And the fact that he remembered just as much as I did, if not more, made me want to simultaneously chuck the phone across the room and jump through it to hold him and never let go.
“I’ll get a shirt on,” I said, setting the phone to face the ceiling while I scrambled out of bed and to the dresser. I pulled out the shirt on top: the one he bought for me at the bookstore.
I came back on camera, fluffing my hair out of the shirt, a movement that Colt tracked with his lips hanging agape. He smirked. “Nice shirt, pretty girl. It’s swallowing you whole, though.”
“I like the boyfriend fit of t-shirts,” I said. “Even better if they’re broken in and smell like a boy.”
Colt’s smile became more vacant. “Good to know. Can’t sleep?”
“Ugh, no. We’re preparing a new study to go to the IRB.”
“Internal Revenue . . . Bervice?” Colt asked.
I laughed. “Institutional Review Board. Sorry. So many acronyms in research. They decide whether your study is clear to proceed as you’ve designed it. They’re pretty rigorous though. You have to prepare to get barbecued. It’s a lot of work.”
Colt listened to me with a knit brow. “That sounds tough.”
“Yeah. I’m just awake overanalyzing everything.”
“Sorry. You want to talk about books instead?”
I nestled into the sheets. “I want to hear about your experience reading smut on the team plane.”
He rolled his eyes and his cheeks flushed red. “Oh, you mean the part where they caught me with a hard-on and told me to take the book with me into the bathroom because they don’t putPlayboyin the bathroom anymore?”
My jaw dropped. “No. No way. They noticed?”
“Noticed, discussed it at length.”
“Length.” I snorted. “Which scene made this happen?”
Colt dug the heel of his hand into his eye socket. “The dinner at the lobster trapper’s house. With the tequila.”
I sat back in the sheets and grabbed my water cup for a sip. “Oh yeah. That’s a good one.”
“Yeah. It reminded me of that time we were in that hotel room and your tits—” Colt stopped himself. “Anyway. Oh! I forgot to mention: my teammate’s wife loves that book. She likes to do buddy reads with her friends. Jeanine. You’d like her. She’s really nice. I’ll have to introduce you.”
I crossed my ankles in my lap and looked down at them. How the hell did he loosely dive into our last very messy encounter and then just rebound with “I found you a friend!”
“That’d be nice. I don’t know too many people out here.”
Colt’s smile was soft. “You have me.”
Warmth flooded through me. “It’s nice to have you back.”
Silence crackled between us, a thousand things I wanted to say hanging in the air. I was the problem. Me, exclusively. Colton was nothing but too forgiving. Kitty’s words haunted me:he’d let you break his heart four hundred times and still come back for more.
I was selfish, keeping him around while not knowing if I’d ever deserve the affection and kindness he raineddown on me like confetti. While not knowing if I’d ever be what he needed sexually. But he interrupted my thoughts. “So, how do you want to talk about the books?”
I smirked. “I’ve never really done a book club or anything, but I guess we talk about our favorite parts?”
Red crept up Colt’s neck and he rubbed the back of it. “You mean overall, or the sexy parts?”
“Um, either,” I squeaked. “I think people call it spicy.”
“Right. Spicy.” Colt pinched his lips together and the camera jiggled where he lifted a hand to run it through his hair, his nervous habit again.
“I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable. We don’t have to talk about the spicy parts. I already went too far and grossed you out talking about touching myself.”
