Chapter 43
Forty-Three
Colin
23 Years Old
Theo was humming. Colin had frankly never seen him happier. Even when they frequently went to the lookout and sat in peace together, he was never this happy. Even in the studio, he had never been as obvious with his joy as he was right then, making tiny little dots as he rocked from toe to heel in Colin’s living room. Scarlett had finished her meticulously planned lesson on the history of pointillism and was standing beside Colin with the same enthused look in Theo’s direction, no doubt finding something wistful in the way he painted.
“Has he ever hummed like this with you?” Colin murmured to Scarlett.
“Never,” she whispered back. Both their eyes trained on Theo again as they leaned against Colin’s kitchen counter, listening. Scarlett drank from the mug of Earl Grey tea Colin had made for her, and he drank the coffee he had been self-medicating with all day. The caffeine felt like it hit his veins extra hard today when he got a few sips in. It was either that or the close proximity to Scarlett that had him so focused. He wished he would have suggested this arrangement forever ago. After Scarlett had given Theo her lesson, she had spent the last several hours chatting with Colin and had even gone on a few of her long-winded tangents. It felt so natural for her to be there that he couldn’t help but hope that she’d keep coming back.
A knock on the door announced that Jessie was back to pick Theo up, and Colin sheepishly looked at his shoes, anticipating what Scarlett would say. “When did she say she was coming?” she asked, right on cue.
“Now.” Colin cringed.
“But Theo hasn’t cleaned up yet.” Scarlett, for all her whimsy and fun with her art students, was a stickler for making the kids pick up after themselves. He knew as well as the next person that it was a good skill to teach kids, but he was a bit of a pushover when it came to Theo.
“I usually pick up after him. It’s not a big deal,” he added as an afterthought.
“Colin.” Scarlett rolled her eyes, making her way to the door. “You can’t let him do that every time.”
“But he was humming,” he protested, enjoying the fact that she seemed comfortable enough to answer his front door.
“Hi, Jessie.” Scarlett waved her in with a bright smile, and Jessie and two bored-looking teenagers stepped into Colin’s still-furnitureless living room. The twin toddlers had gone back to their parents as ordered by the court, and ever since, Jessie had had a revolving door of other kids passing through. He admired her capabilities because Theo was really the only kid Colin felt like he could handle. Jessie seemed to have the opposite problem; she was out of her depth with Theo but could handle pretty much any other kid. She knew well enough that what Theo needed most was routine, though, and because he had been to so many homes since his parents had given him up at four years old, the constant change was setting him back years. Colin had confirmed with Jessie many times that she wasn’t planning on letting Theo go, and told her if she needed him to show up more so that she could handle Theo staying there for longer, he would do that. So far, their current routine seemed to be working.
“Oh, you’re still here.” Jessie smiled back at Scarlett.
“Yep,” Scarlett replied. The tone was a bit unusual, but Colin paid it no mind as he made his way over to Theo and squatted down to his eye level, tapping his ear.
Theo removed his headphones. “I did a lot more that time,” he said. He had been speaking more frequently lately despite his preferred communication still being silence, and it was confirmation to Colin that Theo must be getting more comfortable in their arrangement.
“You did, bud.” Colin bobbed his head and finally looked at what he was painting. Theo’s little body had mostly been blocking his view, so he didn’t realize what he had started. It wasn’t nearly done yet, but the one green eye he had finished today was unmistakable. “Are you painting Ms. Wallace?”
Theo nodded and handed over his paintbrush, and Colin quirked a brow.
“Do you have a crush on her?”
Theo scrunched his face in disgust and shook his head. “You stare at her a lot. You can put it up on your wall.” Theo pointed to one of the several undecorated walls in Colin’s living room.
“Okay.” Colin blew out a breath and looked over his shoulder, happy to find that Scarlett, Jessie, and the emo teenagers were far enough away to not hear Theo’s commentary. “You are correct. But,” Colin lifted a finger, “that’s not usually something we say out loud, because it embarrasses everyone involved, and embarrassing people is not very kind.”
Theo handed another paintbrush to him and pointed to Colin’s chest.
“No, I’m not embarrassed. Ms. Wallace might be if you told her that, though,” Colin said.
Theo seemed to consider this and stared at his painting for a second before frowning and pointing to himself, then the painting, and making a flicking hand motion like he was tossing something in the trash.
Colin shook his head. “No, there’s no need for that. She’ll love your painting. Keep working on it. I meant she would be embarrassed to know that I stare at her when she’s not looking.”
Theo bobbed his head and wandered around Colin to go meet Jessie, conversation over.
“Thanks so much for taking him for a while,” Jessie said when Colin joined the group. She reached out to touch his arm, and he stepped a bit out of her reach. He was sure it was supposed to be a comforting gesture, but he didn’t really like the light touch she tried to give him. “It was really good to see you again.”
“Four days a week, as per usual.” Colin nodded, confused. She was acting like he hadn’t literally seen her yesterday when he picked Theo up to go to the lookout.
“Right.” Jessie sighed. “I guess I’ll see you on Sunday, then?”
“That is the schedule,” Colin said.
“I should have the studio up and running by Saturday again, so we’ll be back to the normal summer classes next Tuesday and Thursday,” Scarlett chimed in.
“Great. But then it’ll just be you on Monday?” Jessie asked Colin, hovering near his shoulder but not touching him. She was still a little too in his personal space for his liking, though, so he took yet another small step away from her.
“Another lookout day,” he confirmed. They had had the same schedule for months, and Jessie hadn’t had any problems with it before. He wasn’t sure why she was rehashing it now, but she had done the same thing last week, so he wondered if picking Theo up on Mondays was now an inconvenience for her. “Did you have something planned for that day?”
“No, I’m free. Did you want to plan something for that day?”
“Yes?” Colin scrunched his face. “The lookout?”
“Right, duh.” Jessie smacked her palm against her forehead. “Anyway, I gotta get going.” Colin left it at that, waiting for her and the kids to leave so he could clean up Theo’s paint mess. Once they were gone, he waited for Scarlett to do the same, but she lingered.
“You don’t have to help me clean up. It doesn’t take very long,” Colin said, in case that was her reason for staying.
“Colin, you know she’s into you, right?” The words exploded out of Scarlett’s mouth like a bomb, and he froze on his way to the sink.
“What?” He turned to face her, blinking.
“Jessie,” Scarlett huffed. “She’s into you. She’s acting all weird. Trying to touch you? Mentioning dates she’s available?”
“Oh.” Colin made his way to the sink, set his watch off to the side, and turned the faucet on. Scarlett was behind him and seemed to want more of an answer than that, so he squirted some cleaning solvent onto the two brushes and shrugged. “I’m not interested.”
“Not at all?” Scarlett came up to his side, leaning against the counter.
“Scarlett, please,” Colin said, exasperated. His eyes shut for a moment in agony. “I’m really trying here. What are you not getting? I don’t want Jessie. She’s very nice, and I appreciate everything she’s willing to do for Theo, but I want you . I don’t ask to hang out with Jessie because I don’t want to. If I did, I’d ask her to come watch Theo paint for a few hours and make her tea.”
Scarlett looked down at the mug she was holding and bit her lip. “Okay. That kind of makes me feel better.”
“Why?”
“Because I—” Scarlett scrunched her eyes shut and set her tea on the counter. “This is going to sound so stupid to you because you don’t get jealous. You met my ex and barely cared, but I care that Jessie clearly likes you. I don’t particularly enjoy knowing that, which is confusing because we aren’t together, and you’re free to do what you want.”
“I do get jealous.” Colin dabbed the clean paintbrushes on a paper towel and set them on his drying rack, turning to face her. “Or so I was recently informed.”
“You were informed? What does that even mean?”
“I told Leo and Sam that Braiden is a very good guy and I have no appropriate reason to dislike him, but I despise the idea of you being with anyone but me. They said that’s jealousy, regardless of whether I agree with my own mind. I don’t like that he’s seen inside your nightstand because that means he’s been in your bedroom. I hate that he’s seen you naked. The current version of you. I hate the idea that he might have—” He cut himself off with a shiver and dried his hands a bit too aggressively on a hand towel.
“That he might have what, Colin?” Scarlett stepped closer to him, and unlike Jessie, he didn’t want to back away. He wanted her to snap to him like a magnet.
“Cuddled with you,” he whispered, his eyes dropping to her lips.
“That’s what bugs you the most?” She laughed. “Not that we’ve had sex, but that we cuddled?”
“So, you did cuddle?” Colin felt like he had been punched in the face.
Scarlett scoffed. “That’s normal behavior for a couple, Colin. Yes, I cuddled with him.”
“Did you like it?” He braced for the answer and still felt sucker-punched when it came.
“Sometimes.”
He bitterly folded his arms over his chest and gave her a curt nod.
“You’re really jealous that I cuddled with someone else?”
Colin tipped his head to the side. “Well, the sex part also really bothers me.”
“Good,” Scarlett replied shortly.
“Good? How is that good? Logically, none of that should be a problem to me, and I know that.” He ran a hand through his hair, getting more frustrated by the second. “I know I shouldn’t care at all. I know I’m the one that broke things off, but I fucking hate it, Scarlett. I really do. You were supposed to be mine.”
“You left. Was I supposed to just wait around for you and fall right back into your arms like nothing happened?”
“Of course not.” But that was exactly what he had done. He had waited. He had gone to years of therapy. He had worked so hard to believe that he deserved her and everyone else in his life. Eyes closed, he could feel her quick breaths dancing across his lips. If he hadn’t slipped his watch off when he’d gone to wash the paintbrushes, he was sure it would be alerting him of a high heart rate again. “I’m sorry.” His eyelashes fluttered, and he confirmed how close she really was. It wouldn’t take any effort at all to kiss her. Slowly, he reached up to remove his glasses and arched backward to set them on the counter beside his watch, resigned to the war waging in his head. “And I’m sorry for what I’m about to do.”
“What are you—” she began to ask, but it was already too late. He crashed into her, damning all his no physicality rules in an instant. He wasn’t one to not follow a plan he had come up with, especially a good one, but the way Scarlett was kissing him back had him wanting to throw out every plan he ever had where she was concerned. Her hand flew to the back of his head, her fingers digging into his scalp. She arched her spine and craned her neck to slant against him harder, taking his desperate kiss and giving him more by dragging her tongue along his bottom lip. He was gone. Finding the nearest wall, he pressed her into it, caging her with his legs and cupping both sides of her face to kiss her like he couldn’t breathe unless she gave him the air to do it. Her body and her mouth were pliable under his, and the way she folded around him felt like finally coming home, a warm pressure he had been searching for for years. When her leg hitched up on his side and their fronts aligned better, he rocked forward with a greedy thrust of his hips. She moaned into his mouth, and he couldn’t help but do it again.
“Red,” Colin panted. His mind was screaming at him to stop. This was a bad idea. This wasn’t the way he wanted her to finally want him again. Breaking free from her a bit, he kissed down her throat and collarbone, trying to regain his composure. When he found a sliver of sanity, he pushed off the wall and took a step away from her with her with his hands raised up in defense. “We shouldn’t.”
Scarlett sagged against the wall and fixed her bangs, smoothing them down and letting out a frustrated breath. “You’re giving me fucking whiplash. I’m so confused. You say you want me, and then I finally decide I want to, and you don’t want me anymore?”
Colin laughed humorlessly, the thought was so ridiculous. Even his body had made sure to declare that he wanted her, his erection pressing against his zipper painfully. He snatched his glasses off the counter and shoved them back on his face in frustration. “I’ve been telling you that I want you for weeks. Months. Years , Scarlett. I want you like every other time I’ve wanted you—desperately. Like there’s an itch under my skin, and it’ll only be satiated once I touch you. The same way I did when we were two minutes late for graduation because we couldn’t control ourselves enough to not fuck in the backseat of my car.”
“Then why did you stop?” Her voice cracked as she looked down at her hands and curled in on herself.
“I don’t want you to think that this is an experiment or that I just want sex.” He heaved out a sigh.
“Maybe that’s what I want,” Scarlett said harshly, her nose turning up at him in a telltale sign of her anger. “Ever thought that it’s not just about you? Maybe I just want to get laid by someone who knows what I want for once.”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple feeling like a lead rock in his throat. “If I do that, you have to stay the night. This isn’t a game to me.”
“I have to feed Pepto,” Scarlett argued.
“You live at your uncle’s right now. Text your mom to feed her,” Colin shot back. “If we’re having sex, you’re staying the night, and I’m going to spoon you when we’re done with aftercare. You’re going to tell me one of your long stories, and I’m going to catch up on everything I’ve missed in the last five years while I play with your hair. Then I’m going to make us both breakfast in the morning. That’s how this is going to work, Scarlett, or I’m not doing it.”
“Fine.” She stepped toward him, and he was dangerously close to throwing her up against the wall and taking her right there in the kitchen. “But if we’re hooking up, then I need this to be the most erotic night of my life so I don’t regret it. Make up for the five years you left me alone, Colin. I want fantasy and experimentation. I want to come so hard I can’t see straight.”
“Music to my goddamn ears.” Colin grabbed her wrist. “Come with me.” He knew exactly what he was going to do, and it was going be pure torture until he finally got to push inside her.
When they got to his bedroom, he flicked the lights on to reveal the sparsely furnished room and looked down to gauge Scarlett’s reaction. Piper would start his project as soon as she recovered a bit more from her fall, and in the meantime, he had been tasked with deciding on what design he wanted. He had already apologized when Scarlett had shown up to his apartment and there was nowhere to sit, so he figured there was no reason to apologize now. The boxes of stuff he had collected were half unpacked and lining the outskirts of the room, and he kicked one to the side when they got to the foot of the bed. He couldn’t quite hear her, but he thought she had mumbled something in the realm of “familiar.”
“Do you want me to take over like I used to?” Colin asked, setting his hands on her shoulders. “And are you on birth control?”
“Yes to both.” Scarlett nodded. “I have an IUD. The pill got a little hard to remember to take when you weren’t calling me to take it.”
“Do you have a condom?” he asked. “Because I don’t. I wasn’t expecting this, but I can go out and get one if?—”
“No, I’m fine without it if you are. I got tested after Braiden.”
“More than fine,” he murmured, his mouth dipping forward. He pressed a slow kiss to her neck, avoiding her dangly red trapezoid earrings that had hit him in the face when he had aggressively kissed her the first time. “No more talking about Braiden.” His hands slid down her arms, fingers folding under her daisy-printed T-shirt. She obeyed his unspoken command and lifted her arms so he could slide her shirt over her head. Her skin was just as he remembered, pale and dotted with freckles he could spend hours tracing. And her bra—damn his spiraling heart—was ruby red like their first time and the picture she had once sent him. He folded her shirt and set it on his nightstand. “I need you to tell me to stop when you need to.”
“I understand.” Scarlett nodded. “I get it now.”
“And I’m going to check in with you verbally, too, in case you freeze up instead of telling me to stop, okay?” He unbuttoned her bell bottom pants and slid them down her legs, indulgently digging his fingertips into her thick thighs.
Scarlett sucked in a sharp breath. “Okay.”
“Don’t get annoyed when I ask too much.” He gently shoved her backward so she fell on the edge of the bed.
She let out a breathy laugh. “I won’t.”
There was a spark of happiness in Colin’s chest when he bent down to take her shoes off and realized they were the same floral embroidered yellow converse she had once wanted. And when he realized the simple cotton underwear concealing her more intimate parts matched her bra, he wanted to hook her legs over his shoulders and pull them to the side to taste her again. But he could wait. He had already waited five years.
In his crouched position, Scarlett gripped his shirt and peeled it over his head, his glasses catching for a moment before he fixed them. It was all the awkwardness of taking someone to bed—the fumbling of clothing removal, the adjustments he had to make to accommodate the height difference—but unlike when they were younger, he felt no discomfort from it, and Scarlett didn’t seem embarrassed by it either because they knew now. The imperfection of some moments was part of intimacy, and sharing them with her felt like he had stepped back in time to when they were lost with what to do with each other’s bodies.
Scarlett dragged her hand with a firm pressure up his torso to the tattoo over his heart. “I can’t believe you got the cum face tattooed on your body.”
“It’s a very discreet cum face,” he said. “It makes me smile sometimes when I look in the mirror and remember how much you laughed when I made that joke.”
“When did you get it?”
“It was a college graduation gift to myself.”
“That long after we broke up?” Scarlett sat up straighter, looking shocked.
“You have got to stop being surprised by the amount I thought of you in the last five years.” He shook his head and kissed the inside of her thigh before rising to his full height, offering her a hand to stand up.
“You never called or said hi when you came back for holidays, so it is surprising to me.”
“I really didn’t think you’d want to see me.” Colin unbuttoned his pants and pulled them down his legs, leaving his underwear on but removing his socks and tennis shoes. He folded the rest of their clothes and neatly set them on the nightstand with her shirt. Scarlett didn’t respond until he stood in front of her again.
“Maybe I didn’t want to see you,” she whispered. “I don’t know.”
“Do you know if you want to see me now?” He dipped his head down to her shoulder, and his tongue swept out, licking at her collarbone.
“Yes.” She nodded, and he closed his eyes once more to trail his lips across the tops of her breasts. “I’m a little nervous that I don’t look the same as I used to, though. I don’t really have the body of an eighteen-year-old anymore.”
“Neither do I.” Back then, he was a lot thinner, and not exactly in a healthy way. He had looked sick in comparison to the now lean but muscular build he had gotten from running.
“You look like you don’t have trouble eating now,” she noted. “You look good.”
“So do you.” He cupped one of her breasts, grasping as much as he could. “I like your bangs, and your tattoos, and all of this.” He grabbed a handful of her ass. “I want to see you naked, but I have a fantasy I’d like to fulfill first.” He dropped his grip on her and dipped his head to murmur in her ear. “Did you know people with ASD can be more prone to hypersexuality?”
“No,” she gasped, her chest heaving and stretching toward him.
“It’s common to have recurrent sexual fantasies about the same thing over and over and over again.” His voice was low in his throat, his desire so strong that the aching of his body was near uncomfortable. “Do you want to know mine, Red?” Her head bobbed a yes before she spoke the word aloud, and he licked his lips. “You did so well by coming here tonight in red, because I still have that picture of you that I’ve gotten myself off to so many times since. I know I should have deleted it and it was wrong, but I can’t take it back now.”
“I should be mad that you kept it, but I’m too turned on right now, and I find that really hot.” A giggle escaped Scarlett’s lips before she lifted a finger in warning. “But I reserve the right to be pissed off about it when we’re done.”
“Right reserved,” Colin recited.
“So that’s your fantasy? Me in red?”
“And black.” Her face sparked with curiosity, and he continued, “In my fantasy, you’re wearing red, and you’re tied up with my rope. Do you still like being held down, Scarlett?”
She released a breath. “God, yes.”
“Good.” Colin pulled away from her and went to his mirrored closet, sliding the door open and taking out his black duffel bag. He could hear the catch in her breath. It only turned him on more as he went to stand in front of her and dropped the bag with a thud at her feet. “Open it.” Scarlett did as told and crouched down to pull the zipper, revealing the carefully wrapped black shibari ropes inside. “What are you thinking?” he questioned, watching her run her fingers over the ropes and twist an end between her fingertips. At some point during this interaction he had started to stim, rocking from ball to heel as excitement bloomed in his chest. This was really happening.
“Explain it to me?” she asked, rising to her feet.
“It’s called shibari. Japanese bondage,” he clarified. “I tie myself up, usually just my legs, as a self-soothing exercise before I read or lie on the ground, because the specific kind of pressure and the control I get from it feels good, but this would be more about displaying your body than anything else. I’ll give you a rope cutter to hold the whole time, so if you’re uncomfortable you can cut it off yourself. If all goes well, I want to tie your wrists so I can control you more.”
Scarlett’s cheeks were tinged pink, and her eyes were wide and alert, but he couldn’t tell whether or not this idea was even remotely what she wanted. Even when she turned to kiss him, throwing her arms around his neck and pressing her body into his, he still wasn’t sure, so he pulled away, breathing hard, and asked her point-blank. “Is that okay?”
“Yes,” Scarlett said throatily. “That sounds like exactly what I’d be into.” She kissed him again. “Please.”
Eagerly pulling the rope cutter from the side pocket of the bag, Colin reached up to hand it to her, handle out. She took it, and he grabbed the first set of ropes from the bag.