Chapter 1
One
Present Day
Colin
22 Years Old
The box Colin gripped under one arm was practically disintegrating under the torrential downpour. He picked up his feet and sprinted faster, hoping the cardboard wouldn’t completely fall apart by the time he got to the door. Rain pelted his face and glasses, making it nearly impossible to see. Luckily, he could get to the front door of his childhood home blindfolded. Everything about coming back to Archwood was muscle memory.
The second Colin got to the porch where the cement below his feet was decorated with the handprints of his parents and siblings, the front door swung open.
“Colin!” his younger sister Pearl squealed and stepped to the side to let him in.
“Hi,” Colin replied as he quickly entered the house and skirted past her. He realized a second too late that the lack of enthusiasm in his response was probably rude given that he hadn’t seen the majority of his family in eight months and, before that, only sporadically during the last four and half years. He quickly shot back an “I missed you!” to make up for it as he sprinted up the stairs. And he did miss her, truly, but the wet box in his hands was about to burst out the bottom, and the feeling of his wet clothes chafing against his skin was about to make him lose his mind.
Running had been a part of Colin’s morning routine since his freshman year of college, and it came in handy as he just made it into his bedroom before the contents spilled out the bottom and the box was no longer a box, but a wet, sopping hunk of cardboard in his hands. The cardboard was pliable enough to bend, so he folded it into a tight rectangle and looked around the room for the wastebasket that was exactly where he had left it, beside the wooden desk in the corner of the room. One of the better parts about moving back into his childhood home was that the routine he had left behind—the routine he was comfortable with—was still here, ready for him to pick it back up again. While he wouldn’t be living here for long, and finding his own place was high on his list of things to do, he liked the idea of knowing all the streets in Archwood. Knowing all the restaurants and which dishes had the right textures. Knowing the people who lived in town. Knowing that the one person he loved most was still here, even if she despised him. The proximity to her alone made him feel high on both possibilities and grief.
Once the cardboard was disposed of, Colin quickly moved back over to the random assortment of his belongings piled on the bed and sifted through them until he found what he was looking for. He turned over the sealed bag in his hands, looking down at the several sheets of paper scrawled with his and another, more bubbly handwriting. The papers were crumpled, and no matter how many times he had tried to flatten them, they never got as smooth as they were the day Scarlett Wallace balled up each one and threw them at his head. He always felt a bit guilty for thinking that that day was tied for the worst of his life, along with the day Walker showed up at the house with a police officer to tell him and his siblings their parents were never going to come home from their date night. Colin had no idea why he kept the damn notes, but it was something of a reminder now. A reminder to do better. His parents had been his safety net, and so had Scarlett. Relying on other people to save him had never worked out well for him. Something bad always happened, and even when it was his fault, it felt out of his control.
A knock on the open bedroom door pulled Colin’s attention back out of the chaos of the past. “Hey, I brought your suitcase in, and whatever the hell this is.” Walker was drenched in rainfall and dragging Colin’s gray-blue suitcase across the floor. The duffel bag he held up was equally wet, and Colin’s vision lasered in on a drop of water rolling down from the black handle to the hardwood. His fist balled up in discomfort only once before he released it, reminding himself that the floor was already wet due to his own dripping clothes.
“Thanks.” Colin retrieved both bags and set them in the middle of the floor.
“Figured you’d want to change,” Walker said. He was right, too. The longer the wet clothes stuck to Colin’s skin, the more he started to feel overwhelmed. “Is this really all you brought? You don’t have any other stuff?”
“Nope.” Colin shrugged and unzipped the duffel first, running his hand along one of the corded ropes inside and regaining a little bit of his control. “I have a few textbooks and my steamer in the backseat. I packed all my clothes pretty tightly, so I’ll have to de-wrinkle everything.” There would have been more books to bring, but for efficiency’s sake, Colin sold the ones he had already read and wasn’t planning on rereading back in Maryland. A lot of his personal collection still took up the floor-to-ceiling wall shelves his mom had designed specifically to fit his room and his tastes.
“Right, so, your clothes, a steamer, and an entire bag of bondage rope. Normal, everyday stuff.” Walker chuckled.
“Yep,” Colin agreed.
“I didn’t realize you were into that.”
The way people beat around the bush was always frustrating to Colin, because “that” meant absolutely nothing to him. Deductive reasoning said Walker must mean the shibari rope, but he wasn’t one hundred percent certain. Walker wasn’t the type to steam his clothes, so maybe that was what he meant. Colin pulled a cloth from a side pouch to clean his glasses.
Walker seemed to realize his lack of clarity because he cleared his throat awkwardly. “I mean, I didn’t realize you were into bondage.”
“Oh.” Colin bobbed his head. “I use it as a self-soothing sensory thing. My therapist back in Baltimore recommended it. If I’m at home reading or something, I usually just tie some double columns across my thighs and connect them to another double column across my ankles and lie on the floor or something.”
“And that helps?” Walker peered down at the bag.
“It does. It would probably help with your anxiety, too. Plus, I have an entire book on different knot options, and I like learning new ones.”
“I just figured you got into some kinky shit while you were gone.” Walker grinned.
Colin let a small smirk pull up the corner of his mouth. “I would definitely not have been opposed to that.” He was the exact opposite of opposed. Some of the new knots he had been practicing required a partner, and he’d had to practice those on a pillow instead. The lack of a partner was a problem if he ever did want to try out even more complicated things, but he could never get past a first date with anyone. He hadn’t even tried to. No one would ever come close to her , and Colin had finally accepted the likelihood that he would be on his own forever was high. He swallowed and pulled at his wet clothes again. “But that would require me to date people, and that’s not going to happen.”
“Why not?” Walker asked. Colin hit him with an irritated expression. Not only was this the last thing he wanted to talk about when coming home to the very town where he had destroyed his love life, but the cloth against his skin was starting to feel like a serpent coiling around his torso and suffocating him. Not the kind of pressure he enjoyed. His short fuse was getting shorter by the second.
“Scarlett.” Colin figured blunt was the best way to go about ending this conversation. At the mention of her name, Walker’s playful demeanor shifted to concern.
“You’re going to beat yourself up over this forever, aren’t you?”
Colin rolled his eyes. “Don’t act like you wouldn’t do the same thing.”
Walker grimaced. He knew just enough about how Colin had blown up his life back then to know that the way Colin had done it was a mistake, one that had hurt both himself and Scarlett so badly that it was hard to come back from. “Yeah, you’re right. The Hartrick family seal should just be someone punching themselves in the face.”
“Do we even have a family seal?”
“We do not. Know any artists?” Walker quirked a brow.
“None that will ever speak to me again.” Colin sighed.
“Shit. I walked right into that one.”
His hand pulling at the collar of his shirt, Colin nodded his head toward the doorway. He was going to lose his damn mind if he didn’t change out of his clothes immediately. “Your name is Walker, so clearly you were born to walk into things. Now kindly walk out of my room.”
“Technically, I think your sister is the one who does the most walking into things,” Walker said, finally moving toward the door. He wasn’t wrong. Colin’s oldest sister, Piper, had been slamming her head on corner cabinets and letting doors actually hit her in the ass since Colin could remember. When they were younger, he had stopped a toddler Piper from falling face-first into a lit fire pit despite being a toddler himself at the time. He couldn’t remember that moment, but his parents used to bring it up as proof of how smart he was. When Walker made it halfway through the doorway, he tapped on the door frame twice with his knuckles. “I missed your constant puns, Colin. Welcome back.”
The door shut behind Walker, and Colin yanked his wet shirt over his head immediately. Once he had stripped completely naked, he felt a bit better—a little cold, sure, but he no longer wanted to peel his skin off, and that was a plus. As he slowly pulled on his new boxer briefs, he hoped the rest of his insides would settle with the warmth of clean, dry clothes. It was wishful thinking, though, because his equilibrium wouldn’t return. He knew exactly why his body was having trouble with it, yet he had no control over the outcome. Normally he would practice some knots to calm his inner turmoil, but for now, a change of clothes would have to do. He couldn’t hide away from his family or this town any more than he could escape the feelings that had followed him thousands of miles away from home.
The quick fix to what felt like an overwhelming flood of senses lived only four blocks away. Sometimes, just imagining Scarlett’s embrace would calm an influx of anxiety. Right now, all the memory did was remind him just how royally he had fucked up four years ago. No—not fucked up, but learned a lesson, he quickly corrected his thoughts with his therapist’s catch-all. But really, there was no way around it.
Any hope of a future for anything other than his career died the day he left Scarlett. Any hope of a relationship with anyone else had died the day he met her.