The feathery touch of her finger along his rib transformed to a poke. “I don’t really want to listen to you talk about being strongly attracted to her.”
“About like I don’t like to hear you say you love Barlow.”
“Loved.” She placed a hard emphasis on the past tense, and a smile pulled at his mouth.
“Anyway.” He gave the smooth lock a gentle tug. “We have more to build on. I mean, how long have we been friends?”
She rested her temple on her fist, and even in the dimness, he could make out the teasing note in her smile. “I suppose you’re going to say since we were analysis partners junior year? Newsflash, Colton, you were absolutely my nemesis on some of those texts.”
“I was not.” She was hyperbolic, for sure. Her nemesis? More like her ally because she came up with the most convoluted analyses and his sorry ass produced the evidence to back her up. Innate honesty and the need to shore up her security in him prodded at him, and he swallowed hard, preparing himself to jump, about like that time he and his cousins had scaled the lime pit walls and leapt into the swim hole. If he remembered correctly, that had been Will’s harebrained idea, goading Tick into it, and then Colt had jumped with him, sure they’d busttheir heads and kill their fool selves. He cleared his throat. “So I wasn’t fair to Tyler.”
Her brows dipped into a delicate frown. “What are you talking about?”
“We got in pretty fast after we met, but the hot and heavy was already cooling off about the time Tick came home from Texas and told Aunt Lenora about his kid and her mama.”
The vee between her brows cut deeper. “Colt, you are not making sense. What does that have to do with anything?”
He scuffed a hand through his hair, then folded his arm behind his head. Geez, his throat wanted to close up, hold back the words making him naked and vulnerable. “I know him. If he was telling his mama he was with her, that meant something.”
Silence hung between them, heavy and loaded, like the twist of nerves in his belly.
He cleared his throat again. “And it meant he wasn’t with you.”
“Oh, my Lord.” With a huff and an eye roll, she flopped to her back beside him. She puffed her bangs out of eyes. “Do you know how old that mess is—”
“Holly, you’re not listening to me.” He kept his voice patient, despite how it wanted to shake. He was laying himself out here, and she was off in old resentment. “I tried, but I couldn’t be what Tyler wanted. And once I had an inkling you weren’t with him—”
“Colt.”
“All I could think about was whether that might mean eventually you’d look at me.” He clenched his hand, then flexed his fingers, working out the tension. “You didn’t. Now I get why. Anyway, I’d let the idea of you and me go, but the way I felt meant the idea of Tyler and me had to go, too.”
She stilled next to him, then rolled to her side in an explosion of movement. “Are you telling me you had feelings for me a year ago?”
Holyhell. He hadn’t been this tied in knots since . . . well, probably that Christmas a couple of years ago when he and Tick ended up alone in the laundry room at Grandma and Grandaddy’s, packing up the house for their move to Orlando. He’d opened his mouth a couple of times,I’m sorryon his tongue, but the unyielding wall of Tick’s back turned to him had smothered the impulse each time. At least he had hope this might turn out better.
“Yeah.”
She didn’t have to know it was longer than a year. He didn’t have to open that up, admit how long he’d made himselfnotlook at her because he’d believed she belonged to his cousin.
“Colton.” Yeah, he could totally read that tone. Was she pleased? Horrified? What? “And you didn’t say anything?”
He scoffed. “Yeah, sure. I was gonna just roll up in the vet’s office and go, ‘Hey, Hols, let’s you and me give it a shot.’ Right.”
“You dumbass.” She landed a punch on his shoulder, hard enough to jar him.
“Hey.” He rubbed at the spot. “That is not okay.”
“Youdumbass.” Her voice shook. “I wasted a year, trying to change . . . and we could have been together? I would have loved to hear that from you.”
“Pfft.”
She shot to an upright position. “Don’t you dare negate what I’m telling you.”
“Holly.” He injected a hefty dose of warning in her name. She wasn’t going to play with him about this.
Sitting cross-legged, she clasped her hands in her lap. “So me and Scott.”
Oh, shit. Tension crawled up his neck. Listening to her wax poetic about the asshole lawyer defined his worst nightmare.
