41. Brynn
brYNN
I couldn’t help it. Once the tears started, they didn’t stop. I cried so hard, I shook. I cried so hard that I felt snot dripping down my face. I tried moving my head so that I could keep it off him, but all he did was rest his hand against the side of my face and softly push me back.
I let all of it drip onto him.
I wasn’t sure how long I cried. I wasn’t sure how long he held me. But once my eyes finally dehydrated themselves, he slid us down into bed. He pulled the comforter over us, his shoulder alone mounting it so high that it felt like the world was blocked off from around us.
I felt safe.
Safe for the first time in years.
My mouth moved a million miles a second.
“I never should’ve said that, Colton,” I said, wiping at my eyes and nose. “It’s just… people always give me such a hard time about Mom. And I know they have every right to. But grief isn’t just a one person thing, you know? It’s a whole family thing sometimes.”
I felt him tuck a rogue strand of hair behind my ear. “I’m proud of you.”
“Huh?”
He gripped my chin and tilted my watery gaze up to his. “I’m proud of you for finally putting a word to it. You’ve danced around that word for a while.”
I shrugged softly. “It’s not my diagnosis.”
“But it does affect your life, and you deserve to be able to talk about it.”
“It’s not my struggle.”
“Whole family thing, right?”
I sighed heavily. “Well, fuck.”
He chuckled before he kissed my forehead. “Do you want to know why I chose not to drink tonight?”
I winced at his question, but shook my head. “No. Why did you?”
“Because you’re right.”
I snapped my stare back up to his. “What?”
He smoothed his thumb along my lower lip, catching a tear I didn’t realize had dribbled down my face.
“You were right. I do drink too much. I never drank like that before the scandal that broke. It started with the divorce, and coping with the empty house, and the empty bed, and the empty… everything.” He shrugged softly.
“Then the news broke and I lost my job, and I figured… why not? People drink over less. It’ll be fine. ”
I scooted a bit closer to him, pressing my leg in between his. “And now?”
He studied my face for a while before he spoke. “And now, there’s no reason for it. The drinking was supposed to help get me through the rough times, not become the foundation of the good times, too. But I let that happen. I let it spiral out of control.”
I blinked. “Do you think that’s what I’ve done? Let my relationship with Mom spiral out of control?”
He shook his head. “No. Do you want me to tell you what I think?”
“Please,” I said.
He scooted just a little closer, his arm slipping around my waist. He caged me against him, and I wondered if I was going to even like what he had to say.
I relished his warmth as his lips moved. “I think you’re allowing your mother to spiral out of control because you keep her surroundings so stable and so put together that she doesn’t realize how much this has eaten away at her.”
I searched his eyes. “You think I enable her.”
“I think you give her the prime environment for her to enable herself. Just like the media could dig into me at any moment and find me still drinking, still fucking, still on this trend, I guarantee you that if I dug into your mother’s life—your mother’s routine—I wouldn’t find much of a deviation. ”
I snickered. “That’s because there’s… not…”
And then, his meaning finally slammed against me. It wasn’t that my help wasn’t hurting Mom, it was that my help was a Band-Aid over a gaping wound that needed stitches.
I swallowed hard as the realization blanketed me. “So, what now?”
He scooted so close that we were sharing a pillow. “What do you mean?”
I shrugged softly as I gazed deeply into his eyes. “Where do we go from here? What do we do? How… do we fix these things?”
He brought my hand to his lips to kiss, his eyes never wavering from mine.
“My drinking stops. I’d love to have the occasional one over dinner with you whenever we go out, but I’m no longer bringing it into the house.
If I drink, it’s out, so that people can see and it’s not this dirty secret that I keep close to my chest.”
“You’re going to do that?”
“I am. It’s what’s best. If I want to move forward with my life and carve out a path I can be proud of, I have to leave behind everything I’m not proud of. My drinking is one of them. The scandal is another.”
I felt panic fill my face. “What if the media finds out we’re together?”
“Is that why you made your comment? You’re worried they’ll start hounding us?”
“Isn’t that what the media does? Hounding people for news?”
He traced his thumb along my cheek. “I won’t lie, there are a lot of similarities between the position I’m in with you and the position I was in before. But do you know how I know this situation is different?”
“How?”
“Because I didn’t love her the way I love you.”
I froze. Did he just say what I think he just said?
“Colton,” I whispered.
“You don’t have to say it back,” he said with a soft shake of his head.
“You don’t have to say it, ever. But if I’m going to start this between the two of us as a new man, I want that new man to be honest. About everything.
And I care for you, greatly. More than I’ve ever cared about any woman in my life, and that includes my ex-wife. ”
My eyes bulged. “Don’t say something like that. You were married to her for years!”
He nodded softly. “Married, and unfulfilled. She was a responsibility I felt I had to take on. Don’t get me wrong, I cared for her, but I didn’t love her. Not really. Not until I realized what love was when I first laid eyes on you.”
My gaze watered over. “Oh, Colton.”
He cupped my cheek, holding my gaze with his.
“You are everything I could have ever asked for, and then some, Brynn. And I know we haven’t known each other for long.
I know we’ve just kind of been tiptoeing around this and throwing caution out the window, but I want to do right by you.
I love you. And I want that to be apparent in every move I make with you. ”
I sniffled. “You really are good with your words.”
He chuckled before he leaned forward, kissing the tip of my nose. “Do you trust me?”
“Absolutely.”
He tucked another strand of hair behind my ear. “Then let’s get some sleep. We can pour out the alcohol I’ve got here in the morning, and then we can talk about some boundaries you should keep with your mom. If anything, so that both you and her have the privacy that grown women need.”
I smiled and went to agree with him, but my phone buzzed. I hated how quickly I rolled out of his embrace just to get to my phone, and when I saw it was Mom, my heart leapt into my throat. I swallowed it down, already noticing the fact that the life I had chosen had me wound so tightly.
I knew Colton was right.
I opened Mom’s text and decided that, whatever it said, I’d be fine with it.
Mom <3: Everything’s fine. I watched the game on television. Just couldn’t get out of the driveway.
I smiled and quickly texted back.
Me: Love you. Glad you’re okay. See you sometime tomorrow.
Even though I wanted to go home and check on her, even though I wanted to see Mom for myself and make sure she was fine, I forced myself to put my phone down. I made myself roll back toward Colton. But the second I laid eyes on him, it was easy to curl back against his mountainous form.
It was easy to find myself back in his embrace.
“Everything okay?” he muttered.
I nodded before a yawn escaped from my lips. “Yeah, yeah, she’s fine. She just couldn’t get her tire changed, and I guess everyone was at the game when she needed someone, so she just watched the game at home.”
“Wait.”
“What?”
He paused before he looked down at me. “There’s a local broadcast deal for the games?”
I nodded. “Yeah, Mom locked in a regional broadcast deal years ago. It was a big deal at the time — she fought hard for it. But we’ve never really done anything with the streaming rights beyond the basics.”
His eyes implored me for more details, so I smiled as I gave them. “Mom pushed for it when I got sick with mono one season and couldn’t make it to the games. She wanted me to be able to watch from home. But honestly? It’s just been sitting there, barely touched.”
“Huh.”
I blinked. “What?”
And then, that swarthy grin of his peeled across his lips. “We could do a lot of things with those cameras.”
I quirked an eyebrow. “Oh, really? Like what?”
He leaned forward and pressed the softest kiss to my lips before he spoke. “Like, selling partial tickets for people who want to watch the game at home.”
Actually, that wasn’t a half-bad idea.
“Or,” he continued as he pulled back a bit, his coach-like mind already running away from him as he flopped onto his back, “we could sell discounted season tickets for those who want to watch the entire season at home.”
I sighed as I climbed over him, resting my head on his chest. His fingers started mindlessly sliding through my hair.
“Or, we could—”
“And here I thought you were trying to be dirty,” I said with a small giggle as I played with his chest hair.
He growled as he wrapped his strong arms around me and rolled me onto my back. His cheeky smile was back.
“Does my girl want to be filmed?” he asked.
He kissed my neck, and it made me sigh. “I mean, you said something about cameras with that little grin on your face, and I didn’t expect—oh.”
He nipped at my pulse point. “You didn’t expect, what?”
My legs mindlessly spread for him. “Hockey. Didn’t… didn’t expect…”
“Mmmmm,” he hummed as he nuzzled his face between my clothed breasts, “does my sweet girl want to watch her pussy be stuffed full?”
“Shit,” I hissed as he hooked his fingers into the band of his boxers that I wore.
“Does my sweet girl,” he said as he punctuated his words with kisses down my stomach, “want to watch what I do to her?”
“Colton,” I whimpered as I reached down for his hair.
He slid my legs over his shoulders. “Say it.”
“Huh?” I asked.
He pressed a chaste kiss to my pussy lips. “Tell me what you want.”