“My vanity.” Holly wrinkled her nose, mouth pinched with chagrin. “Photos I took during Tick’s wedding weekend. I’m thinking of putting them together into a photobook for them as a Christmas gift, although I know they had a professional photographer.”
“That’s a great idea.” He kept his gaze averted to one side of the photo array.
“I told her the same thing, that it was a sweet idea and Lamar will love it.” Mama lifted her cup for a long sip. Lord, please let that be water or tea and not wine.
Please.
Holly patted the stool next to her. “So come help me pick which ones to use.”
“Oh, no.” He held both hands aloft, cup in one. Maybe she wouldn’t notice his fingers were a little shaky. “You don’t want me involved in that. Are we waiting on D to eat?”
“No.” Mama picked up a glossy sheet of paper. “Holly and I already ate. You go ahead.”
Sweet . . . wow. Holy freaking hell.
“Okay.” Thankful for the excuse to move away from the pictorial record of his cousin’s life, the one he had no part in, he flipped open the top pizza box, found an all-meat and grimaced. Who’d come up with the idea to put ground beef on a pizza, anyway? The second box held pepperoni, sausage and black olives, and he nearly groaned with relief. Lunch had been a while away, and his appetite had been shit, knowing she was with Barlow.
“Hmm, I like this one.” Holly slid a photo to one side and examined the others with a critical eye. Colt propped on the counter behind her, paper plate in hand. Her braid bobbed with each movement, and a grin tugged at his mouth. That was kind of cute. “What about that one, Sue?”
He choked. When had she dropped the Mrs. before that Sue?
Obviously, he’d stepped into a parallel universe. Maybe in this one, he hadn’t screwed everything to hell.
“I like this one better, where you can see the sun through her veil.” Mama’s face softened. “And that’s sweet, the way he’s smiling at her.”
“He’s always looking at her like that.” Holly added the photo to her “keep” pile. “He’s a big ol’ goober around her.”
The idea tugged the center of Colt’s chest, hard. The pull made him want to step forward, take a look into Tick’s life, see for himself that he was happy and all right.
Colt didn’t have that privilege anymore.
He hadn’t even laid eyes on Tick in months, maybe over a year. Chewing a bite of Nick’s pizza that suddenly tasted like sawdust, he tried to remember, casting about for the slimmest of meetings. Not Easter, because Tick had brought his family but there’d been no Sunday services after that tornado went through the night before. He’d spent Christmas in Texas, and Thanksgiving solely at his mama’s.
That weekend before he went to Texas, maybe. Yeah, Tick had been at church, and Colt had glimpsed him in the foyer between Sunday School and services, coming out from the young single men’s class upstairs, the one Jay Mackey and Scott Barlow attended, unlike Colt, who hadn’t set foot in Sunday School since the Sunday before Will died.
Even pleasing Mama couldn’t make him do that.
He choked down the pizza and chased it with water. The half a slice left on his plate seemed insurmountable, but eating meant he could ignore the love fest over those photos. He didn’t need to see. He knew Tick’s daughter looked like him, looked a lot like Del’s daughters, knew his wife was a brunette Aunt Lenora called lovely, that Louise adored her and thought she was perfect for him.
He wouldn’t know her if he passed her on the street, and really it was better that way. To be honest, he craved being connected to Lamar, missed him like a violently amputated limb, phantom pain and all, but come on . . . everyone knew David messed up when he looked upon Bathsheba, that Lot’swife shouldn’t have turned and looked back. He deserved what he got, and what he needed to do was keep his gaze on his own life, not look dead on at Tick’s.
“Colt.” Mama’s voice jolted him from the reverie, her tone making it clear she’d called him more than once. “Are you listening?”
He blinked, caught Holly’s pointed gaze on his face, and looked away. “Sorry. Thinking about work.”
Damn it, he was lying to his mama. He’d worry about going to hell for that, except Holly had Mona believing she was a virgin, and well, as if. A memory spiked in his brain, her fingers tangled in his hair while he . . . his face flushed hot.
Pretty appropriate since they were hot together.
She knew where his mind had gone, smirking at him. He scowled, and her lips curved into a knowing smile he felt all the way below his belt. The woman was incorrigible, and he liked it that way, liked how she slotted into his life and lit everything up.
His mama relaxed around her — that said a lot right there.
He didn’t want to think about life before her or a life going forward without her.
Holy . . . damn it, he was gone over her already.
“Colt.” Exasperation tinged Mama’s voice, and he tore his gaze away from Holly’s. With her lips parted like that, a hint of surprise in her blue eyes, no telling what showed on his face.
