“Then stop acting like I walked into Blue Skye looking to hurt people.”
I turn to face him. He’s closer now. Not looming, but present. Solid. Like a wall that won’t budge no matter how hard I shove.
“You walked in looking for answers,” he says. “And you found pieces sharp enough to cut you.”
I swallow. “I can handle it.”
His eyes soften a fraction. “I know you think that.”
That’s not agreement.
That’s fear.
I shove the rest of my clothes into the bag and zip it hard. “I’m not hiding or giving up.”
“You’re not,” he agrees, slightly patronizing. “You’re regrouping.”
I scoff. “Regrouping sounds like hiding.”
“Sounds like surviving,” he counters. “Which is something you know how to do very well.”
Silence settles between us, heavy but not hostile.
I sling the bag over my shoulder. “I’m not going with you because you ordered me to.”
His mouth curves slightly. “I wouldn’t expect anything else.”
“And this isn’t over.”
Now he smiles. “Of course not.”
He helps me into his truck, buckling me in before closing the door softly behind him. Colter comes around to the other side, hopping in and then starting the truck.
The ride back to his place is quiet, but it isn’t tense like I am expecting. He doesn’t seem to be holding on to any of the emotions he showed me in my John’s office. He is peaceful and relaxed, his hand on my thigh comfortingly as the truck bobs along the bumpy road.
“I’m not angry, darling,” he breaks the silence as the truck pulls into the driveway. “Even if I was, that shit stays locked.” He puts the truck in park and turns to me. When I don’t look athim right away, he nudges my chin toward him with his knuckle, forcing me to meet his soft gaze.
“You sounded angry,” I admit with a shrug.
“I was frustrated,” he admits himself. “But not angry. I’m frustrated that you keep running headlong into something you don’t understand while also at my wits end with John, because I do believe you deserve to know the truth about what happened.”
“Then why don’t you tell me?”
He sighs. “Because it isn’t my story to tell, Peyton.”
I know he’s right and trying to do the proper thing, but it still stings. There is this weird sense that, even if he wasn’t holding back about my mother and John, there is still something none of them are telling me. It’s like I am being held at arms-length or looking into a pond but all I can see are the ripples on the surface.
“I know,” I huff, attempting to keep the childlike petulance from my voice. “It feels like—everyone is on a secret and I’m standing on the outside looking in.”
Colter reaches over and clicks my seatbelt off. I barely have time to figure out what he is doing before he has me straddling him on the middle seat of his truck. He’s hard beneath me, but nothing about his touch at the moment is sexual.
“I know it’s hard to understand,” he tells me, his voice heavy. His eyes are set on mine, begging me to understand. “You feel like an outsider and that hurts. But there are some things, outside of John, that I can’t tell you. Not yet. But I will. You are mine, Peyton Masterson, and everything that I have will be yours as well. You need to give me time.”
“You say I’myours,” I breathe. “But we barely know one another. Hell, barely is a stretch. We are strangers, Colter and yet you act as if we’ve been together our whole lives.”
“Come on now, little star,” he smirks at me. “We’re the stars. Meant to be. Giant balls of gas that blink out of existence onlyto blink right back in under a new sky. We’re eternal, Peyton Masterson. I know it, because every time I look at your beautiful face, I feel it. That we’ve done this a thousand times over the years. Brought together by fate time after time. Coming right back to one another.”
Well shit.
