Only a month? It seemed a lifetime ago, a different life.
Lorraine harrumphed, a wealth of amusement in the small sound. “She is all over you.”
“Beggarweed. All night. Like the beginning of the reception was okay, but once she started drinking? Lord help me.” Grimacing, Colt lifted his arm from Holly’s shoulders and leaned forward for his cup. “Seems she needed a plus one because she and her boyfriend broke up. And this was when she could still walk. Gracie ended up calling her mama to come get her.”
“I started to call Andy’s mama to come get him.” Grace elbowed her husband’s ribs, and he gave an exaggerated wince. She sobered. “She’s lucky, though.”
Barb made a noise of assent, her troubled gaze on the screen as the video clip ended. “Yes . . . some guys would have taken advantage of that situation.”
Lorraine sniffed in agreement, and Holly slanted a nod at her. There was alwaysthat guyin a bar or at a party or on a night out.
Del and Colt emitted matching scoffs, then exchanged a look. Colt shook his head. “D.”
With his reserved grin, Del nodded. “Lamar.”
“And Gene.” Colt set his cup aside with precise movements and squared his shoulders to mimic Mr. Gene’s posture. “Boy, just because a girl’s been drinking and is not herself–”
“--that does not give you permission,” Del finished for him.
“Thank you.” Pete smacked the table, hard enough that Lorraine, sitting between him and David, flinched. He gestured between Lorraine and Mackey, ignoring how Wally stiffened next to him, gaze trained on Colt with laser-like focus. “I tried to tell that asshole today.”
His slight accent deepened with his anger. Mackey stretched in his chair, disgust twisting his features. “You can’t tell that asshole anything, Pete, let alone that a person who is blackout drunk can’t consent to anything.”
“Someone blackout drunk can’t consent.” Wally’s voice rang with a hard, cold note, his gaze tracking from Scott to Mackey, over Del and David, encompassing Lorraine and Holly, but landing on Colt’s face. “Imagine that.”
Eyes narrowed, Scott tilted his head, that quizzical lawyer’s expression arching his brows. “Am I missing something?”
Wally’s taut snort felt like an insult. “Nope, not anything you–”
“Walton.” Colt’s deep voice sagged with quiet exhaustion, and when Wally finally swung his gaze back to him, he shook his head. Something indefinable passed between them, Wally grabbing his cup with enough force to rattle the ice. Mackeywatched the exchange, frowning, a speculative light in his blue eyes.
Andy stared down at his fingernails, a ring of white around his mouth, he’d compressed his lips so tightly. Gracie watched his face, the position of her arm hinting that she had hold of his knee.
The air about the table crackled with tension and undercurrents, and Holly frowned. None of this made sense, especially not the sudden sensation that an unseen hand had taken a marker, drawn an unscalable barrier between his friends and hers, although once upon a time . . . they’d all been friends.
Some of the fracture had healed – Grace’s Raley was friends with DJ and Blake, so she interacted with Lorraine and Barb. Andy coached rec league, so he interacted with David and Del. They all went to church together, and . . .
None of this made sense. She wasn’t stupid – that long ago night wrapped about the table with dark, ghostly tentacles like a poisonous mist – but the subtext hid within that murkiness. Allison and Colt had both been drinking that night, the subject of whispered conversations all over town, how he’d passed out later after a brief confrontation with Tick, how Allison had reeked of rum punch, all of that coming to Holly second or third, even fourth-hand, because she’d been beyond the party scene by then, had spent the night with Lorraine because David was on shift.
Why couldn’t that night just die, instead of rising like a hissing Hydra every time its head was severed?
Next to her, Colt assumed a ramrod-straight posture, rubbing his thumbnail over the edge of the table. Lord, if he kept that up, he’d end up with a wicked splinter. She laid a hand on his thigh, and his dark gaze jerked to hers. The defeated desolation there clenched her heart, and she tightened her light hold, his muscles going taut under her palm.
Lorraine’s phone shrilled, and Holly jerked. The distinctive ringtone belonging to Vontressa shattered the suffocating silence, Lorraine’s quiet “excuse me” breaking the excruciating tension but not dispelling it.
The gathering splintered from there, people separating for their leavetaking. Lorraine’s hard hug and whispered “I love you, girl” in her ear had hot tears prickling the backs of Holly’s eyes all over again. Closing the door behind David and Lorraine, Holly drifted back to the kitchen, where Colt packaged leftover soup and sandwiches in containers and stowed them in the refrigerator, the dishwasher already running as he’d cleared away while she handled awkward farewells.
She paused on the boundary between the living room and kitchen, watching the careful circles of a damp rag while he wiped down the counters, the way his shoulder blades pushed against the thin cotton of his shirt with each movement. He remained tense, quiet and withdrawn, and Holly cupped her elbows, hugging her arms tight against her midriff.
The last thing he needed was her pushing and digging, trying to make sense of that conversation through his perspective, because that one conversation had shoved him right back into the hole he’d just climbed out of. She wouldn’t do that to him, wouldn’t make this worse.
What she would do was care for him, be whatever he needed in the moment.
With extreme precision, he draped the rag across the sink divider and turned, his expression blank, his gaze shuttered and distant. Dropping her hold on her elbows, Holly took a step forward, followed by another and another until she stood before him, until she could lift her hands and cradle his face, draw his mouth down to hers.
Surprise flared in his dark eyes, his grateful “huh” whispering across her lips before she kissed him, wrapped her arms about his neck and clung like beggarweed.
Strong arms banded about her, clamping her close, and she pressed nearer, stroking his hair, his nape, firm comfort in each touch. “Colt?”
