26. Chapter 26 #2
“But I also don’t think one day defines you.”
His throat moved.
“You were trained for violence long before you had any meaningful choice in what kind of man you wanted to become,” I said.
“Then people used that training against you. Hurt you. Broke your sense of safety and taught your nervous system that danger is the one place where you know exactly how to function.”
Colt looked away.
“That doesn’t make what happened today meaningless,” I continued. “And it doesn’t make you a monster. It means there is still work to do.”
His shoulders sagged.
“I’m so fucking tired of work.”
The words shattered something inside me.
Not because they were dramatic.
Because they weren’t.
Colt sounded exhausted.
I crossed the remaining distance.
This time, I did not ask.
I moved slowly enough for him to stop me.
He didn’t.
My hands settled against his sides.
“I know.”
His eyes closed.
“I’m tired of every decent thing in my life turning into another reason I need to fix myself.”
My throat tightened.
“Then don’t fix yourself tonight.”
His eyes opened.
“Sit with me,” I said. “Shake. Be angry. Hate what happened. Be relieved we survived. Feel guilty that part of you felt alive.” My voice softened. “You don’t have to turn it into a recovery milestone before morning.”
For several seconds, Colt did not move.
Then his forehead dropped against mine.
We stood like that in the middle of the living room.
His breath against my mouth.
My hands against his body.
The security system humming around us.
“I thought you were dead.”
The words were so quiet I almost missed them.
My body went still.
Colt’s eyes remained closed.
“When the first rounds hit the vehicle, I couldn’t see you.” His voice roughened. “Sweet pulled over. Prime was firing. I saw the glass go and I couldn’t fucking see you.”
My eyes burned.
“I knew the shooter positions. I knew what I was supposed to do. But all I could think was that I had waited too long.”
“Too long for what?”
His face tightened.
I felt him retreat before he moved.
“Colt.”
He stepped back.
The loss of contact was immediate.
He paced two steps away, then stopped.
I waited.
His hands closed into fists.
Opened.
Closed again.
“I told myself I wasn’t saying it because it was too soon.”
My heart stumbled.
Colt stared at the floor.
“Then I told myself it was because you’d been my therapist. Because everything between us was already complicated enough.”
I stopped breathing.
“But that wasn’t it.”
He looked at me.
There was terror in his face.
More than I had seen on the highway.
More than when he admitted he had killed three men.
“I didn’t say it because the last time I needed people, they used it against me.”
My eyes burned.
Colt swallowed hard.
“I didn’t say it because loving you means you can fucking destroy me.”
The room disappeared.
Every sound.
Every thought.
Gone.
There was only him.
Colt stood several feet away from me with his hands shaking and his face stripped of every defense I had ever watched him use.
“I love you, Caroline.”
My chest broke open.
He exhaled like the words had physically hurt.
“I love you.”
The second time was worse.
Or better.
I could not tell.
“I loved you when you were still pissing me off in that locker room. I loved you when you left and I hated you for how much it hurt. I loved you in that hospital room, but I was too fucked up and too scared to understand what I was asking you to stay for.”
Tears blurred my vision.
Colt’s voice broke.
“And today, when I couldn’t see you through that fucking window, all I could think was that I might lose you without ever telling you the truth.”
I covered my mouth.
For months, I had imagined what love might feel like if I ever allowed myself near it again.
I had imagined safety.
Warmth.
Certainty.
This was none of those things.
This was terror.
This was a man standing in front of me after the worst day of our lives and handing me the exact weapon he had spent years refusing to give anyone.
The power to hurt him.
The power to leave.
The truth.
I crossed the room.
Colt did not move.
I stopped in front of him and placed both hands against his face.
His eyes closed.
A tear slipped free.
That undid me.
“I need you to look at me.”
He did.
“I have spent months trying not to love you.”
His breath caught.
“I called it concern. Responsibility. Countertransference. I buried it under every clinical term I knew because if I could diagnose it, I didn’t have to admit it was mine.”
My thumbs moved over his cheeks.
“But it was mine.”
Colt stared at me.
“I loved you when you were impossible. I loved you when you made me so angry I could barely see straight. I loved you when I left, and that was why leaving nearly destroyed me.”
His hands closed around my wrists.
Not pulling me away.
Holding on.
“I love you, Colt.”
His face broke.
There was no other word for it.
Every wall disappeared.
Every hard line.
Every practiced defense.
He pulled me against him, and I went willingly.
The kiss landed somewhere between a sob and a collision.
There was nothing careful about it.
Nothing tentative.
Colt kissed me like a man who had spent months starving beside a table and only just realized he was allowed to reach.
I kissed him back just as hard.
His hands slid into my hair.
Mine fisted in his shirt.
When we broke apart, both of us were breathing too hard.
“I love you,” he said again against my mouth.
A laugh broke through my tears.
“I heard you.”
“Need to make sure.”
“You’re very thorough.”
“Occupational hazard.”
I laughed again.
The sound seemed to undo him.
His forehead dropped against mine.
For a few seconds, we simply breathed.
Then his mouth found mine again.
Slower this time.
Deeper.
The fear did not disappear.
Neither did the ambush.
Three men were still dead.
One man was still fighting for his life.
Marcus was still hunting me.
Xtinction was still coming.
But none of that made this less real.
Colt’s hand moved down my back and settled at my waist.
He stopped.
Even now.
Even with both of us shaking.
His eyes searched mine.
“Tell me what you need.”
The question moved through me like heat.
Not Are you okay?
Not Can I fix this?
What do you need?
I slid my hands beneath his shirt, feeling warm skin and the rapid beat of his heart beneath my palm.
“You.”
His eyes darkened.
“Caroline.”
“I need to feel something that isn’t fear.”
His hand tightened at my waist.
I kissed him.
“And I need you to understand that I’m choosing this.”
Something raw moved across his face.
“Choosing you.”
His mouth found mine again.
This time, neither of us pulled away.
The world outside the circle of his arms ceased to exist. The blood on the pavement, the smell of gunpowder, and the looming shadow of Marcus were all drowned out by the roar of my own pulse.
I didn't want tenderness; I wanted to be consumed.
I wanted the friction and the heat to burn away every trace of the terror that had been clawing at my insides for weeks.
Colt didn't hesitate. He gripped my waist and hoisted me up, my legs instinctively locking around his hips.
I felt the hard ridge of his cock pressing against my center through our clothes, a promise of the release I was starving for.
He backed me against the nearest wall, the rough brick scraping against my skin, but I didn't care.
I only cared about the way his mouth crashed back onto mine, his tongue sliding deep into my throat, claiming me with a desperation that matched my own.
My fingers scrambled with the buttons of his shirt, ripping a few loose in my haste to feel his bare chest. When the fabric finally fell away, I pressed my palms against his muscles, feeling the tremors running through him.
He was shaking, not from fear, but from the sheer effort of holding himself back.
"Now," I whimpered against his lips. "Colt, please, right now."