40. Colton
COLTON
“Who knew Frank was such a monster at pool?” Brynn asked as we made our way into my place.
I threw the door open for her and relinquished her just long enough to get her inside. “The second I watched him sink that red stripe on Jett during that third round he played, I knew he was taking it.”
“Really?” she asked as she shrugged off my windbreaker and hung it up on the coat rack near the door. “How did you know?”
“Form,” I said simply as I made my way toward the stairs. “Form tells all.”
She snickered. “Is that the slogan for the season? Form tells all?”
I chuckled as I held my hand out for her. “Might as well be. Coming?”
She tossed me a wink as she slipped her hand into mine. “Always, when you’re around.”
I barked with laughter as we made our way up the steps.
We immediately moved toward my bedroom, but instead of collapsing onto the bed, we danced around one another.
It wasn’t a rehearsed dance by any means, but I watched as she washed her face at the sink.
I moved around her as I changed out of my clothes and into a pair of my sweatpants.
She slipped around me, bebopping back and forth from my closet until she was settled in a pair of my boxers and a gardening shirt of mine that practically swallowed her whole.
She beamed with pride as she climbed into bed, and I took an equal amount of pride wrapping my arm around her and pulling her close.
“Mmm, you’re always so warm,” she muttered as she hunkered down beneath my arm.
I placed a chaste kiss to the top of her head before I pulled the comforter over us. “How are you feeling?”
She giggled softly, and it brought such peace to my soul. “Good. Tired, but the good kind of tired. You?”
I pressed my nose into the top of her head and inhaled her scent. “Good. I’m… I’m good.”
She paused. “You sure?”
I drew in her scent again. “Just thinking.”
“About what?”
I wasn’t sure if I was ready to talk about New York.
To admit my plans, or the fact that I now wanted to throw those plans out the fucking window.
After all, we’d only been doing this for a few weeks.
I tried tallying up the weeks in my head, only to embarrass myself.
Three weeks. In three weeks, this woman had blazed a trail into my world, flipped that shit on its head, and left me scrambling to get upright.
The idea of leaving her made less and less sense as the days ticked by.
But admitting that to her out loud? That I was willing to change all of my life plans in the span of three weeks? Jesus Christ, I didn’t want to scare the poor woman.
I hopped to another topic that I was, at the very least, curious about. “Is your mother all right?”
I felt the curiosity in her pause before she answered. “As far as I know. Why?”
I shrugged. “She just wasn’t at the game, or so the guys say. Apparently, she comes into the—”
She gasped. A bit delayed, but I guess when my words finally registered, she scrambled onto her knees, turning to face me, and gasped.
“Mom wasn’t at the game? Why didn’t you tell me!? What do you mean she wasn’t at the game? Tell me everything. Was she not in the locker room afterward?”
I furrowed my brow. “No. That’s when the guys told me that she’s usually in the locker room celebrating wins with them.”
Without another word, she scrambled out of my bed. I tried reaching for her, but the blankets and sheets and pillows went fucking flying as she yanked at them to get out of the bed just a tad quicker.
“Brynn, I’m sure she’s—”
“I’ll be just a second!” she exclaimed as she raced out of the room.
I chuckled and shook my head as I eyed her pants on the floor. I counted down the seconds in my head from ten, and by the time I got to two, she was already stomping back up the steps.
“I think my phone’s in my pants,” she said as she rushed back into the bedroom.
I just grinned as she snatched her jeans up, digging around in the pockets, and pulled out her cell phone.
I expected her to call. Immediately. Maybe even put it on speakerphone so that someone else could bear witness to the apparent travesty I didn’t understand. But instead, she unlocked her phone and stared at the screen.
“Brynn?” I asked.
She slowly put her finger up to me, her eyes scanning the screen. She must’ve had text messages or something.
“Okaaaay,” she said as her fingers flew across the screen of her phone. “I got one text about an hour before the game saying she was on her way, and then another one ten minutes after that about a flat tire.”
“Did she miss the game because of the flat?”
She shook her head. “No, the message says she’s going to be late. Not that she’s not coming at all.”
I didn’t hesitate. “You know she’s not your responsibility, right?”
She paused before she slowly raked her eyes toward me. I’d never seen an accusatory look in her eye before, but it was there now. “You know you drink too much, right?”
My jaw clenched. “Brynn.”
She turned her body to face me. “Colton.”
I didn’t like this. I didn’t like the way she looked. She deserved more than that. More than this.
I wanted to give her the world.
“Brynn,” I said, forcing my voice to lighten for her sake, “are we ever going to talk about the fact that both you and I understand that you’ve put your entire life on hold for a problem with your mother that isn’t yours to solve?”
She quipped back without hesitation, which told me she’d thought about this conversation, too. “Depends. Are we going to talk about how I’m basically just the owner’s daughter that you’re fucking?”
Not even I was prepared for the answer she gave. It ripped the fucking air out of my lungs.
Almost immediately, regret crossed her face. “Colton, I’m so sorry, it’s just, right now? With Mom? It’s—”
I held up my hand, silencing her words. “You know what I think?”
She shook her head softly.
“I think it sounds like we need to have this conversation out loud, instead of the two of us having it separately in our heads.”
She sighed so hard her shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry.”
I held out my hand for her. “I know.”
She put her phone back to her face. “Just let me send—”
“No, Brynn,” I said. “Put the phone down and come here, please.”
I knew that word would catch her attention.
Please. I never used it. Not often enough, anyway.
At first, I wasn’t sure she was going to listen.
For the smallest of moments, I braced myself for the idea that she might scoop her clothes off the floor, flip me the bird, and march out of my life completely.
But instead, she sighed again as she came back around to her side of the bed, tossing her phone onto the bedside table, and crawled back in with me.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered as she crawled into my lap.
I enveloped her with my arms and tucked her head into the crook of my neck.
And before I even took a breath to speak on her apology, she began crying.
So I held her tightly while she wept.