I snorted. “I wish that’s how it worked. If so, whatever hex Kitty’s put on him would already have him six feet under.”
Colt chuckled. “I’m glad you have her. She’s scary, but she loves you.”
“We’re scary together.” I rubbed his arm. “But how are you?”
He sighed. “A little bit of everything.”
I winced. “Are you going to lose the captaincy?”
“Maybe.” Colt lifted a shoulder. “Player safety will review the play, I’m sure. Might get suspended. Might lose my role. But honestly, I don’t really care.”
I shook my head. “You didn’t have to do that for me. To risk your career for me. You do care. Those guys are your family.”
“I don’t think you get it,” he said. “None of that shit matters. At all.”
Tears sprang to my eyes, my breath halted in my chest, and my heart picked up. My voice was barely a whisper. “What?”
Colton’s hands rested on my hips. “That’s all just stuff. Status. Money.” His teeth sank into his bottom lip before his gaze rose to mine. “They’re my family, but so are you. And none of that matters more than your peace.”
A single tear streaked down my cheek and I lifted my hand to touch around his increasingly black eye. “Maybe you don’t understand, then,” I said.
Colton was getting agitated, breathing faster, eyes flicking rapidly between mine. I placed my hand on his heart. “My peace is with you. You are my safe place. You’re the one I trust with everything. And I want to be all those things for you. You don’t have to fight for me. I’m already yours. Every part of me.”
Colt’s bottom lip trembled and he sniffled.
The icy blue eyes that I cherished watered, but all I could do was smile. “You’re everything to me, Colton.”
Colt’s hand cupped my neck for the second before hismouth sealed to mine. I moaned against his soft lips, his rough stubble, the tears on both of our cheeks. His tongue brushed the seam of my lips and it made my stomach dip just like it did when he first kissed me in his college house. When he kissed me after Kitty’s wedding. When he kissed me in the supply closet at work.
Kissing Colton was as thrilling as the first drop on a roller coaster, as comforting as a favorite blanket fresh out of the dryer, as much a part of me as my own skin, my fingerprints.
This was it. I’d run from it twice, and now I’d had the joy of coming back to it twice.
Colton Jones was the love of my life.
I pulled away just enough to get out his name. He must have thought I was chiding him for kissing me too hard, because he switched to slow, drugging kisses. I let myself get lost there: his hands on my waist, up my spine, his body firm, angling me backward slightly and tucking me against him.
I broke our kiss again and put my hands on his pecs. “I love you, Colton.”
A tiny gasp escaped his lips. “Love? Not loved?” He emphasized the D on the end of love. A new glossy sheen covered his eyes.
“Love. Today. Now. Present tense. Future tense.”
His mouth opened and closed. He swallowed. His chest heaved with one breath, two. My eyes passed over his face, trying to figure out what I was seeing. Was he shutting down?
“Say someth?—”
“I never stopped loving you, Violet. Never. Not even for a fucking minute. Not even when I was so frustrated with you that it broke me. Not even when I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again. There is no plane of existence, no parallel universe where I don’t love you. It is, always has been, and always will be you for me.”
I smiled, cupping his cheeks and letting him continue to hold me close. “When you said you loved me at the wedding?”
He laughed and rolled his eyes. “Biggest fucking liar. I was still in love with you then.”
I tipped my head from side to side. “Kinda figured.”
Colton pinched his lips together and narrowed his eyes at me. “I love you even though you’re a brat.”
“You love mebecauseI’m a brat.” I rubbed our noses together.
