Chapter 37
THIRTY-SEVEN | COLTEN
Have I said I’m screwed yet? Like majorly fucked because I can’t stop thinking about her.
I can’t stop lusting after her.
And my hands won’t stop drifting over Taryn’s delicate, naked body sprawled under my sheets as if she belongs on my bed with them. And I’m starting to think she does.
I said I could never give her all of me. It’s what I’ve told every woman who’s stepped into this house before. Yet I didn’t quite convince myself when I said it to her. Because I’m starting to wonder if she’s the one person I could let go for.
And that thought is terrifying. The clang of those internal alarm bells echoes in my skull. She’s everything I told myself I could never have if I wanted to protect my family.
What you could have with Taryn was everything you vowed you’d never let yourself desire.
But as I rest my arm on the pillow behind my head, my eyes scan her soft features beside me.
Taryn’s button nose points toward the ceiling, and her eyelashes fan over her rosy cheeks, dusted with freckles.
The moonlight shines on the orchard outside my bedroom, casting long shadows that creep across the grass and through my windows.
My chest aches, as if whatever I’m feeling for her has sunk its sharp claws into my heart and refuses to let go. Taryn is so beautiful and perfect that it hurts.
Perfect for this family.
Perfect for me—though admitting it means risking everything.
Are some things worth annihilating yourself for?
Yes.
But there’s so much at stake. I wouldn’t be the only one facing the consequences if this relationship—well, whatever the fuck we are—turns into a catastrophic event. Two sweet, innocent faces in that house think the world of the girl next to me.
I wish I weren’t wandering aimlessly in my head all the time. Making decisions would be a lot goddamn easier if I didn’t have to contemplate how my actions affect my family.
“You’re staring.” Taryn’s gentle, post-sex, sleep-ridden voice catches me off guard. Her eyes flutter open, whatever force between us pulling them to mine.
“Hmm?”
She shifts to face me, her hair draping over the pillow. “You’ve been staring at me for the last five minutes.”
“Oh— Yeah. I can’t seem to stop.” When did I suddenly decide to respond with full-blown honesty?
Her eyes flit between mine. “If this is making you uncomfortable, I can leave. If you want?”
She begins to sit up, but impulsively, I reach for her. I pull her into my frame, sitting up against the bed frame. “Please stay.”
She pulls up the duvet to cover her stunning breasts, fiddling with the red polish on her nails as her skin slowly melts into mine.
I admire the special relationship she shares with Elena, one that is unlike any of ours.
They always wear the same color when it’s time to repaint their nails, and whenever I see a new color flash before my eyes—or when Taryn’s fingers wrap around my cock—it’s a reminder that my little sister is falling for her just as hard as I am.
God. We’re all fucking attached.
Taryn drags me back to the present. “You’re not used to this. Are you?”
“What?”
“Women staying.” She says it so innocently—so confidently because she knows exactly how my interactions before her have ended. “Every night I saw you bring a woman in, she would leave a few hours later. But you’re asking me to stay. Why?”
Her probing question tightens my tendons. It feels different, I want to say, but I don’t. “Because my cock likes your cunt more.”
She glares at my response, the expression releasing something that had been tightly wound inside me for a very long time.
I sigh, not wanting to talk about it but unable to stop myself—which is nothing new since she seems to have that effect on me.
“My parents’ marriage wasn’t always a mess.
It was the kind of relationship I looked up to.
One I knew I wanted someday—until one random month, it shifted into something I didn’t. ”
She listens intently, her eyes locked on my face while her fingertips tenderly drift through the hair on my chest.
“My mom’s temperament was the first to change.
Sometimes, it was subtle, but when it worsened, she and my dad became increasingly detached, which led him to an alcohol addiction.
They fought constantly,” enough that I would shield my siblings from their wrath in my room until two in the morning when it finally stopped, when they were too tired to continue.
“They were in love, and then they weren’t.
When nothing changed, and they were caught in this repetitive cycle of arguing and resenting each other for years, my father chased her down and ultimately brought it to an end. ”
Her fingers still on my pec. “What do you mean ‘chased her down’?”
“My mother, Jane, tried to leave the night before she disappeared when one fight escalated,” I sigh. “He followed. He returned. She didn’t. It’s painfully fucking simple to put the pieces together, especially after—” The words disintegrate on my tongue.
I’m not looking at her, but I know her chest rises and falls weightily by how her skin lightly rubs against mine. “And that’s what you believe? That she ran, and he—murdered her.”
My tone raises an octave, becoming defensive. “It’s what I know, Taryn. There’s nothing to believe if I saw it happen.” I’m not screaming at her, but I can’t stop the hurt from blending with my voice.
Her muscles harden to stone beside me, and I side-eye her. She’s not breathing now. But I expected that. It’s the same way I felt when I walked in on them that night.
“What do you mean you saw it happen, Colten?” She chokes out my name.
Fuck.
Somehow, she pulls the truth out of me despite my internal quarrel to keep it in the depths of my soul where it’s festered and rotted. “It’s exactly what it sounds like. The sight of my mother’s blood is burned into my brain like a fucking cattle brand, Taryn!”
She sits up hastily, clutching the blanket to her chest. “You saw your father murder your mother?” she utters disbelievingly.
“Yes,” I answer firmly.
“That’s a big accusat—”
“It’s not a fucking accusation!” Emotion clogs my throat. “I was there. I saw the shattered dresser mirror and her blood dripping on the floor. I saw—”
My eyes burn, the tip of my nose tingling.
She reaches up, cupping my face as her thumb moves in gentle, circular motions on my cheek. “It’s okay,” she murmurs.
I swallow, rolling my shoulders back to alleviate some of the strain. “When I walked into the room, he was holding a bloody shard of glass in one hand and a bottle of scotch in the other. When she saw me, she ran and told me she would be back. It’s been five years, Taryn— Five years!”
We sit silently, her fingernails gliding over the ink on my bicep. “Jessica said you disappeared for three days after that.”
The air I draw into my lungs hangs heavy, swirling and expanding until I can barely breathe.
My brothers and I rode our bikes for miles in the summers. We always passed this dirt road, and we decided to explore it one day. The two-mile, unkempt path passed through a thick forest of Douglas firs and other vegetation, but what was at the end of the road was something we never expected.
High on the cliffs overlooking a small canyon where a creek flowed into the Columbia stood a cabin.
The abandoned, weathered wooden structure, with broken windows and a stone chimney, had succumbed to years of exposure, yet it remained magnificent.
It was our refuge, a place we retreated to when our parents began to argue more frequently.
There were times we nearly threw parties out there, where we could drink underage and hook up, but something about it felt sacred.
It seemed like it would lose all its meaning if we brought anyone else there.
No one else knew about it. That was until a year later, after we discovered it.
We were stunned to see a young girl standing dangerously close to the edge.
At first, we thought she was a ghost. With bright blonde hair and milky skin, she appeared almost silver against her black dress and the dusky sky, staring down at the creek below.
It was eerie. But we soon realized she wasn’t a figment of our imagination or a soul trapped in a second dimension haunting the cabin.
She was seeking a safe place to escape the thoughts tormenting her mind, and like us, the cabin became her sanctuary.
Taryn sits up, analyzing my expression with warm eyes.
“There’s this abandoned cabin on the Altair Bluff Cliffs,” I begin.
“My brothers and I discovered it long ago, and it became one of our favorite places that nobody else knew about. That next morning, when my father returned home with dried blood on his hands and shirt, and my mom didn’t, that’s where I went.
I packed a backpack, took my bike, and camped there for three days while I tried to process everything—”
To this day, I still haven’t processed that night. As I’ve gotten older, the memories from that night are cloudy, but all the significant elements remain vivid and unchanged.
The blood.
The sickly-sweet scent of scotch on my father’s breath.
The shards of reflective glass littering the carpet.
“Then I went home because I had five siblings who needed me more than I needed to be alone. From that point on, I swore I would never leave them again, and I would do whatever I could to protect them since I was more focused on myself during those three days than on the people I should have been concerned about around my father.”
Her brows pull together. “Is that why you don’t drink?” I hold her eyes. “I’ve never seen you with a beer, only with glasses of scotch. And I’ve never actually seen you drink them. I drank your glass that one night…”
My cock twitches at the thought. Yes, I painfully remember that. “The scotch on your tongue when I kissed you was the first time I had tasted liquor in five years.”
“You’ve been sober for five years?”
“Alcohol controlled my father, and I promised I would never give it dominance to control me.”
“So, you always make yourself a glass but never drink it?”
It sounds ridiculous when she says it like that.
My head moves back and forth. “The scent of it in my hand, but my willpower not to let it course through my veins, reminds me that I’m in control.”
“That is very—”
“Eccentric?”
Her lingering eyes attract mine. Who’s the one staring now?
“I was going to say admirable,” she mumbles softly.
“Not sure I would call it that since it’s the easiest decision I ever made. My father once told me that a man only fails when he gives up entirely.”
She twists her lips thoughtfully. “Then, despite whatever happened that night, I think the one thing you can take away is that your father showed you exactly what that looks like. And even though he gave up on your mom—your family,” she chokes on the emotion clogging her throat, “you never have. That’s why it’s admirable.
Because even after all the shit he’s put you through, you’re still here, and you’ve become exactly what your family has needed. ”
I’ve never thought of it that way. It’s easier to resent him. To picture his face on the target my brothers and I set up in the orchard for archery practice when we need to blow off steam.
For the first time in a long while, I’m thinking about the pile of unopened letters in my desk drawer—a stack that grows taller every week—wondering if they are filled with apologies and “I’m sorry.” Or if they loiter there with excuses I don’t fucking want to hear.
I’ve never had the urge to open them. It would be like dragging the blade of a letter opener through a freshly stitched wound that has never healed.
Yet the glint of curiosity in my mind ponders if they would bring a new wave of clarity. But as I stare at the picture frame across the room on my dresser of my siblings and me that I had taken of us last summer, I don’t think I’m ready to open that can of worms yet—or if I’ll ever be ready.