But our time was running out. I’d have to hold this moment sacred, a vacation from reality, a fantasy land where we existed without demanding parents and grueling studies and memories we couldn’t access.
“I need to go get ready for brunch.” My body resisted every word in that sentence, screaming at each syllable.
“Okay. Yep.” Colt slipped out of bed and stepped into the bathroom while I searched for my dress on the floor. When I picked it up, a little streak of bright blue caught my eye, hanging from the edge of his suitcase. I walked toward it, squinting. It looked strangely like one of my old ribbons. Like a burglar, I crept toward the suitcase slowly. Right as I waswithin striking distance, the bathroom door opened. I jumped and held the dress to my front.
“Trade ya,” I said, walking his way and trying to act smooth to cover up my snooping. I used the bathroom and swished with his bottle of mouth wash on the sink.
Then I took a much needed look in the mirror. Colton was a gentleman, only putting love bites where they wouldn’t be visible in clothes. He cared about me. He respected what we had. He really was the best kind of man.
I still wanted him. It was selfish of me. He’d be better off if I let him go, if I lied and said it wasn’t real, that we didn’t matter.
But I wasn’t strong enough to do that. I wanted to spend a week in bed with him. Memorize every little trimmed hair on his chest, every freckle on his shoulders.
With trembling hands, I opened the bathroom door, finding him waiting on the other side with some clothes for brunch in his hand and a pained expression.
I was so many things at once: happy we got to see each other, sad it was ending, and wanting him so badly it hurt. I hadn’t put my dress back on, instead holding it in front of me.
“One last time?” I croaked out.
He shook his head, lips pursing. “No.”
I nodded feebly, looking away from him and starting to shake out the dress. “Okay. Sure.”
His voice was low. Even. Deceptively calm. “It’s not the last time, because I can’t let you go. We can make this work.”
I winced and clutched the material in my hands. “You have to. You have to let me go.”
His jaw popped, forward and back, forward and back. His eyes floated from my feet, up my legs, to the dress in my hands. His nostrils flared and his chest puffed.
“Fine.” Colton stepped forward, pace by pacetoward me. “Last timetoday. Because mark my words, Vi: this is not the end of us.”
He pushed his underwear down and kicked them away at his feet. Then his finger hooked into the fabric balled in my hands and ripped it from me. Peach chiffon sailed toward the hotel room door.
I wanted to believe him. I didn’t want this to end, but I knew in my heart it had to. “It might be.”
“Tell me again it’s just your work. Tell me it’s just your parents,” he gritted out, eyes wild. I wasn’t afraid of him, of his intensity. He was mad at the situation, not me. “If that’s really true, say it.”
Adrenaline made me tremble. We both knew there was more to it, but neither of us knew what it was. I had some idea, and it had to do with that hole in my memory. But with my work where it was at the moment, I feared opening that memory would be the ultimate distraction. My mom’s voice from that morning after the memory I couldn’t access rang in my head.You’d do better to forget about it. It never happened.
I didn’t have time to unpack it.
“I don’t know.”
A thousand emotions flashed over Colton’s face, but the most crushing of all was the devastating sadness. The happy-go-lucky guy I knew was gone, replaced by some shell of a human. The darkness was coming for him, and it was because of me.
My next words were true.
“But I want you.” I focused on his eyes while mine watered, words caught in my throat to the point that I’d stopped breathing. On a gulp of air, I spoke. “I loved you.”
A guttural growl tore from Colton’s throat as he closed the space between us. I raised on my toes, the tile below my feetwarm from how long I’d been rooted to that spot. His fingers sank into the hair at the nape of my neck, a gentle restraint keeping him from pulling too hard.
“I loved you, Violet. I fucking loved you.”
“I loved you,” I repeated against his lips.
He nipped my lower lip and I retaliated, his pained groan a little too satisfying. His mouth dropped to my neck, nibbling, biting, stroking with his tongue. His palm scraped down my belly until his fingertip met my clit. “You’re dripping for me, Violet. Don’t even try to lie and say you’re not mine.”
I reached between his legs to cup his balls and drag my hand over his shaft. He needed this. He needed me to lie. He needed me to turn the mood away from tender and toward a feverish passion, raw, unfettered, almost cruel. He needed to fuck his feelings out. “I’m not yours.”
