20. Chapter 20 #2
I sighed. “Fine.”
“And without the look.”
“What look?”
“The one where you mentally revise the agreement.”
I grabbed a napkin from the table and threw it at him.
Colt caught it against his chest.
For one startled second, we both froze.
Then he laughed.
A real laugh.
My own followed before I could stop it.
The tension did not disappear. Nothing had been solved. I was still a former therapist sitting across from a man who had once been my patient. He was still healing from injuries tied to choices that terrified me. We were still carrying more emotional damage than either of us knew how to unpack.
But for the first time since he walked through my door, I stopped feeling as if one wrong sentence would destroy everything.
Colt set the napkin aside. “Do you want to ask now?”
I blinked. “Ask what?”
“Whether I want help.”
I hesitated, then chose the words carefully but not clinically. “Do you want to talk about why the joke bothered you?”
He stared down at his food. “No.”
The answer sparked immediate anxiety through me.
I sat with it.
Did not push.
Did not ask if he was sure.
“Okay,” I said, picking up my carton.
Colt watched me for several seconds, suspicious and quiet.
Then he said, “It reminded me how close I came to fucking everything up.”
My fork stopped.
“I knew what I was doing,” he continued. “Maybe not every time. Maybe I had a hundred excuses for it. But going back to the ring, picking fights, acting like getting hurt was just part of the job…” His jaw tightened. “There were nights I wanted it more than I should’ve.”
The food in my lap became impossible to swallow.
I set it down.
Colt’s gaze flicked toward me.
I kept my hands still.
“Do you want me to say something?” I asked.
He nodded once. “Yeah.”
The permission nearly undid me.
“I’m scared of that,” I admitted.
He looked away.
“Not scared of you. Not judging you. Scared because I know I can’t control whether you ever feel that way again, and every part of me wants to.
I want to notice before you do. I want to say the exact right thing and prevent the exact wrong thing and make sure you never get close to that place again. ”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is.” My voice thinned. “And I know caring about you doesn’t make me responsible for keeping you alive through sheer vigilance.”
Colt turned toward me fully.
His hand appeared in the space between us.
Palm up.
In another version of our relationship, I would have been the one offering contact carefully enough to let him choose.
Now he was offering it to me.
I placed my hand in his.
His fingers closed around mine.
Warm.
Callused.
Real.
“I don’t know how to do this either,” he said.
“This?”
“Any of it.” His thumb moved once over my knuckles. “Being the guy who says he’s not okay before he’s already halfway to destroying something. Letting somebody see it. Letting you see it when I know you’re going to worry.”
“I will worry.”
“I know.” His fingers tightened slightly. “I’m asking you not to make worrying about me your whole life.”
The words landed hard enough that I stopped breathing for a second.
“I don’t want that,” I said.
“You sure?”
“I’m sure I don’t want it.” I looked down at our joined hands. “I’m less sure I know how to prevent it.”
Colt nodded slowly. “Then we figure it out.”
The conversation shifted after that.
Not because the difficult parts disappeared, but because we had survived one.
Outside the hospital.
Without a crisis forcing honesty.
Without me turning his pain into something to manage.
Without Colt deciding discomfort meant he had to leave.
We talked about things I should have known and somehow did not. His first motorcycle, a barely functional Honda he bought for two hundred dollars from a man who claimed the engine only needed “minor work.”
“The engine was in three boxes,” Colt said.
“And you bought it?”
“Two hundred dollars.”
“That explains why you made a terrible decision. It does not justify it.”
He pointed his fork at me. “Therapizing.”
“That is not a word.”
“It is now.”
I laughed and tucked my feet beneath me. “What happened to it?”
“Got it running.”
“Of course you did.”
“Took four months.”
“Was it worth it?”
His expression changed just enough.
“Yeah.”
I felt the question rise.
Why?
Then I hesitated, suddenly unsure whether curiosity sounded too much like analysis.
Colt watched the argument happen across my face.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Ask.”
I pressed my lips together. “Why was it worth it?”
He leaned back against the couch. “First thing that was mine.”
I went quiet.
He pointed at me again. “Don’t.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re making the face.”
“What face?”
“The one where you find emotional significance in a carburetor.”
“It was already emotionally significant.”
“Jesus Christ.”
I laughed.
Then he did too.
The sound filled my apartment, and something about it struck me so unexpectedly that I had to look away.
“What?” he asked.
I stared toward the dark windows. “I don’t know you like this.”
He went still.
“I knew so much about you,” I said. “Your history. Your triggers. Your coping mechanisms. Things you had never told most people. But I didn’t know about the motorcycle.
I don’t know what food you order when no one is watching.
I don’t know what music you listen to when you’re alone.
I don’t know whether you leave cabinet doors open. ”
“I’m not a monster.”
A laugh caught in my throat.
“I know the worst things that happened to you,” I said softly. “I know some of the worst things you’ve done to yourself. And now I’m realizing how many ordinary things I don’t know.”
Colt’s thumb stopped against my hand. “Does that bother you?”
“Yes.” His expression tightened, and I squeezed his fingers. “Not because I think I was entitled to know them. It bothers me because I spent so much time telling myself I understood you.”
“You did.”
“Parts of you.”
“Bad parts.”
“Painful parts.” I shifted closer without consciously deciding to. “But I want the others.”
His gaze fixed on mine.
“I want the stupid motorcycle stories,” I said. “I want to know why you apparently believe curry should be a near-death experience. I want to know what you do on a Sunday when no one needs you.”
“That sounds a lot like dating.”
My heart gave one hard, painful beat.
“I think it might be.”
Colt looked around my apartment, then at the cold takeout on the table. “This is a shitty first date.”
I stared at him.
“I showed up uninvited,” he said. “Insulted your food. Made you negotiate rules for not accidentally treating me.”
A laugh burst out of me. “Not your best work.”
“No,” he agreed, watching me with a warmth that made the air change. “But I’m here.”
The laughter faded.
He looked down at our joined hands. “When did this happen?”
I knew what he meant.
Still, I asked, “What?”
“Me wanting this.”
The vulnerability in his voice stripped away every clever answer I might have given.
“I don’t know.”
“I do.” He looked up. “The locker room.”
I blinked. “The locker room?”
“When you confronted me about the boxing.”
The memory hit immediately. My anger. My fear. The certainty that he was going to destroy himself if someone did not make him stop.
“I was furious with you.”
“I noticed.”
“I wasn’t particularly kind.”
“You called me a self-destructive asshole with a martyr complex.”
I winced. “That sounds like me.”
“It does.” His expression sobered. “You were angry, but you weren’t afraid of me.”
My smile disappeared.
“People get careful when I’m angry,” he said. “Even the club sometimes. You didn’t. You got angrier.”
“That may not have been wise.”
“It wasn’t.” He looked at our hands. “But you were so fucking unwilling to accept my bullshit. You didn’t care that I could’ve walked out or told you to fuck off.”
“I cared.”
“Didn’t look like it.”
“I was terrified.”
His gaze lifted. “Of me?”
“No. Of what was happening to you.” I swallowed. “And of what was happening to me.”
Colt did not move.
“I was losing objectivity. Every time you walked out, I thought about you after you were gone. Every time you took a risk, I was angry in ways that had nothing to do with professional concern. I kept trying to force it back into something clinical because the alternative scared me.”
“This?”
“At the time, I didn’t know what this was.”
“And now?”
I could have given him something beautiful.
Something certain.
Instead, I told him the truth.
“Now I know I have feelings for you I can’t explain away.”
His breathing changed.
“I know leaving hurt more than it should have if you were only my patient. I know seeing you in that hospital bed scared me enough that I stopped caring whether admitting that was wise.” My voice softened. “And I know you’re standing in my apartment right now, and I don’t want you to leave.”
His eyes searched mine. “Is that enough?”
“For tonight?” I asked.
His shoulders eased. “Yeah.”
“Yes.”
At some point, without either of us acknowledging it, Colt moved closer.
An inch.
Then another.
His knee settled against mine, and our hands remained linked between us. I could hear the kitchen clock, the traffic six floors below, my own heartbeat.
Colt lifted his free hand.
Then stopped.
His fingers hovered near my face.
The hesitation nearly broke me. Not because I doubted what he wanted, but because he was waiting.
I closed the remaining distance.
His palm settled against my cheek.
“Still okay?” he asked.
My chest ached. “Yes.”
“You’ll tell me?”
“Yes.”
I leaned into his hand before I could become frightened by how much I wanted to.
Colt exhaled slowly. “I’m scared.”
I did not search his face for symptoms. I simply waited.
“That I’m going to hurt you,” he said. “That my shit is going to become your shit. That I’ll wake up one day and be right back where I was three weeks ago.” His jaw tightened. “That you’ll eventually realize this was a terrible fucking idea.”
My first instinct was immediate.
Correct him.
Reframe the language.
Challenge the assumption.
I did none of those things.
Instead, I covered his wrist with my hand.
“Do you want reassurance or honesty?”
“What’s the difference?”