that fixing was possible. "
"That's overstating it," I said, but I listened as she talked.
She told me about the time after the black-site, when a young prospect named Marcus had been injured during a security operation.
Colt had sat in the hospital chair for three days straight.
No mattress brought in. No real sleep. Just Colt watching over a kid who barely knew him, making sure he wasn't alone when he woke up.
"Sweet told me about it after," Jemma said. "Said Colt wouldn't leave because he felt responsible for every prospect that got hurt. Wouldn't accept that he couldn't protect everyone."
That sounded like survivor's guilt. That sounded like the deep-seated belief that he was responsible for the safety and wellbeing of people he had no control over. That sounded like the man I'd been treating who carried the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Later that week, I saw Jade at a coffee shop. She was writing in a journal with the large viking-looking one watching her every move like she’d hung the moon. I sat down across from her.
"You wanted to talk to me?" she asked, recognizing the look.
"No. I just wanted to listen. If you're willing to talk about Colt."
She set down her pen and she considered me for a long moment. "Why?"
"Because I'm trying to understand him better. As a person, not just as a patient."
"Okay then." Jade leaned back. "During the war with Xtinction, things got bad. Really bad. People were dying. Brothers were getting arrested. There was this moment where we thought we were going to lose. Thought the club was actually going to be destroyed."
"What happened?"
"Colt happened. He started planning operations that put himself directly in danger. Volunteered for the most high-risk missions. Didn't care if it got him killed because at least it meant his brothers had a chance to survive."
She told me about a specific operation where Colt had been the bait. Had drawn Xtinction forces into an ambush that could have killed him ten times over. Had done it deliberately. Strategically. Using himself as the weapon because he believed his life was more expendable than his brothers'.
"He saved all of us," Jade said quietly. "Not just the club. Innocent people too. There was this woman—I don't know the details, but Colt risked everything to keep her safe when Xtinction decided to use civilians as leverage."
I thought about the young woman in his case file. The one injured in the crossfire during operations. The guilt he carried about her.
"What happened to her?" I asked.
"She made it. Got relocated. Last I heard, she was doing okay. But Colt didn't know that at the time. He just knew he'd put her in danger, and he spent weeks trying to fix what he'd broken."
Rochelle told me similar stories but from a different angle. She was working with Lena on one of the outreach programs, and we grabbed lunch between sessions.
"You know why they call him Killer?" she asked, not bothering with preamble.
"Because he's violent?"
"Because he's efficient. Because when a threat needs eliminating, Colt is the one who steps up. But here's the thing—his violence has always been directed outward. Toward actual threats. Toward people trying to hurt his family or innocent people caught in the crossfire."
She told me about the night Don's forces had attacked the club house. About how Colt had placed himself between the gunfire and the prospects who'd still been inside. About how he'd taken shrapnel and a bullet graze and kept fighting anyway.
"But he's not cruel," Rochelle said that same week. "I've seen him with people. With the prospects. He trains them hard, but it's because he cares about their survival. Every violent thing he does serves a purpose beyond just hurting people."
By the time I'd heard a dozen stories from a dozen different women, a picture emerged that shattered my remaining assumptions about Colt's violence.
He was dangerous. That was true. But his danger had always been a tool.
A weapon deployed in service of protecting others.
The self-destructive version of Colt—the one boxing until he bled, punching walls, trying to destroy himself—that was new.
That was the trauma talking. That was the black-site breaking something fundamental.
But underneath the broken parts, there was a man who'd spent years choosing to sacrifice himself so others wouldn't have to.
That realization broke my heart.
I started paying closer attention to him at the events I attended.
Noticed things I might have missed before.
The way his entire body relaxed when he saw Ditch enter a room—trust. The way he interacted with the younger prospects—patient, careful, protective.
The way his sarcasm had shifted from being purely defensive to being actually playful.
When we saw each other at Lena's recovery program fundraiser the following week, he maintained eye contact longer than necessary. His smile was genuine instead of the defensive smirk he used to deploy like armor.
"How's work going?" he asked, which was such an ordinary question that it felt like intimacy.
"Busy. Rewarding. I had a patient make significant progress this week. It's the kind of work that reminds me why I do this."
He nodded like he understood exactly what I meant. Like he recognized that the work mattered because the people mattered.
"I'm glad you're doing work you care about," he said.
The simplicity of the conversation felt charged with everything we weren't saying. How I cared about his wellbeing. How he was making genuine progress. How much harder it was getting to maintain professional distance when he looked at me like I mattered to him.
"The investigation is ongoing," he said. "About the inconsistencies in my case file. Ditch is coordinating with the Lords. Whatever happened during my capture, someone's still trying to hide it. And they might still be watching."
"Be careful," I said, and the concern in my voice was entirely unprofessional.
"Always."
After he walked away, I stood in the middle of Lena's event, and I admitted something to myself that I'd been avoiding for weeks.
I wasn't worried about crossing professional boundaries anymore.
I wanted to cross them.
I wanted to be the person who wasn't his therapist. The person who could care about him without having to frame it as clinical responsibility. The person who could imagine kissing him without it being a breach of ethics.
Five more months until the arbitrary line between appropriate and inappropriate shifted. Five months until I could want him the way I actually wanted him without it being professional misconduct.
It felt like both an eternity and no time at all.